How do you believe they have new wings? They had to go back to F-5A wings as the launch rails on the wingtips of the F-5E did create turblucences which caused problems with the twin tails. And not a few would say that these were F-5A to start with.

@ Seahawk –

The RN hasn’t only used harriers until today :rolleyes:

I know. But for a Navy which thought that the Harrier would be adequate in 2010, the SH should be adequate in 2035.

A332 can take 233 metric tons at 2600m runway length. A342 265 tons at 3020m runway length. Which in theend means that the A332 can carry 10 tones more payload when flying from Kiruana to JFK for example.(2550m runway at Kiruana)

What a pointless discussion.

Back in te day when the cold war was at full swing and the evil Soviet just about to recht the Rhine and Paris, NATO thought about what they need to win the airwar in 2010.

The first thing they wanted was a replacement for the F-15C. A fighter that could dominate the FoB. That became the F-22 designed to fight iside the enemies airspace and take on their latest Su-27 developments inside the enemy airspace.

The second was a fighter to replace the aging F-4s in allied forces. A fighter good at defending friendly airspace from enemy fighters and with a secondary ground attack role. That became EF.

The third was a replacement for the F-16. Multirole, primarilyused for strike missions (lookwhat the uSAf F-16 mostly do) but good enough in the air-to-air areana to defend against modern threats. That became the JSF.

And today put them into the described roles and you will see that each them is better than the others doing the job that they were meant to do back as late as the early 70ies.

NATO also had a full GC network with mobile radars to replace knocked out stationary radars and consisting of multiple layers. But especially for directing offensive air operations and detecting low flying enemey bombers, the E-3s would be badly missed.

How much fuel is enough depends on the mission. When F-105 or F-4s bombed Vietcongs attackign the perimeter of the airbase internal fuel was more than enough.

Eurocanards were never designed around the RCS thingie..the reason why Rafale and the EF do have s duct is more related with engines performance than with radar discretion, people yell and babble over the yf-22/23 having the s-duct for the rcs thingie, but then is most likely related with engines performance as well, there was a ‘s-duct’ fashion for all planes for that generation, F22/23, EF, Rafale, s-37, Mig144, only 2 of them were designed with the RCS thing in mind, IMO, the s duct does have other function as well, probably more important than the stealth stuff.

I must disagree. I have the original requirements laid out for the future European fighter aircraft, dating back to the 1970ies. In the papers a reduction of the frontal RCS was already listed as a requirement to be met by TF2000.

I’m sorry, but this is not true, I’m sorry for the pro west/east fanboys eating fanboy books, confusing real RCS requirements with obsolete technology.

The state of this program is already advanced, this is not a YT-50, this is clearly a operative prototype, and IMO is not the only one there.

Russians did consider the whole S-duct thing, as you can see in the flateric pictures.

What they are doing with this PAKFA will be great, basically they will troll the ‘stealth’ industry and a bunch of fanboys with good engineering, the only thing that really matters, and they will achieve the same performance in the RCS field.

They won’t go with the S duct thing, they already studied it, and laughed over it, the S duct is a source of radar return, it shows more surface on exposed angles than a conventional duct, they will screen the whole thing, will they use blockers? or a grill? we don’t really know

They could even go with the same intake type of the F-23, don’t say that redesigning the intake would require a immense airframe redesign, look at the J-10B or even the F-16 with the DSI thingie.

But i really think this is the final airframe’s design.

Well, if you have so much faith in engineers. I don´t regardless of their home country. (and I am one)

For me it is a conflicting requirement. Putting a radar blocker in hte inlet reduces the flow through the inlet, while a stronger engine would require a higher airflow. It would be wise imho to wait for the final duct design, until you use the final engine.