[QUOTE=US Agent]Makes me sick to my stomach that the French will benefit from this contract in any way, shape or form. 😡

Makes me sick to my stomach that there are politicians in Europe that consider the likes of you in the DoD and in the WH “allies”…

Is it possible to alter the shape of the air-intake of Su-27, to say, an S-shape.

could be done (those would look like something between YF-23 and SuperHornet’s intakes) but would add a lot of drag. However there will be a Flanker “derivative” with S-shaped intakes: the Pak-Fa 😉

Try to fit simultaneously 2 Storm Shadows and 3 external fuel tanks in a Typhoon
without getting in the way of the landing gear and you’ll learn that the Rafale is
the plane for those that want “long range” stand-off attack capability.
If you’re exclusively into A2A then the plane you need is the Typhoon.
If you want a multirole that can fire any weapon imaginable and don’t care much
about range, then the Typhoon is also your plane.

Mate, I asked you in the other thread- where did you hear these rumors? Like I said there, neither of them make much sense, especially the Su-27SM avionics one. Personally, I think these rumors are the product of crossed communications some ill-informed journalist read one day, and they don’t trump the more definitive info. Like I said in the other thread

– Su-27SM avionics: They’re basically Su-30MKK avionics, which will be over a decade old by the time the aircraft is supposed to have reached IOC. It’s simply not plausible. Leninents has already designed an impressive avionics suite for the Su-27IB, based around the B004 on some sensor fusion features, which was part of the reason why a special civilian aircraft was converted to serve as a testbed (like the F-22 had to, incidentally).

– AL-31Fs in ten years is also, quite dumb. The AL-41F has been around for some time (work focused on increasing TBO etc) and the reduced thrust version (AL-41F1? F2? whatever) from the original for the bigger MFI should reduce, not complicate matters. AL-41F technology is already being incorporated in a modernized AL-31F (AL-31V: 137kN).

Well, I heard about it in several short news items on the western press (FI, AFM, AI, etc…)
concerning the development of Lyulka engines and Su-27 upgrades. The
argument runs like this “PAK-FAs dimensions and weights are being
designed to fall in Flanker’s
figures ballpark as a way to fit in Flanker’s subsystems, if the new ones
don’t happen to be ready when the first airframes start testing”. But yes,
it could be a load of typical journalist drivel.

BTW, Vympel, do you know where I could get some info about current developments in Russia on
sensor fusion and EW in combat aircraft?

Just for the record, to make clear my considerations on the SH:
This plane is the outcome of the Navy trying to make the best of a bad situation
(a decade of procurement screw-ups). It would inevitably result in an unballanced
design.
The SH is a decent air combat platform for BVR engagements. In close range it
will, however, be struggling to perform as well as the other 4th, 4 1/2 generation aircraft.
In the air to ground role the SH will perform well, and it is not clear yet if the naval
JSF, if it is ever deployed, will be more performant in this role except for the stealth
characteristics.

ELP:
“I am looking toward a future that has less expeditionary warfare. That also includes a game plan that doesn’t see China as some big threat that has to be sabre rattled against ( outside the scope of this post ). It also involves a future that means few if any foreign arms sales. The future I am talking about still leaves us the ability to kick down a door if needed but doesn’t mean we have to be omni-present everywhere in the world, which has gotten us into the trouble we are in today. It is also a future where we still have a killing air ability and not spending so much tax dollars on facilities management of bases outside the U.S. I see… no bases outside the U.S. as being the ultimate hot setup, and if there is a war, it better be well within our direct interest before we even think about being involved… if ever.”

Man, you have just articulated a rational, sound and sane US post-Cold War defense policy,
something I have yet to hear any US politician (Republican or Democrat) making!
Have you ever thought of running for office?

Of course it can, Hyperwarp, if an SA-6 can down an F-117…

What is relevant is what the odds are of shooting it down per hundreed or per
thousand launches. They may be low but you can be sure that they are not 0…

From the rumors I heard it seems that when the plane will come out it will have interim avionics and
engines. The avionics based on the Su-27 SKM, which mean that will
feature a PESA antenna, and the engines a version of the AL-31F.

Only later in the production will an AESA radar be available as well as a
“Su-27/T-50 compatible” version of the AL-41F (I think it’s called AL-41F1).

Probably the retrofits of these subsystems will not only be available to the T-50,
but also for Su-27 users

Yeah, Sauron, Criticism of Israel Goverments = Anti-Semitism

By that standard how many jewish citizens ar anti-semitic?