If people in are really worried about the long-term safety of various European countries (including Russia’s safety), then just looking at defence spending isn’t enough.
At a fertility conference being held these days in Oslo it’s been revealed that with current fertility rates of 1.4-1.5 in Germany, Russia, Spain and Italy and other European countries, their populations will be halved within 44 years. The UK is doing better with 1.8, but you’re still looking at a decline, just not that dramatic.

Immigration does nothing because studies have shown that the majority of the immigrants will fall in with the fertility trends of these countries.

I have no links to this yet, the conference will end on the 5th, these are just the main points that have been reported in the press.
In the face of a population halving within a mere 44 years, the issues of 2.5% or 3%, 180 or 200 Typhoons, 3 or 5 Sachsens, will seem like fairly small issues to me. More important is the issue of making it possible and attractive for a career couple to foster two children and still keep their jobs as well as having the rest energy and free time that western people want.

Additionally, the reduction in population is one thing, the strong reduction in working population is another worrying fact. Before somebody is “gone”, he is in average 10 to 15 years retiree with little to none effective value to the economy.
Europe hast lost several million jobs in the last decade, in Germany alone ~5 to 7 million people have left the working process since the pre-1990 (reunification falsifies the picture a bit). Due to spendy retirement systems the ability to invest in defence and infrastructure will be limited to zero in a not too far future. This problem affects most of the European countries and also the USA. Managing the mass of disappointed elderly people of which a good percentage will live impoverished after decades of work, may take the European countries all ability to defend against anything.

check the combat radius of SH under different configurations and then check that of Eagle, huge difference.

Do you have any data?

The ride quality is nothing else than the gust response of an aircraft. The vertical load factor (when we consider vertical axis only) changes with the airspeed flucturations (and angle of attack, but lets consider a purely hotizontal gust).
The function is:
n ~ CL ~ IAS² * WingArea * Lift Curve Slope * Angle of Attack

Canards only help in controlling the aircraft, the gust response is largely similar. The discomfort of low level flight is due to gusty conditions with high dynamic pressure. The pilot also needs to control the flight path, which may cause high workload (lots of disturbance, probably resonance with aircraft modes).
For a gust load allevation it is rather necessary to use wing trailing and leading edge devices, which normally have insufficient reaction time. The canards on the B-1B were necessary so that the flight control system could control pitch, the elevators were not fast enough.

Which is quite right if you are Uncle Sam 😉 I was approaching this from the standpoint of a user country like Australia, who will need every bit of range they can get, or Israel, who need to eke every bit of capacity from a set number of airframes; ie using the external racks to punch a hole in the AD network, then presto-chango :dev2: there is a hole in the defences, AND they have most/all of their RCS back.

Matt

From a range standpoint the carriage of external stores seems dubious: Though external tanks might offer better range the clean aircraft on internal fuel should have a formidable range, especially when the flight profile has more time at altitude.
Anyways, there is hardly any aircraft more capable for those missions on the horizon. Compared to today’s aircraft of Israel and Australia (F-15I, F-18/E, F-111C) the F-35 will prove a huge leap forward. Of cousre, some particular missions will not be covered as good as it is today, for example carriage of excessive amounts of dumb bombs.

My argument was that during the 30s build up of German military power, Britain and France did virtualy nothing until it was too late. (for France anyways….allmost for Britain) The point being…..regardless of intentions today……what China will be like in 10 years is an unknown. They ARE building their armed forces up with very modern equipment , and to not take a long hard look at that and react in an appropriate way would be…..well…..very much like the allied powers in the 30s.

I wouldn’t say they did nothing. Correct is that Nazi Germany increased its military budget dramatically in the 1930s. Advantage was that it didn’t possess a large army and could rebuilt it from the scratch, was forced to go new ways to compensate for some shortcomings. But the Wehrmacht of 1939 wan’t much stronger than the French forces at that time. The problem for the Allies: the British had a traditionally small army and needed time to get to France, French offensive capabilities were limited, though to “do something” they would had to act offensively against Nazi Germany.

The disaster in May 1940 was due to a small core of trained German troops (basically the Panzer Divisonen and the few mechanized divisions, in lieu with Luftwaffe) acting under very good leadership but at the same time accepting high risks. The mass of the German army wasn’t any better than the British or French.

“TF-15A ‘Strike Eagle’ Second development TF-15A modified during 1982 for dedicated air-ground operations to potentially replace the F-111. Company funded demonstrator.”
24th February 1984 Production go-ahead for F-15E.
11th December 1986 Maiden flight of F-15E prototype.
1988 First F-15E delivered to the USAF.

Which sounds like a very good schedule. Only 4 years between go-ahead and delivery/IOC was probably only achievable because the aircraft was a modification and largely similar to the legacy Eagle (at least more similarities than the Suchoi to its legacy aircraft). And it was Cold War times.

http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=040cda3a-a564-44d3-9cd4-6c0d26a9763c&

And next year is 50th anniversary of the Phantom’s first flight, I guess the people of that era wouldn’t had believed if we had told them that today the most modern aircraft (A380, B787) are only a few Mach counts faster than the old B707.
On the other hand, they produce one tenth of the noise and need one third of the fuel (per seat-mile). An A380 could haul three empty B707-120 packed in boxes.

Indeed good news for Airbus. The single in-service aircraft helps to focus resources on this one. Looks like this time the “green banana” is little bit more yellow than it was when Airbus delivered the A340-600.