There seems to be no authoritative account of the radars performance or ability…compare and contrast to how open the Russians are with their details. 🙁

I would go so far and say the stated figures are falsified/inaccurate to the point, that comparisons become guesswork. So the discussion here about a 10% performance advantage seems strange. I accept that one can distinct between radar generations and basic performance figures, but discussing tracking ability sounds a bit bold. By the way, in a heavy ECM environment the actual radar range will be much lower, and how the radar can cope with jamming is a totally different thing hardly accessible via internet (and no matter who you ask, everybody knowledgable will go mute, knowing that those infos are real game-changers).

If that’s full tanks then the Typhoon fuel load, as a fraction of empty weight, is a little less than that of an F-18E. But we’re talking a few percent, not a major difference.

The range of the F-18E is reported to be below expectations and actually you hardly see any without at least one external tank. “One man, one bomb, one hour”* :diablo:

But comparing fuel fractions hits the limit here, as the drag is probably not comparable. We also have to consider the mission. An Eurofighter on CAP mission with one singe tank and 4MRAAM & 2IRAAM will have pretty low drag (supercruise capability), so that a rather useful range can be expected.

Let’s assume 5000kg internal and 800kg external (=1000l).
Of that we consider 1400kg as take-off to 35.000ft and (conservative) reserve, the rest is cruising.
So we get (5800-1400)=4400kg for cruise.
Lift over drag is estimated at 8 (my personal guess), the SFC of the EJ200 at M0.85/35000ft is set at 0.85 kg/(daN*h).
TOW is 10000kg (OEW) + 5800kg (Fuel) + 1000kg (Weapon) = 16800kg. Actual fuel fraction is then .345.
Cruise time is then 4400kg *1/(14250daN/8 * 0.85kg/(h*daN)) = 2.9h (Brueget equation, average flight weight)
Range is then 2.9h * M0.85 * 305m/s * 3.6 = 2710km.
Radius is then 2710km/2 = 730nm
When we include a burner time of 4 minutes
@36kft and M1.2
@SFC of 2.0
@Thrust of 0.5 * static sea level (=0.5*2*90kN) (rough estimate of installed thrust at given altitude and speed when in full afterburner)
4/60 h * 2.0kg/(h*daN) * 9000daN = 1200kg (equals fuel flow of 18tons/hour)
Remaining cruise fuel is then 4400 – 1200 = 3200kg
Radius (excluding take-off distance) is then 530nm.

One can see that per one minute of burner the radius shrinks by 50nm. One minute afterburner equals 180km range. Quite impressive, but from my limited experience a quite reasonable number.
—————————————————-
(* Navy saying over the F-18A/C )

What is the Typhoons unrefueled range in combat configurations? I have read it carries 4500 kg of fuel, this seems fairly low for a medium twin engined fighter? The SH is something like 7000kg if I remember right?

From reading through the posts I guess comparing the Typhoon to the Rafale is probably a good benchmark it which to judge each aircrafts relative capabilities.

Combat radius with weapons (a2a) and some burner-time is about 300nm. With 3 external tanks (still leaves 10 AAM slots) the combat radius is about 600nm. Unrefueled range without weapons is 1200-1500km clean and about 4000km with full external tanks. The last two figures are “all-in” numbers, means no reserves and hardy operational.

Internal fuel is 4500kg, so at a standard a2a mission TOW of 15,000kg the fuel fraction is about .28-.29. That is better than most F-Teens. The low drag of the Eurofighter will allow a few nm more than on other fighters will comparable fuel fraction.

You seem to forget one thing.. That Raptor has a combat score of some 350:1 against F-15s 😉 or was it 3478:1? I seem to have lost thetrack in counting long ago..

And the F-15 has a combat record of 100:1 against various opponents (I now that no air2air-loss was officially accounted so far, but I can’t divide by zero, so I admit one loss).
When one F-15 is lost for 100 opponents, but one F-22 equals 350 F-15s, we can derive using simple mathematics:

350/1 * 100/1 = 35000/1

So the F-22 will have a combat record of 35000:1, or basically one F-22 can shot down ALL FIGHTERS IN THE WORLD. 😉 That brings me back to quote from American general Furgerson who followed an early presentation on the superiority of the F-15: “Ben, if I believed your story – which I don’t – but if I did – well, then we’d only need three F-15s: one in Europe, one in the Pacific, and one in the US to train in.”

By the way: how many AMRAAM are in the inventory?

It might be that a clean Su-34 has a lower RCS than a loaded Typhoon, but ….

Better make it this way:
[ATTACH]151327[/ATTACH]

TYphoon RCS:
Lots of talk about relatively LO a/c. Seen values from 0.01-0.5 msq clean config on the internet. Anything authoritative, whats the forum opinion?

Surely no source, but a pilot said that head-on the RCS is very low and the Eurofighter is hard to detect.

Trim-drag!

But I doubt that the Eurofighter shifts fuel when going supersonic. The relaxed stability (or incase of the Eurofighter the unstable configuration) allows to optimize the CG for trans/supersonic operation and achieve “artificial stability” below M1. The unstable configuration is important to achieve supercruise. Take a look at F-16 and F-18, which both have good thrust/weight with comparabe engine and inlet. It is the few percent more here (thrust) and few percent less here (trim-drag, front-drag, inlet-drag) to achieve supercruise. When an aircraft gets over M1, M1.3 to M1.5 a no real problem, especially as the thrust increases with speed.

No, I am sorry but TWR is not the end all single factor as to if an aircraft can super cruise or not, far be it, although, if I remember correctly didnt the Concorde have to use AB extensively to get on step??

Especially as you will hardly get knowledge of the TWR of Eurofighter, Rafale or F-22 at M0.9 to M1.2.