Why?!

Change in control law. Read something about it. Can’t remember the source, sorry.

We should remember that if a country really want to order new fighters, the maneuverability will be the first consideration out of them, so more powerful engine always being better.

Wrong! Manouverability will hardly get under the Top 10 of reasons to chose an aircraft. When we reduce it to the performance issues, it possibly gets under the Top 5. Only if it is a showstopper it might be considered more.

Also, what about price of the Dash 5 compared to the Rafale (which is vastly superior in every aspect imho)?

This aspect requires a seperated post.

I agree that the Rafale offers more manouverability, more multi-role, easier handling and can call itself “4th generation”. But, is it superior in the end? From the pure performance point of view (avionics are interchangable) the Mirage is actually superior to the Rafale in some areas. Manouverability is worse, but I doubt that this is of importance.

The Mirage lacks the proper engine. Especially is it basically an upgrade of something that was never intended as multi-role.

I don’t want to say that the Rafale is no advance, my point is: When one would design a Mirage 2000 today with up-to-date engine, avionics and flight control integrated from the start, the lack in performance resulting from the tailless delta would be small.

The Gripens twr is not that great with the rm12 so the ej200 would be a good option imho. The ej200 is a much newer design and theres still a lot of potential in it (120kn+) whereas the rm12 is at the end of its life cycle.
A Gripen with 12 tons of thrust would be a real monster. 😎

Like always some people in this forum tend to focus on maniverability first and forget other things about it. The fact that the Gripen is able to achieve Mach 2 with a lower TWR than some American designs (incl. F-18) shows the aerodynamic benefits of the design. The TWR is surely not the best in the world, but it is sufficient. There is no need for “super-manouverability”, so designers re-think.
Fast is that the Gripen with its current engine is a marvelous machine: very low weight, high capability, true multi-role, easy maintenance and handling, very competitive flight performance. It is not the best performer, but for the customers in question it is not of importance. When you see how much some designs sacrifice for the extra deg/sec, you doubt that it was worth it.

Unfortunately, the Gripen (like the M2000) lacks the backing of a powerful nation to achieve sales in the market. Instead air forces buy crappy used F-16 or horribly expensive new F-16C.

I found this website to be very interesting. The author is comparing the Mirage to F-16 and F-18. He surely is biased, but the remarks he makes have some truth.
http://www.mirage-jet.com/COMPAR_1/compar_1.htm

Please note that all this max turn-rate blabla is only of secondary importance. Yes, I said secondary. Although people on this forum tend to rate fighters after their turn rate, it is not that important when other things are good. A Mirage with state-of-the-art IR missiles is a very tough contender for any fighter (not talkingof BVR here).

The Mirage appeals by its low empty weight and very competitive high-speed performance. The -5 is apparently very multi-mission capable, however, the payload-range seems not to be too attractive with a real bomb load and under combat conditions.
Anybody numbers apart from the usual wiki-stuff?

This thread needs some schooling on aircraft pitch trim, specifically, how it is done on tailed and canard aircraft. The NASA tutorial in the link gives a basic explanation of pitch trim.

http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/trim.html

Thanks for bringing some knowledge in. Especially when reading this:

So really what’s the point of aerodynamic design now? It has become moot in the face of magic bullets. You can design an airframe with less considerations for maneuverbility now, put priorities in radar cross section reduction, more space inside to put electronic stuff, considerations of easy access and maintenance, considerations for ruggedness, reliability, airframe life. The product will fly like crap once it’s done. But put a big honking motor, TVC, fancy helmet and fancy missiles, and you’re all set to go with your next wonder fighter.

The perception that “aerodynamics don’t matter that much any more” are completely wrong! Only a well designed aircraft will fullfil its requirements. You can achieve a lot with second class aerodynamic design but you put your performance at stake. Look at the F-18E.

I agree that canards or not are more a decision. I think that canard aircraft offer a basically better option for agility, but the offset of other designs is small. It is a decision that people make in the design process. In the definition phase of the Eurofighter everybody was after canards. Today things look different, but the design of EF and others proved well. Let’s remember that the technical possibilities in the early 80s were not the same as today.

This “staibility thing” is very tricky (thanks again djcross for his useful post). The X-29 had highly negative stability margin (about -0.25 MAC) and the control system design was very tricky. There are hard limits about how unstable aircraft can be. Beyond a certain point several issues will make control design impossible.

The long canard looks good on paper, but brings a truckload of problems for the real-world design. In my mind only the XB-70 had a proper implementation.

So does conventional design. The forward wing will influence the wing behind it. The tailplane is in the downwash of the main wing. The canard has the inherent advantage that you have full pitch authority at all AoA.

After all, canards are by itself no major advantage when looking at the total system performance. But I think they look cool.

???? He was killed in MiG-15UTI.

Really? Read it wrong. Let’s agree on “double-digit MiG”. :diablo: