Agreed but so is the MiG-29M/K/35

True, but I also see those as sitting in something of a grey area (along with the latest Strike Eagles) given that while they are essentially new airframes they are a drop-in replacement/upgrade to a previous type and all retain some of their predecessor’s parts/avionics. The Super Hornet is not an updated Hornet, it is an entirely new aircraft that once shared some avionics and now shares essentially nothing with the original Hornet.

You are forgetting high speed cruise and super-agility. EF or Typhoon easily meet the criteria regd. avionics, sensor fusion, agility and arguably even cruise capability. The F-35, OTOH, meets critera for LO/VLO and avionics/sensor fusion.

By all means the F-35 is hardly more 5th Gen than Typhoon. If we were very precise, only F-22, T-50 and J-20 would meet criteria for a real 5th gen fighter, AFAIK..

Hardly given the EF can cruise at M1.3+ with reasonable A-A load while SHornet at some M0.8 (if, at all.). BTW, I would hesitate to tell that the stealthy pods are more VLO than semi-recessed AIM-120s or Meteors on the EF, if we already talk about it.

You actually argued the opposite of what I think you were trying to. Super cruise is present in some 4th and 5th generation aircraft, and is thus not a good distinguishing characteristic, and you are correct, the same could be claimed of advanced avionics and sensor fusion. Stealth is the primary distinguishing mark of a 5th generation fighter, but I think advanced avionics and sensor fusion is still a necessary feature. (If there were a stealthy aircraft without advanced avionics and sensor fusion what would one call it? 5–? )

Your responses do nothing but try to push everything US made a category higher and everything foreign-made a category lower than they actually belong to.

Not at all. I placed the various Eurocanards in the same category as the aircraft the compete with. I would put the J-20 and PAK FA in the 5th generation column with the F-22 and F-35.

Super Hornet is a warmed over design from the 70s, just like MiG-35 and Su-35 are, and as H-6K is a warmed over design from the 50s.

Ah, so I guess you are still unaware that the Super Hornet is an entirely new airframe. :rolleyes:

Fighters that organically belong to the next generation after the teen series and Fulcrum/Flanker can all be distinguished by their delta-canard configuration: Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon, Lavi, J-10, MiG MFI.

Here you are wrong again. The F-15,16,18 and Super Hornet are all 4th generation aircraft, as are the Eurocanards, Mig-29, Su-27, etc.

The generation after 4th generation is 5th generation, which is characterized principally by airframes with a heavy emphasis on stealth, internal weapons carriage, a new generation of avionics and sensor fusion.

The closest thing to a bridge from the 4th generation to the 5th generation is the Super Hornet since it is now flying with a stealthy conformal weapons pod. The Rafale may eventually follow this approach as well.

It’s hardly surprising that Super Hornet and F-16 (and MiG-35) went down hard the moment a customer decided to place performance characteristics ahead of political or value-for-money considerations. They’re just fundamentally older platforms.

Again, a belief clearly reached without any examination of the available evidence. The world export market since the introduction of the Eurocanards has been dominated by the F-15, F-16, Su-27/30 and Mig-29 with the F-15 and F-16 in particular having won several notable head-to-head competitions against Eurocanard designs. (Competitions that actually resulted in orders being placed I might add, which is more than can be said of the Indian competition to date…)

I suggest you take some time to read the various threads on this forum and generally educate yourself before interjecting yourself into topics you don’t yet understand.

Can anyone guess what aircraft I would like to sell to the US to makeup for its financial position cum milavia cliff?

Does anyone care?

Agreed. As the youngest of the 4th generation fighters (coming almost 10 years after the F-14), the vanilla Hornet was half-way to a 4.5 generation design already in many respects, and the SH did add a considerable amount of airframe re-design.

Er… no. F-16 production since 2000: about 570. Combined Typhoon/Rafale production: about 470. So the Falcon did outsell them, but certainly not “several times over” and it had an established market presence and is smaller and cheaper to buy. Add Gripen and the gap might just disappear altogether.

I’m too lazy to research F-16 export contracts since 2000 (preferably excluding repeat orders without open competition), but for what it’s worth the Eurocanards (excluding Gripen) have won a total of some 220 orders over this period.

Yes, let’s.

We are talking in terms of exports, read the post I am responding to.

Hopsalot, i do not used to kid you. Check what i said, then talk.

Oh I read what you said just fine. :rolleyes:

The way in which the options are being laid out, its quite clear that the Pentagon is kind of forcing Congress to act in a certain way, a way which they prefer. No one is going to cancel 2 out of the 3 programs that the USAF Secretary has described as the service’s top priorities (LRS_B, F-35 and the Tanker Program)…. So kind of laying out such options by the pentagon, in a “LEAKED” report, is kind of amusing..Who’s gonna take this “Threat”(F-35 being cancelled) seriously when the Pentagon concluded a multi batch purchase of 71 fighters :), just a few days ago.

Indeed, these leaks are not serious proposals, they are designed to force Congress to take action.

Hypothetically if the F-35 were cancelled the USAF would immediately have to turn around and start life extensions and ordering hundreds of new build upgraded F-15s and F-16s at great expense. It would probably be marginally cheaper than buying F-35s, but at the cost of saddling the USAF with new-build jets that would be nearing obsolescence by the time they rolled off the assembly line. The Navy would be in better shape as they could simply continue buying Super Hornets… but of course they would have far fewer carriers to worry about equipping if this scenario played out.

The tanker program offers even fewer options. The current tankers are exhausted and simply can not fly forever. If the tanker program is cancelled the Pentagon will simply have to do without. No other option could fill the need at lower cost.

The NGB would be the easiest to kill in the short term. The current fleet of bombers could continue to serve but this would derail much of the Pentagon’s Pacific strategy which is reliant on the NGB. The NGB program is also fairly early in its development and hasn’t reached the really expensive part of the program. Killing it now likely wouldn’t yield large near-term savings.

This isn’t any different from what the plan has been for the last several years.
They explicitly state that total procurement numbers are not being reduced, and development of block upgrades continues to plan.

They announced they were reducing the total procurement numbers earlier this year.

Even that will be in question unless export orders materialize. You simply can’t sustain a production line producing an average of 4 fighters a year. The costs would be astronomical. Don’t forget this isn’t just about the airframes, it is about everything else the Rafale requires. Four radars a year, ~8 engines a year, etc.

You can only scale production up and down so much.

Dassault Aviation, which builds the Rafale fighters, used to high-profile effect in fighting in Libya and Mali, was to supply 11 planes a year to the French defense forces.

This was intended to ensure an essential minimum amount of work for production lines while France tries to achieve the first sales of the aircraft abroad.

But the government, which is struggling to meet commitments to the European Union and to retain investor confidence by getting its public deficit under control, is crimping public expenditures, including defense spending.

Under the draft defense estimates put before the cabinet Friday, the left-wing government will acquire only 26 of the planes during the next six years.

Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said June 11 that from 2016, Dassault Aviation would have to count on exports to underpin production of the plane, which is able to fulfil several types of missions.

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130802/DEFREG01/308020007/France-Cut-Rafale-Order-Betting-Exports

26 aircraft over 6 years? How are these distributed? 4 per year? Or are they front loaded? (11 next year, 11 the year after that, then essentially nothing)

In either case do I really have to ask what happens if a substantial export order doesn’t come? …and if you were a potential customer would you want to buy into a program knowing what a low priority it is for its domestic government? What does that say about its long-term support?