F-35 is a fast jet isn’t it ?

In my opinion it’s short sighted to withdraw the T1 Typhoons from service that early and the predicted 2030 out of service date for T2 & T3A examples means that some of them won’t be in service for longer than 15 years! I’m yet sceptical on these time lines as a replacement is not even on its way!

Seems insane to scrap all typhoons in 2030 — it will not make it easier to sell Typhoon abroad if this really is the case! But Germany and Spain would probably still operate Typhoon after 2030?

The replacement date is very dramatic if true. Would that mean that the UK would pull out of Eurofighter by 2030? They would have not interest in paying if they don’t operate it? OTOH I am sure the UK would insist on keeping the jobs! Meetings between the Eurofighter partners are probably never boring!

The replacement could be F-35… :diablo:

Libya obviously, but the reason i ask is that the UK is apparently airlifting refugees into Libya.

Or is the UK lifting refugees out of Libya?

BBC says:

The NAO report says Typhoons are performing well in air-to-air missions, but that work on adapting the jets for ground attack is unlikely to be complete until 2018.

Of course the Typhoon has a2g capability already, but it seems some pieces are still missing?

Funny I remember back in 2007 (or was it early 2008?) the Norwegian evaluation committee was leaking info on how they evaluated each candidate. The problem that was highlighted with the Typhoon was “lack of commitment” from the partner nations on particular capabilities that were lacking.

Loke, which 2.5 ton load does the rafale carry ?

Rafale was tested as a launch vehicle for rockets that could push payloads up to LEO. If I recall correctly the weight of that vehicle was in the same range as Brahmos, if not even higher.

Perhaps my memory is failing me?

Where are the Rafale experts when you need them!?

Why was the top speed the only thing mentioned then, if turning performance was also being compared?

WW, you have a highly theoretical approach to this discussion that seems quite far removed from the constraints and noise found in what is normally referred to as “the real world”.

The story was not written by the Col. but by a journalist. He obviously did not write everything the Col. said, and he probably misunderstood some of it.

The Col. probably never meant to imply that due to higher top Mach number the F-16 would be better for air shows than the F-35 as you yourself pointed out would be meaningless…

We don’t have a complete transcription of everything he said; this is a news story, no more and no less.

However since the reference to air shows was in both the main body and the heading, it seems highly probable that the journalist got that one right. Also a statement “x is better for air shows than y” is easy for a journo to understand and therefore get right, whereas talk about turn rates and other parameters can easily become complicated and confusing to a journo and therefore difficult to refer correctly. Top speed again is easy to understand and report, and since that was a parameter that distinguished the two, the journo may have mistakenly made a connection the the air show comment that was made during the presentation. However the fact that it says “clean F-16” indicates at least some attention to detail on the Journalist’s part.

Also the Col. probably did not do a “fanboy” type of comparison that you seem to imply, when you talk about comparing parameters. He would be focusing more on the combat effectivness and not waste too much time talking about air shows (although, as one would expect, it was the statement on “air shows” that got the attention of the journalist).

Finally; what is a good air show? That is in the eye of the beholder, don’t you agree? Some people would claim that fighter X would give the best airshows whereas others may claim that the Y is superior to X for air-shows.

I am sure you will be very happy with the air-show performance of your beloved F-35 and claim it’s way better than F-16 also in that regard … 😉

Whether you will accept that some people seem disagree with you well that’s another story.

Single crystal blades are nothing new at all. Every MMRCA candidate has them. Even the Su-30’s currently flown by India have them. Now that they are getting help from SNECMA on the Kaveri this shouldn’t even be an issue.

I mostly agree, although I think I read somewhere that there was something “special” about the EJ200 single crystal tech — sorry I cannot remember what it was and where I read it. (it could also be that it was just some BS I read on a forum…)

I will try to find out. Or perhaps some of the Typhoon experts on this forum can tell us?