The Rafale’s radar is extremely small and coul easily be out-ranged by even a good PESA.

In the Swiss leaks they praised the excellent performance of the Rafale’s (small) PESA — The RBE2 has a significantly longer range than the Rafale PESA, there are some numbers out there I am sure Halloweene or other French members can provide :).

Surprisingly they did not praise the Typhoons radar which by many has been considered to be one of the best (if not the best) non-AESA fighter radar… Perhaps there is a difference between “commonly held beliefs” and realities sometimes?

(having said that — yes the Rafale radar is not huge, that is certainly a fact).

If the beings running this simulation have a certain ‘ethical standard’ how would you explain the millions of people who have died in excruciating agony from a whole range of terminal degenerate disorders; what would be the purpose of that part of the simulation?

It’s impossible to say of course however, one may speculate that the objective of the simulation for some reason requires the individuals within to be able to experience pain. Also consider that whereas a fraction of people experience pain prior to death, everybody in the end experience death, and research seem to indicate that death itself is not painful. Thus, when the “individual” has served it’s part of the simulation it is terminated without unecessary pain.

Another interesting paper: http://www.nickbostrom.com/extraterrestrial.pdf

The Fermi paradox is indeed an interesting one; however the lack of intelligent life outside of planet earth could easily be explained if we live in a simulation…

To expand on this:

What if a significant number of people on this planet becomes aware of the “simulation hypothesis” and perhaps even start to believe in it? Perhaps that would invalidate one of the basic premises for running the simulation? Perhaps the beings running the simulation will then terminate it? Or perhaps they will decide to keep it running but lift all humans into a “nicer” environment (i.e., “heaven”) instead of terminating everybody, for ethical reasons.

The thing is that it has so many holes in it, that Boeing went to the tribunals with it, something that they didnt do in Japan, Korea or Norway.

Just a minor correction: Boeing did not compete in Norway…

Eurofighter did for a while however they left the competition before the final eval because they believed the competition was unfair/biased.

Saab participated until the bitter end but did not sue. I think they accepted that given the Norwegian technical requirements only a stealth platform could realistically win (which begs the question why this was not made clear to the competitors before they entered the competition, the obvious answer is that with only one stealth platform there would be no competition and there was a political requirement to arrange a competition) however what they never accepted was the economical estimates the Norwegian committe made for the Gripen NG and the F-35. I think Sweden concluded that even giving Gripen away for free, the Norwegian eval committee would still conclude it would be more expensive than the F-35…

No doubt the F-35 will be the most capable multirole fighter once it’s ready, the only questions that remains (in my mind) are:

1. Will all countries see the need to invest in stealth?
2. How expensive will it be to operate?

I know it is laughable, but i want to see how far would he go, trying to justify his made up figures

To my knowledge Halloweene is not Picard… H please confirm

As for the question of this thread:

If we are talking about airshows I would actually go for the Rafale, it has scored highly in the past in airshows — of course the F-35B has some very impressive tricks up it’s sleeve so maybe I am wrong (however my thinking is that the “elevator” thing of the B while hugely impressive, may be too limited to be considered overall a better airshow performer? Or am I wrong)?

For combat, it is tempting to say F-35; however as of today the Rafale is very mature and the F-35 is not, so it may not be so clear-cut as some people believe; I simply don’t know.

However for combat operations after the F-35 becomes more mature (in a couple of years, probably), the answer is very clear: F-35, F-35, F-35.

Sure they needed a deterrence; the question I am asking is:

If they had reduced the F-22 R&D budget by, say, 25%, would the resultant F-22 no longer work as deterrent?

Same goes for the F-35.

Hmm, part of the idea with the F-35 was that due to the large numbers produced it would be very cheap.

By 2028 surely they should be able to increase the build rate of the F-35? I don’t see how introducing a new a/c would help in that respect, since introducing a new a/c will also take a long time!

Also part of the idea was to reduce the number of different types of aircraft. Does it then really make sense to introduce a new type already by 2028?

This does not make sense to me, unless the F-35 is not as “fantastic” as depicted by some…