Yes I wondered why that was. Is it just to give Italy a share of export success or do they genuinely have a good relationship with the Kuwaitis? Given the progress of the deal, they obviously have been successful, but the Middle East clients have all been British associates as was Kuwait once upon a time, so is Italy’s involvement a hint that Eurofighter doesn’t see too much opportunity outside of the Middle East?

I’m sure that is too simplistic.

The Italian eurofighter pitch to Kuwait was simplified as their 1st choice, the super hornet was repeatedly delayed by the us senate. The eurofighter consortium has divided their potential export clients among the member countries. Example for india, the assigned country was Germany.

The issue here is that Kuwait prefers to deal with bae, as it would simplify training (UK in English) and the advantage of a common service provider with fellow Arab countries Saudi Arabia and Oman. Dealing with Italy is not the kuwaiti’s choice as it was forced upon them by the eurofighter consortium.

Yes I understand the Indian need to have a different fighter jet supplier other than Russia. But why is the benchmark capability for a medium fighter at par with the heavy fighter mki?

The problem with Typhoons Tr1,
– those dont offer all the capabilties we want
what capabilities of a tranche 1 typoon don’t have compared to IAF mig21 and mig27’s that are to be replaced?
– difficult to maintain and upgrade to latest standard.
difficult to maintain? Compared to what? The buy is supposed to be just a stopgap buy, what kind of upgrades do you want to do to a stopgap equipment? Those 2nd hand typhoons just cost usd35million each. Just use it as is as a stopgap.
– host air forces dont want to stick with it
it is because they are bound by contract to buy tranche 3 planes, which is more than they need. That’s why they want to get rid of the tranche 1, to enable to use those tranche 3 they are forced to buy.
– comparable cost to french but more strings attached.
brand new rafales cost hundreds of millions each can be compared to a used tranche 1 typhoon selling for usd35million??

……

The AEW&C program (biz jet based, S Band, 300km class for a small fighter target) is in trials. Follow on program is in development.
An airborne AESA radar for the LCA is in prototyping.

The Embraer jet-based AEW&C programme has not been in the news for several years now. Any latest updates? Is it performing as expected?

Jumping straight to build an aesa fighter radar is quite a huge undertaking. Even korea, which is currently designing its own stealth fighter needs a tech transfer to develop its own aesa radar.

Proven by the Swiss themselves in a simple and undisputable way:

an F-18 simulated an airliner that had to be intercepted (cruising at altitude at subsonic speed), the interceptor had to scramble, climb and intercept it before ut leaves swiss airspace. Rafale and Typhoon did it with no problems, the Gripen scrambled, climbed and ran for all it was worth, and was bingo fuel before completing the intercept, having to interrupt the interception and go back to land. And before you come and say something along the lines of “the swiss did it wrong” or “they can’t fly”, in the rear seat was a saab pilot to monitor what was going on.. and couldn’t say anything wrong about what was done. The aircraft simply couldn’t do it

And let me guess… The Swiss themselves proved it on a weekday during normal 9 to 5 working hours eh? LoL!!!

I don’t believe that for a country which its furthest border to border distance is merely 300kms, that a fighter such as the gripen could not intercept an airliner with only its internal fuel load. Do also note like during the ethiopian airlines flight 702 hijacking, the rouge aircraft would already overflown neighbouring countries such as France and Italy (and already been intercepted and identifed by fighters of those countries). That in itself an early warning luxury that most other countries don’t have. If the Swiss airforce itself is not serious in having a 24/7 QRA capability so why are they trying to get an very high spec fighter that in itself is outside of their budget? It just doesn’t make any sense.

The Swiss air force disagrees with you. For air policing Gripen C was found to not meet the requirements; Gripen E was found to barely meet the air policing requirement. Anything less than Gripen E would therefore not be acceptable for the air policing role in Switzerland.

I believe their Hornets are not quite “standard” either… and they use the afterburners a lot.

Of course captain obvious. If you can comprehend english that is what I am saying in my first paragraph.

The Swiss airforce wants the highest performance fighter they could get, which is out of sync with the country’s budget and minimum capability required for air policing missions in Swiss airspace. They wanted a fighter that could outperform the hornet in every area, even for strike, EW, recce capability. Why do they need all that capability for? In reality even the hornets are overkill for air policing missions inside Swiss borders.

Imo even the f-6e was adequate for the QRA and air policing missions around Switzerland. Thats why I said IF, the swiss airforce could lower their requirements probably then the Swiss people would agree to fund its new fighters.

If they really insist on high performance air superiority fighters, get those cheap used tranche 1 typhoons from Germany or Italy and be done with it.

disagree, it was proven none of them has the high-speed range to intercept in a timely manner

And proven by whom actually? The 3rd plane I mentioned is not even built yet.

From the centre of Switzerland, it is only 100-150km distance to any point of its borders. Even something with the performance of its current f-5e is adequate for any QRA and air policing tasks, not to mention the advantage of early warning of any rouge aircraft flying towards Switzerland by neighbouring countries.