Phantom, the notion of a Brit feeling pride for a predominantly Franco-German company sounds plain wrong. I think you put too much in the word “European.” It’s a “pensinsula of peninsulas” as someone has said, and that means more than just the geographical formations. While true that the the political stability, attitudes between the people and cultural exchange we have now is unmatched in history, (and I believe this state will continue) that does not mean you feel pride for some commercial company across the canal .

The Concorde was a whole different thing. Some BAe stocks, some plants located in the UK and RR engines in some of their airplanes is far from enough to make a Brit feel some sort of allegiance to Airbus. For that matter I think most French, Spaniards and Germans could not care less about what happens to Airbus.

Rather that they designed the missile for that bay. (You do have a point that the helicopter and FAC carriage requirements for the Penguin/NSM results in a size that conveniently comes close to the size of the JSF bay. But if the JSF bay had been an inch shorter, you can bet that the NSM would have been an inch shorter as well.)

I know, internet sources can be doubted, but most of the critical info on that site is cited from official MoD or industry sources.
The peacetime (12 JSF + 10 ) and wartime (36 JSF + 6) air group numbers on that site might seem slightly low but those are the official requirements set down for the project. We also know that the French design is something like 5000t heavier “just” because of extra stores, so the 1 plane per X tons thumb rule can’t really be followed here.

Yes the designers may have left some extra space to allow a few more aircraft above the requirement, but I don’t think they went so far as to add room for two extra squadrons!

Google “cvf aviation requirements”, click the first link on Beedall’s site, scroll down to the hangar and deck plans with stowed JSF drawn on them and count the aircraft. You can’t physically fit anywhere near 65 JSF on the design unless you’re running a pure ferry trip with no possibility of any meaningful air operation.

Yes the deck and hangar plans are drawn with stowed JSF on them so you can count the aircraft and see for yourself. These are official drawings from the MoD or industry.

The elevator issue sounds strange, yes.

But where is this 12-16 number coming from?
Do you think the French would order a carrier larger than the CdG, but operating only half of the CdG’s air group?

It was supposed to be 36 JSF + 4 AEW + SAR flight for the 65kt+ variant. 12-16 sounds like some journalist grabbing the number for embarked JSF during peacetime.

I use the stated ferry range since there is no standard configuration for maximum range. Even designations such as “Hi-Lo-Lo-Hi” does not tie down enough parameters to really evaluate the effective combat range of a fighter bomber.
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It is not just landing speed but also many other factors such as
AoA, not stated in numbers like this are factors such as minimum wind over the deck, etc.

Yes, that’s what I’ve been saying. The whole point of my post you quoted was to point out the potential inaccuracy and incompleteness of internet sources. So it seems we’re in agreement here.

And that’s also why I mentioned the Mirage 2000 and the F-16. Because you have some public combat range figures on the Mirage which are based on the loadout with three tanks and 6 AAM, you get a good number. Obviously if the USAF wanted to commonly load a F-16 with three large drop tanks in stead of the two underwing we commonly see, they could – but the reality is that a F-16 combat range would be stated with a standard two-tank loadout, which does not reflect accurately on the airplane but does reflect on practices by the user air forces.

See my point about comparing A-4 and Saab 37 ferry range? Ferry ranges I’ve seen have always been given with full internal fuel plus however many drop tanks you can stick on the plane, or unspecified on that point. The Viggen was only used for intercept/top cover missions over the Baltic and they only had to ferry the airplanes within Sweden, because of that they used a single tank and because of that you’re of course not going to get a range figure comparable to a Mirage with 4500 litres of external fuel.

As for the A-4, I think it was introduced in this thread in relation to a hypothetical 1970’s era non-US carrier?
I do really like the subsonic strikers and think they have great character, Skyhawks, Buccaneers, Intruders, and obviously the USMC held on to the A-4 for so long for a good reason. (Just like they have a good reason for keeping the Cobra and requiring the AV-8 and F-35B development etc.)

However with a limited amount of hypothetical carrier deck in 1970, I think I would choose a hypothetical navalized Viggen for the same reason the USN introduced the Hornet in the 1980’s. Both airframes are built for air-to-air combat (in one fashion or another, one being an interceptor and the other a dogfighter) and are considerably heavier afterburning designs with room for a larger radar.
Yes a light attack fighter will benefit in its primary mission from not needing the afterburner or a large radar, and I do think efficient designs like the Intruder, Viking and Corsair would not be out of place on a year 2007 Nimitz class deck.
But having said that, the USN did begin to eliminate specialist ground attackers in the mid-80’s and I think that with a smaller carrier you more reason to do so. Just MHO.

About the 1250 mile ferry range, that’s actually the combat range. According to my mag the JA 37 has a 1000km combat radius with 6 AAM + centreline tank (have seen 1400l and 1275l given for those tanks) on a hi-lo-hi mission.

Same as with the warload numbers issue, because tanks weren’t normally carried anywhere else than on the centreline, it can be used as ferry range for lack of any other number.
It’s like the Mirage 2000 having a longer nominal range than the F-16 because they use warloads with 6 AAM and three big tanks (2x2000l and 1×1500? See this pic.). The range and warload numbers given in some cases can be more a function of operational practices with different air forces than whatever the plane is capable of.

In the event that SAAB would have had to fly planes down to India or Australia, obviously we would have seen tanks under the wings and probably a Mirage-style IFR probe. (They have a history of modifying for customer needs, the Danish F-35 Draken had 35% more internal fuel, a larger wing and three more pylons along with structural strengthening for Bullpup/dumb bomb carriage. The JAS 39C with the retractable IFR probe, strengthening for KEPD 350, NATO’s datalink in addition to TILDS, etc.

Also you have the F-4K and F-8E(FN) as examples of pretty extensive customization that took place “back in those days” seemingly without spending much time on it. UK gov approved F-4K in June 1964, YF-4K flew in July 1966. French saw the F-8 at the Paris air show in 1962, first production model F-8E(FN) flew in June 1964.)

I don’t know about reliability or operational expenses

Seeing as it weighs over three times as much as an A-4A, has a sizable (see one of Bager’s posts) afterburning engine and a relatively large radar, I certainly wouldn’t expect it to be any cheaper to operate than the Skyhawk!

Bager… thanks, very interesting that Convair was interested in the Olympus.