Sean,

Yep Indians right the French Porte Avions 2 is a CTOL adaptation of the Thales CVF design. There are some pictures of the proposed design on the Royal Navy board over at warships1.

WRONG on both side.
France hasn’t decided which design will be used
The design of the british carrier hasn’t been freeeze yet.

I’ve checked the air and cosmos you talked about.

They said 90% of the parts were completed, not the prototype.

Ouch, you’re right.
But in my mind it was more or less the same thing. Perhaps I overestimated the importance of the program

in that article it is said the demonstrator to be built will be not an m88-3 with more thrust but rather a m88-2 based on m88-3(with the same parts,here’s the interest of the word “parts”) with better lifetime rather than more thrust.

Oups, sorry again.
Since South Koeran rejected the RAfale, the only customer for the M88-3 was the french AF who never hide that between a M88-3 with muscles and an economic M88-3, only the latter was considered.

So, like you, i’m not that optimist for that programm.
unfortunately.

I hope that the SAgem-Snecma entity will be able to resume the programm.

On the other hand, SAGEM-SNECMA isn’t in the business to make us happy.
Perhaps (as we discussed on check-six) the rafale with more powerful engine is quite an improvement over the “basic” flavor but I must say that if lots of potentiel upgrade for the Rafale, gripen or even chinese plane speak of newer version of M88-3 but never of real orders.

No inews since then but a “the first engine should be completly built at the end of 2003” months ago.

it would be nice if France would join the Pak-FA. but traditionally they have always gone their own way and I suspect after some disagreements they might just walk out.

Things change and Dassault really feel the heat of F-35 already.

I suppose that can be a sweet manner from dassault to add another “cheap” plane to gain exports deals.

A way to hedge against that risk is to develop 3 versions like JSF, one to russian specs, one to french and one for whoever else wants to join in – if they have a different vision.

Only the avionics then, never at the same scale with the JSF.

france doesnt have a Raptor class engine. the M88-3 is too small. Russia has the Al41 which can be further developed into a more refined form.

You’re right.
Internal bays means high volume so high price for the plane …. until UAV.
Anyway, Dassault is working with Sukhoi and Snecma with SAturn.
Officially, it has never to do with a new fighter but ….. that could be so cool :dev2:

BRING IT ON
Yep, even Russia + France + India + China cannot fund a fighter at the class of the F-22 in a near future.

The first question is WHO is working on the PAK-FA ?

Russia, ok.
But next ? China ? India ? France ?

As Nirav said, nthing official about it.

In Fact, the problem is that an engineer from Thales said a word about it and Thales refused to said anything more AND after that interview has never spoken of that feature so that some “experts” thought that it was the sign that Thales decide to stay quiet about it because they fear to leak important information and to avoid attracting attention.

That how I see the whole story.

why not, weren’t they offering it to Singapore?

Only the radar technologies

besides the europeans aren’t going to need a 150-ton-payload strategic airlifter anytime soon. french and germans have lived with nothing more than Transalls and C-130s, and with few expeditionary ops likely in the forseeable future it’s nothing that can’t be handled by some cheap rental An-124s.

Good point.

but I know that the French AF dream of pure french assets instead of rented Ukrainian An-124.

Should the french economy rise several years, with a better budget, the An-124 or C-17 would be considered.