Well, I thought Collins wasn’t a reliable source neither, is he ? lol

Anyway, my aim here was to show how easy it’s to discredit anyone. Hopefully we all agree that such behavior is pointless anyway, so don’t forget my last line :

And yes I think Peter Collins knows as well what he’s speaking of, even if I disagree with part of his article. No one is perfect isn’t it, no even a damn plane 😉

Well the point is that some people were quiet quick in seeing that article as an evidence about the Rafale’s superiority as it came from a british guy. Something I had predicted very early and for what I was attacked by a certain banned member. Jacko pointed out some quite valid points which put things into a perspective, but was merely attacked by the virtue of his person. If people had actually bothered with comprehending what was said we could have saved a lot of bandwith, time, offenses and nerves by that and probably even some bannings. But no people did exactly what I expected from the very beginning and here we go.

Edit:
@StevoJH

At the end of the article he said:

If I had to go into combat, on any mission, against anyone, I would, without question, choose the Rafale.

Well, you know, it could easily be said that we don’t know what this pilot has flown on before. Maybe he’s coming from a Tornado or some Harrier, so yeah the jump is terrific. Obviously, had he flown a Typhoon he would explicitly speak of it for the sake of comparison, but he doesn’t, so obviously he hasn’t.

In the end, it’s a nice comment from this guy but, come on, he isn’t really qualified enough to discuss the matter of which airplane really is the best overall. So we should not take his words too seriously.

I could come up with another conclusion as well : we’ve heard similar comments from RAF pilot switching from Jaguar to Typhoon, so clearly Typhoon and F22 are quite close one from the other.

LOL

See what I mean ?

Seriously speaking this time, for record’s sake, I really think this guy knows what he’s speaking of !

He is indeed a Tornado F.3 driver. But hey don’t we know that the Rafale is much better than the F-22 because Peter Collins said he would take it anytime over any other aircraft?

Official now : rafale F1 to be retrofitted to F3 standard. Cost 300 millions euros.

http://secretdefense.blogs.liberation.fr/defense/2009/11/quand-les-rafale-sortent-de-leur-cocon.html

with the 60 rafale ordered this is a nice news !

Good news. But is a contract for batch 4 already signed. To my understanding it has been approved, but a contract is yet to be signed.

I will try to imprve this time:D:)

http://www.ainonline.com/news/single…le-production/

For me that article is very interesting and that talk to me directly. As an auditor in one of the big four (mainly for aeronautic industry) I know these problematics quite well !

Hmm I gathered a total programme cost of 31.9 bln € some years ago and now it’s up to 39.6 bln €, that’s ~20% more.

Seriously, Scorpion…How about actually reading a link from the post you’re quoting?

Where does the link state that there are F-15As which reached a service life of 14k h? Have I missed something in there? I asked for a possible source confirming the 14k h claim for the F-15A and what you came up with 16k h for the E and that link.

I don’t get it. Did you even red post #253 (bottom line)?

Flew over it, as it wasn’t addressed at me. Got the links thanks. I’ll provide a source for the MKI 6000 h claims as soon as I get it. My current internet connection isn’t really fast and my paper stuff is all at home some 700 km away from my current location.

Funny, people seem to forget that when talking of the F-35. 😉

May have to do with the fact that we still don’t know what we really get for our money here. So far we merely have a lot of promises which have yet to become true.

Well, we were talking about structural integrity and there are(were) F15A with over 14,000 flight hours.
Su27SK has SLL of 2000 hours and Su-30Mk has 3000 hours.

Was the F-15A designed for 14k h? I doubt so. You compare some very specific examples kept in service with a design life span. Su-27s upgraded to SM standard will provide a much greater life than the original Su-27, if it comes close to the F-15 is another question. I would yet like to see any F-15A with so much flight hours. The Su-30MKI has a reported service life of 6000 h as has the Su-35.