Why would Spain, Germany or Italy need to build their fighters independently? I don’t think they were ever interested in that. All four Eurofighter partnership nations are in EU, anyway, so what’s the big deal?

At least Germany WAS interested! Hence the TKF90…

Ho please, spare US your usual knot-spinning “I didn’t say this”.

Reach for your painkillers.:D

Quite funny for someone who says “take on the argument not on the poster” :rolleyes:
So in which way did my statement Boeing is proposing an even more advanced blk III variant contradicting to the sources you gave? NOWHERE so please spare us the usual offenses, by your lack of proper arguments.

When was the last time you read anythnig on the subject of aircrafts?

Today…

This is what Boeing proposes instead of “MORE” F-35…

Not really, that’s just the roadmap plan, much like the Rafale F3+. Boeing speaks about an even more advanced blk III variant though not much details has been released. There were talks about improved LO treatments and stronger engines.

All good points and all worth replying to:

Yes it was intended from the outset with secondary strike capability and given the state opf technology and world affairs when it was designed it was more a political intention than a real design intention.

Not really true, the RAF ever intended to replace it’s Jaguars with a new design and initially even the Harrier, before the Harrier II was jointly developed by BAe and McDD addressing the Harrier replacement. The EdA had AG requirements as well and all the German TKF90 proposals were for exactly such an aircraft, though no formal requirement besides the Luftwaffe existed. The approach was, that advanced airframe design, avionics and weapons will provide a decent multirole capability, even for an aircraft which is optimised for AA.

Large delta wing aircraft do not make good low level strikers due to severe buffet encountered at high speeds and low level. FBW only addresses some but not all of the problem.

Well the artificial stability provided by the FCS is sufficient enough for low level. The Typhoon is for sure not the best performer their, but even in an AG fit close to ground operations weren’t the sole mission profile for that role (AG) and there’re ofcourse tradeoffs for the optimation in AA. No one is going to say the Typhoon will be the upper strike aircraft, but it will provide a sufficient multi-role capability in the future. Just take a look at the F-15, F-16, MiG-29 or Su-27! They were all designed as fighters and evolved into very capable multirole aircraft! This is something people mysterically forget about when argueing about the Typhoon.

Second, it is a fact that EF scrambled to fit an austere A2G capability after the plane was in production and that it’s full A2G suite will not be in place until and unless T3 is fielded.

Well the austere package was issued after all those delays, as AG capabilities of that kind were not planned to happen before T2. It is in fact T2 that will bring full multirole capabilities over the time, not T3. T3 might just improve on that.

In short it really is not going to be a very good A2G platform and only the fact that standoff PGMs have been fielded makes it a viable platform.

Well the Typhoon wasn’t designed to be a very good platform AG wise, though Very good depends on the point of view. The aircraft will provide a medium range, good performance and self escort capability for AG missions. I say it will be sufficient, though not as effective as some more optimised designs.

The Typhoon is very late and again that only tells part of the story. It was rushed into service without all of the integration done on it than was intended. Did it have IRST, did it the helmet mounted sight just to name two items that came later. Even in service it was/(is?) operationally limited in altitude and speed.

Well the Rafale or F-22 or virtually almost every other fighter programme of that time suffered quite similar designs. Neither of these designs was fielded in the intended full configuration from the very beginning! While I can understand those crititcs, I can not understand that people blank out the fact that most, if not all fighter programmes of that time had similar problems!

Sure lots of systems are late and lots of them are expensive but don’t you think that there isn’t much value at over 60 million pounds a copy for a jet that breaks no new ground.

Well I won’t go into that cost debate again, just pointing out that the 60 mln pound figures is way off and misunderstood. But this has been explained a thousand times here and I’m not going to repeat this again. For Europe or the customer nations in particulare the Eurofighter breaks ground in many ways. As said there’re a lot of strong political and economical points that speak for the project alone, but there are also military aspects. Note that Europe required a cost effective multirole fighter with WVR and BVR capabilities and being superior to the teen/teenski series. While the Typhoon isn’t cost effective from a procurement costs point of view, its operating costs might look a bit different. In the 80s there was no alternative, the F-15 was seen as to large and expensive, the F-16 and F/A-18 were not good enough performers in AA and the Rafale was supposed to be less optimised and therefore less effective either. So what were the alternatives?

There was really nothing that had not been done before on other aircraft so why the delays? Look at Super Hornet, why can the USN get them for a bit over 50 million dollars a copy. Both planes are of the same vintage and have roughly the same level of technology. In fact the Super is carrier capable which adds even more cost to it.

Well the SH, while being considerabley redesigned airframe wise is not an all new design, but based on the legacy Hornet. The block 1 examples shared 90% of the late C/D modells avionics, just the more recent blk II examples feature all those new goodies such as the AN/APG-79 etc., so the SH wasn’t exactly fielded with all those goodies, but developed into its current form as well, much like the Typhoon did.
For Europe there were a lot of firsts, though the Rafale introduced many of those items as well (before some start complaining 😉 ).

I basically see an aircraft as a whole, many tend to reduce it to single factors such as the aerodynamics only or the avionics only.
The Eurofighter combines an aerodynamically better performing airframe than the teen/teenski series, with an FCS which is second to none, quite advanced and powerful engines with a lot of growth potential left, advanced airframe with more than 80% composites and reduced forntal RCS. Add to that one of the most sophosticated MMIs, a higher degree of systems integration, automation, the maybe best MSA radar ever developed which is still very capable and a quite good performer, a somewhat unique IRST/FLIR sensor for which there is no operational equivalent in Russia or the US, a quite comprehensive and advanced EWS with ESM, DECM, FOTRD, MAW and LWR, plus expendables fully integrated and automated, MIDS, automated IFF, soon a HMD/HMS which is second only to that of the F-35 (if second at all), sensor fusion, EMCON and advanced HOBS IIR AAMs and AMRAAM. Basically I see a quite advanced and effective combat aircraft, which is quite deadly in AA right now, but still lacks the flexibility when it comes to AG.

The PAK-Fas and J-XXs of the world while a potential threat down the road are not necessarily the problem right now. What about the upgraded SU-27s of the world? Are they more advanced? Are they better than Typhoon? Probably not. Will they cause Typhoon pilots problems? Will Typhoon dominate? Yes, and no. Again, where is the value from a cost/capability standpoint? Do you really think that Israel with upgraded F-15s and later F-35s won’t make short work of Saudi Typhoons if it ever came down to it?

Well if Israeli F-15 would make short of work with RSAF Typhoons, then because of the Saudis, but not of the platform. The F-35 might look a bit different.

All you need is one potential enemy to posses a modern integrated ADS and you have problems. Sure you could saturate the airspace with cruise and stand off munitions but how many of them do you need? How do you do BDA? What happens when you miss a battery of SA300s?

How were air operations conducted in the past when no F-22s or F-35s were available? Even when stealth aircraft (i.e. F-117) were in the theater, the most important early warning/communication facilities and ADs were destroyed by special units on the ground (if possible) and more importantley CMs. It is interesting that people think any aircraft without stealth can’t survive. Reduced RCS, advanced ESM which detects, locates and identifies enemy SAM sites (allowing to avoid the threat), counter measures and SEAD/DEAD platforms in the theater won’t make it that easy for such an ADS.

Sure technology will evolve. The problem is that Typhoon is behind the eight ball and as counters to stealth evolve, stealth will also evolve. Technology advances for both sides.

Well maybe we’ll even see a new kind of stealth to be applied to existing designs. I would have to look up, but there was an interesting article about active materials in the works in the UK, which would make an aircraft stealthy without specific shaping. Maybe such technologies might bring back an edge to aircraft which are currently unstealthy or less stealthy, but perform better due fewer aerodynamical restrictions.

This datalink was fitted to Rafale Bs only AFAIK and these aircraft, also capable of deploying the GBU-12/22 are called F2+.

While I have already given my opinion on why the Typhoon is no waste of time from a political and economical point of view. Here some remarks to the types design and current operations.

The Typhoon was from the outset designed as a tactical multirole fighter with a primary AA role and a secondary AG role. The aircraft was supposed to encounter waves of enemy air strikes and achieve and maintain air superiority over the battlefield. With secondary strike/attack missions to strike targets not to far behind the frontline, CAS, SEAD and other missions as intended. It is true that the Typhoon is late and expensive to procure, though the weak dollar makes the aircraft looking more expensive from a “dollar point of view”. The aircraft is late as most current generation fighters.
For current scenarios the Typhoon is even over qualified, though the aircraft is much more suited than the over expensive F-22 for example. Even the F-35 is more than over qualified for the current types of scenario.
When are the PAK-FA and J-XX are going to enter service, when are they fielded in numbers and operational, how capable will they be in reality. The next question is how many of these aircraft will be exported? Many of you guys seem to believe that the PAK-FA or J-XX will be exported on a large scale very soon, don’t you think this is more than exagerated? How many nations can even affort a complex air defense system comprising dozens of advanced EWRs or S-300/400 types? How do you guys think have non-stealth combat aircraft operated in the past?
Do you think technology won’t evolve?

MBB (Herbst) TFK-90 was a CLOSE-COUPLED canard, quiet different from Typhoon aerodynamicaly and YES as a result, Typhoon suffers from quiet visible AoA limitations which makes the use of PS maneuvres highly improbable without TVC.

I actually would have prefered that configuration over the current one. The configuration shown is however just one of many TKF 90 proposals, there weren’t just one.

Here are some others:

and Departure at speed below 50 kt (not an issue with integrated canards which doesn’t DEPART, pitch authority remaining).

The exact reason is that AoA measurment accuracy below speeds of 50 kts is not very accurate anymore and that “departure can’t be excluded”, not that the aircraft will immediatley depart when decending below 50 kts.

As a matter of FACT BOTH X-31 (TVC) and Typhoon are limited in Max AoA to 70* for the SAME reasons of lack of pitch control (one of Long-moment harm arrangement drawback creeping out).

Everything I could read on the topic (aircraft related) says that the canards are exactly for pitch control as their main purpose.

In ther other hand, Gripen demonstrated 90* AoA and Rafale passed 100* AoA and 40 kt negative speed a full COBRA maneuvre without TVC.

Talk about PSTs…:D

Sure the Flanker could do so as well, but this is a very specific manoeuver, with basically almost no controllability, apart nose up and then nose down. No rolls or everything else. That’s the advantage of TVC.