Love the tomkitty, but the airframe is old, and the engines are set too far apart – but active cancellation / waveform shaping and management is the future of stealth technology .

The Sukhoi T-50 has engines that are set quite far apart. It looks like a Tomcat from some angles.

Tomcat 2

Tomcat 21 equipped with Thales Spectra (active cancellation) 😀

F-35C

more pictures of the F-35C’s first flight

original URLhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/lockheedmartin/4678788768/

original URLhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/lockheedmartin/4678788130/ The pilot Jeff (SLIM) Knowles wearing a very cool helmet.

original URLhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/lockheedmartin/4678157373/

What a beautiful aircraft. 🙂

Hypothetical situation

This is purely conjecture and an attempt to answer the TS’s wargame scenario.

The French would win in a Naval-Air battle in the Mediterranean. Assumptions as follows.

1. Israel’s Navy capabilities are concentrated on littoral warfare
2. IAF’s traditional operations have been overland with good weather and long daylight hours. They have not had extensive training or flying in adverse weather conditions
3. Israel does not have an amphibious warfare capability (Gator Marines)
4. Israel’s operations in recent years have been concentrated on land operations
5. Israel’s success in military conflicts have often involved detailed planning and they’ve not planned for a Mediterranean naval-air battle.

In order to give a more accurate answer please send two attractive female field operatives from Israel and France’s intelligence community to help me in my research. 😀

Do we have the bandwidth to be able to do all of that. The more we talk about doing this sort of thing the more we are going to need to look at the number of Sats we have in the sky

I guess a fleet of UCAV strike aircraft sounds a little far fetched.

Possbile bandwith solutions include UAVs or High altitude airships http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_airship as relays in a networked battlefield. UCAVs can act as network nodes or be designed with more autonomy. UCAVs may be a lower cost alternative to Tomahawk (USD 570,000) or Boeng SLAM-ER (USD 720,000).

The RN isn’t interested and the RAF is going to be doing the flying. Why not just go to UCAVs?

Another possible solution is to accelerate development of a EM railgun. BAe Systems have the technology.
http://www.baesystems.com/Sites/SAS/Videos/EMRailgun/index.htm
http://www.baesystems.com/Newsroom/NewsReleases/autoGen_109116154945.html
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/bae-producing-scaleddown-rail-gun-naval-weapon-01986/

Would Israel sell to Taiwan?

Nuclear weapons? 😀

Swerve,
This might change.

Google link to the Financial Times article. Call for Japan to ease ban on arms exports
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OIx&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=FT.com+%2F+Asia-Pacific+-+Call+for+Japan+to+ease+ban+on+arms+exports&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

“We are now interested in international co-development,” Mr Nagashima said. “People in the industry are really eager to participate in international joint development of, for example, fighter aircraft.”

He said exports would be limited to “friendly states”.

China’s first aircraft carrier…….bit like CVF!

It looks similar to the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier.