The nuclear deterrence is the only one thing we can expect to reasonably receive from NATO: while NATO would likely leave the UK alone once more in a Falklands-like conventional scenario, a nuclear war would certainly force France and US to employ their own nukes. No stands idle in front of nuclear attacks, because if someone is mad enough to launch one, then everyone is at risk.

I would liek to think so…

However i recall seeing a map (cannot find it for the life of me at the moment however) detailing a realeased pre-emptive Soviet strategic strike plan on western europe.

And what I noticed was the Germans, Danes, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians and Italians all had major cities targetted; no surprise there; however there was no targets over France or the UK… the theory being that the UK and French would think “we’ve just dodged a bullet here” and not risk a counter-strike knowing what would to happen London and Paris in retaliation…

now would the French or Americans be able to justify the death of millions of their own to protect Britain? would we accept the destruction of the UK to help Belgium?

i agree, in limited nuclear wars we probably could rely on NATO umbrellas but in WW3? im not so sure?

I wonder if is time to think in 5th generation interceptors rather than in 6th generation fighters. I always ear statements like “interceptors are beast of the past” but is a fact that
5th generation fighters (F-22, F-35, T-50, J-XX) have an “offensive bias” since are designed to penetrate on enemy airspaces to hit hard and fast.
How should be a 5th generation interceptor able to deal with the above mentioned fighters? I just imagine some specifications:
– Mach 2+ supercruise w/o after-burners.
– Mach 3+ top speed.
– 25.000+ m ceil.
– VLO in the A-A aspect.
– Long-range ultra-manœuvrable missiles (multiple seekers on missiles ?).
– Very high power-aperture X-band AESA radar and a L-band tracking capable radar (?).
– Long range IRST

never really thought of that and it is a very interesting point you raise…

however is there much demand (with a few possible exceptions) in the western world at least for “Pure” interceptors… look at the criticism of the EF for example amongst UK press at least, saying it is optimised for A2A when most of the current requirements call for CAS… People (more importantly politicians) want multi-role capabilities…

Unfortunately, I don’t think Europe is capable of making a unified effort that would result in a 5th generation fighter coming on stream in the next 15 years.

Too much pride would need to be swallowed and too many compromises made.

But I guess the pride comes from the major players believing (I think rightly) that given the funding, the UK, France, Sweden, Germany, could probably produce indigenous 5th generation fighters, fit for their own purposes, in a shorter timescale.

Honestly, I think if you handed Saab two billion euros today, they could come up with a nippy little stealth Air Defence fighter that would fly in 3 years and be in service in 5-6 years. Repeat that for BAE, Dassault, etc.

Hence my earlier thread were I suggested a unified airframe, with open system architecture – where each nation could decide on powerplant and avionics. Just get the nations to agree on a basic airframe. But hey, good luck with that.

Would it be an F-22 challenger? No – but in concert with existing 4.5 fleets… it would be interesting.

agreed… look at the typhoon predecessor, the EAP… BAe built that for next to nothing over the course of a long weekend…

stating the obvious here but this merely boils down to money…

the UK fear that they will not be able to develop their own upgrade packages in the future, therefore fear that companies like BAE will lose both expertise and money…

and the US fear that the UK will develop then sell these upgrade packages, in direct competition with US companies…

both sides trying to protect their own aerospace industry…