Good news, the orders continue to trickle in, one by one. The Italians are likely to order more as well, as is the UK. There are more opportunities, not least the re-issued CSAR-X. I believe the only European final assembly line is now Yeovil, with the Italian line closed and 2 still to be built Italian aircraft and new orders moved to Yeovil. This was done to keep a line open and with the UK being the larger market, it was the obvious choice. With about 22 (6 for Denmark, 6 for Algeria, 7 for the USA and 2-3 for Italy) or so AW101s not assembled yet in Yeovil and about 49 (6 for Algeria, 6 for Denmark, about 10 for Japan, about 25 for the USA, 2-3 for Italy) or so not produced yet, the whole set up can survive until around 2009 without new orders. Though new orders should be likely well before that probably from countries such as Italy, the UK, Malaysia, India and perhaps a few others.

It has come so far that Saudi order or Rafales has been publicly announced after Chirac met with Saud, don’t you remember?

There was iirc no such announcement, you are invited to prove otherwise. Actually, reports have it that the Saudis have gone off buying French helicopters because of France’s insistence on a Rafale sale, so it was not an asset but a liability.

Surely now is precisely the time for BAe to capitalise on the Hawk’s success and, as recognised world leaders in advanced trainer design, bring out something new to sock it to the competition. Always keep your opponents off balance.

The Hawk the RAF is getting is new in the areas where it matters, avionics, simulation capability, operating efficiency, etc… but why change the aerodynamics if such a costly process would increase unit costs and not bring much more to the table? People who write off the Hawk are in my opinion wrong, BAE Systems knows the market and they reckon they can sell another 400 Hawks over the next 10 years.

I believe that production will go on for another deacde or so, they have some very good prospects out there and a good order book.

Nice. 🙂

In May, in Italy, during an exercise, a Eurofighter was virtually shot down by Gripens… In our french forum, Rob then told us that actually, while there was one loss, the Typhoon had shot 49 fighters down.

49 aircraft, it wasn’t mentioned how many fighters or what type exactly, but I assume most were fighters, the source is a RAF Group Captain in AFM.

“had shot down 49 enemy aircraft to the loss of one… Exceeding expectations”

AFM November 2007 page 7

EDIT: The Eurofighter was shot down in Italy??? Then this must have been a different exercize, the 49 aircraft comes from the Skylance exercize in the UK. :confused: Sorry for the confusion, if there was any. But it doesn’t matter much, saying in Italy it was 1-0 and nothing else is rather weird. 😎

In English.
Reuters

I actually follow the AJT market quite closely and of those three countries only the UAE are close to making a decision with RFI, RFP, downselect and now soon selection (with BAE Hawk MK128, KAI/LM T50 and Alenia M346 under consideration), Singapore has said they’ll give out RFIs in a few months time and Greece is well known to have a requirement but they haven’t started any formal competition yet. The information might be true, but then two of the three countries must have massively sped up their procurement cycle and skipped the competition, and the UAE must have already made a decision. I doubt this, plain and simple, but of course that doesn’t mean it is totally impossible.