Not having the money is very different from not spending the money on the relevant issues. You can argue about political considerations and syntax as much as you wish but your initial statement is flawed.

Also, just to state regarding Grim’s last post: should the will be there then there is no reason the major European nations could not do it alone. Financially they would be able if spending allocation was adjusted accordingly. It would of course be significantly easier to spread the cost across a few of them and the likelihood of any individual nation doing so is practically nil but can’t and won’t should not be confused.

EDIT: to add last paragraph.

I’d actually begin to argue that money isn’t the only factor, as has been pointed out before. Yes if you pour enough money in eventually any nation could, but to produce a 5th gen on any kind of sensible timescale would require a certain level of knowledge and skill that is only likely to be found in one or two European nations (namely the UK and France, and maybe some bits in Sweden or Germany).

That is a very good question, perhaps even worth it’s own thread? :rolleyes:

since they are talking about “performing sub par” could that indicate that they are talking about the a/c they have actually tested so far?

Perhaps I am being terribly biased, but I wonder if the Mig-35 could be one of the two?

Anyway, unless something goes terribly wrong during testing, or the price is too high, it seems that the Typhoon could become a front runner.

I assumed it meant two of the aircraft already flown there, so it means that 2 out of “the American F/A-18 Super Hornet and the F-16IN Super Viper; the French Rafale; and the Russian MiG-35” have been below standards.

I think Typhoon could be front runner as long as the finance ministry don’t step in again and decide cheapest is best, without factoring in capability and maybe tech. transfer, in which case Typhoon will be undercut.

If all it took was money China would have one.

And that has also been covered, but then some people refuse to accept that Europe aren’t all idiots who just suckle on the technological teet of a certain superpower, so there’s no point in arguing.

I think he was talking about Warrior, Bulldog and Mastiff were via UOR’s!

Similar points could be made about Warrior, it’s a sterling piece of kit. No idea why it isn’t deployed.

Well I assumed that Russia can track launch position and target. Simply seeing a single launch shouldn’t be enough to set them off.

So me and my friend were discussing the Typhoon again last night and we came to a conclusion.That is that the Typhoon, whilst being an excellent fighter was badly marred by program managers slowing the order books thus creating a four to six year delay and inflating the cost of the program by around £13 billion.
Would this be an accurate summary of events?

I am curious as to why the Ministry of Defence have refused to release updated cost estimates on the grounds of ‘commercial sensitivity’ so what is the cost of a Typhoon? Some soucres claim £30 million whilst i’ve seen others that claim it closer to £55 million and yet others that put it at £115 million. Which is it?
Thanks.

Weren’t the delays more to do with the end of the Cold War throwing a massive spanner in the works? I thought that’d been covered here.

And I guess the reason they don’t want to release the figures is in case the Saudi’s aren’t getting quite such a good price off us…same for any other bids Typhoon is involved in. The figure I keep seeing quoted is around £60million. No way is it £115million.

Until we know the cost we won’t know if it saves money. Normally you would need to fire a salvo of rockets at a target and then more if you miss. Now it can maybe be done with 1+ rockets.
Is it only helicopters these can be fired from? I was thinking if they worked with fast jets that would be good as i imagine it’s harder to hit a target in a Harrier doing 500mph than from a helicopter doing 60mph.

Harriers use the similar unguided rockets, I assume they’d be able to use the guided version too.

Cost isn’t necessarily the only factor here either, these things make a much smaller bang than a bomb right? A precision kill weapon that doesn’t decimate an entire building could be massively useful against an enemy that likes to play hide and seek amongst civilians. Anyone else seen the video of a British bomb being guided off target because the Taliban pickup drove a little too close to some farmers.

Anyway, another useful weapons for helos and UAVs at least.

The Typhoon was meant to fill a secondary AG role from the very beginning, it’s a common misunderstanding that the aircraft was never meant to perform AG missions. It is necessary to understand that the deployability depends on pilots as well. There seem not to be to much pilots ready for that role to sustain such a commitment, not all T1 aircraft has been upgraded with the AG package, many T1 have to run through the R2 upgrade and are therefore unavailable, T2 won’t receive it, next to the QRA commitments it is necessary to keep up training and opeval of new standards and the EPW II currently available isn’t overly well suited for the theater as well.

And on top of that we all know it isn’t optimised for the strike role anyway, which is why the RAF kept pushing for extra funds to turn it into a proper depp strike bomber, which is well within the realms of possibility, the funding is just patchy.