From Canopener Al

“The aircraft have little flying time left as there is no depth maintenance support and most airframes are extended by the maximum to the latest possible date of October. All the kites will go to Cosford to become training airframes that are more relevant to modern combat aircraft!!”

Maybe I’m being dim but how can aircraft with no airframe hours left be used for flight training?

As for Americans “having a habit” for this sort of thing, probably has more to do with the fact that American combat aircraft are also performing the majority of sorties over Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than some sort of percieved eagerness to drop/fire ordnance with less than proper regard.

This is the reason. The Americans don’t single out British forces for special blue-on-blue treatment, although some would have us believe otherwise.

About PIRATE AFAIK it is still in an initial version primarily limited to the FLIR role. It should become fully functional with block 8 aircraft in 2008 and I assume a software update will do it for block 5.

Does anyone know what the final Typhoon Tranche 1 block number will be and what differences there will be between that and the first block of Tranche 2?

We’re lucky to be living at a time when some really great aeroplanes are entering service in Europe, civil and military.

European industry is doing well.

The Rafale is a bloody good aeroplane.

The French are naturally proud of it – like the Swedes are proud of the Gripen.

But they do get a bit carried away sometimes, and a lot of them are unwilling to admit any weakness, failing, or inferiority, or they will say that they will acknowledge weaknesses and then fail to do so.

So I’d say that while the Rafale is a bloody good, bloody impressive aeroplane, it doesn’t quite live up to the hype put about by the more nationalistic French Rafale fan boys.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t many ways in which the Rafale hasn’t set new standards, and hasn’t done better than Typhoon.

It has. In several ways and in several areas.

In the area of programme management, focus, getting and keeping public and political support, Rafale makes the Eurofighter programme look like a joke.

And the aeroplane itself has some impressive features – and the French did a great job in getting it into service with a wide variety of useful weapons.

And while it can hold its head up among other land-based fighters, the basic aircraft proved adaptable to the carrier role with astonishingly little modification.

Low speed agility is as impressive as anything out there (to the extent that comparisons with Typhoon will rely on the alpha and g limits set by the users, so close are the two aircraft in that area).

But there are areas where Rafale lags Typhoon. MMI is one such area, supersonic maneouvrability is another. Outright performance and radar performance, too.

And this has shown in a number of export competitions, where Typhoon was preferred by the evaluation teams. The only proven, undisputed victory of Rafale over Typhoon came in the Netherlands – which was an early, economic evaluation, and in which the actual aircraft and their performance and capabilities were not evaluated, and in which the unflown JSF emerged triumphant!

Excellent post; there are a number of people on both sides that would do well to take a step back first before formulating their opinions.

Typhoon + Typhoon (N) + Typhoon Plus w. CFT

would represent a very cost effective air power solution in a way that

Typhoon + Rafale M + different FOA type

or

Typhoon + Dave-B + different FOA type

would not.

I agree, it would make a very neat and tidy solution if the navalization can be done cost-effectively.

But the human in the cockpit gives you an ability to FIND the target, rapidly and efficiently, using its panoramic sensor (the eyes) and then to use its unrivalled processor (the human brain) to assess and analyse the situation. A UAV, controlled remotely by an operator who will only ever have a very partial view of the outside world, will NEVER have that level of capability.

Really? What if you use an ultra-high resolution camera with a panoramic lens?

Starstreak could easily have either II or TI sights attached. Laser beam riding missiles are very capable and have a future because their components are relatively cheap… no expensive sensor that requires a flat window to view the target through. Making them very high velocity makes them even more useful. The SOSNA-R is a Russian weapon far too heavy for shoulder launch but small enough to be fitted to a jeep sized vehicle and powerful enough to be a real threat to helicopter type targets. Starstreak will be much more capable than Blowpipe.

That’s what I think too. Plus it’s relatively resistant to countermeasures.