Stuff that is used by other nations, or where the manufacturer wants to compete to supply weapons to JSF customers could be integrated before Germany makes a formal decision. However, it would be extremely odd for any customer or perspective customer to expect all of its potential weapons be integrated prior to investing in the aircraft.

Of course.
My point is available weapons are an advantage SH and F-15 enjoy right now. Whether or not F-35 can catch up by 2025 remains to be seen.
I forgot to mention HARM.

With the AESA set contracted by Kuwait and P3E funded the vannila SH doesnt bring much to the table that its not already on the Typhoon´s menu (well, outside of the B-61), the Growler could make an interesting acquisition, the Strike eagle would bring Range and payload.

Apart from B61, Typhoon doesn’t have a dedicated SEAD/ECM version. F-18E/F is not nuclear capable, that’s why I think the Germans are mainly interested in the EA-18 Growler as a potential Tornado ECR replacement. That would require a third airframe to cover the nuclear strike role though. A mixed EF, F-15, EA-18 fleet would be nice. At least for the enthusiast/spotter 😉

Being realistic (i think), i can see the Luftwaffe wanting and “selling” to the Government the LO airframe of “Dave”, but i cant see the Luftwaffe selling (or even wanting) what are equivalent airframes to what they already have, suport costs and all that.
And if the German Industry (Airbus and MTU) would/will make a hell of a noise if the Luftwaffe goes for Dave i can only imagine what would happen if sudenly some Luftwaffe chap went along and publicly said something like “those Super Hornets are jolly nice”

The advantage those nice Super Hornets have is they actually work and have all the weapons you can imagine (except B61 of course). No need to wait a decade to have a bomb integrated like on the EF. Actually todays F-35 doesn’t offer much flexibility aswell.
But it’s pretty obvious, what they really want is F-35.

Careful there, one Lufftwaffe official under Chatan House Rules said that the Luftwaffe looked on whats on the market and its favorite was the F-35 (i would imagine the “A”). Thats understandable, they only have three realistic options “on the market”, a) keeping the Tornado till the late thirties, b) more Typhoons or c) the F-35A, looking at the mission the Luftwaffe would choose c) almost automaticaly,

Other options on the market are F-18E/F/G and advanced F-15. Luftwaffe has been briefed about the Boeing fighters.
Typhoon is not really on the market, at least not with the capabilites required.

now the MOD will have to agree with the Luftwaffe and the Government will have to agree with the Luftwaffe and thats far from certain. And that acquisition will be resisted “tooth and nail” by the industry and (i suspect) by parts of the Government.

Indeed. It looks like the green party will be part of the next German government. Buying nuclear bombers might be a bit unpopular with some of them. Would be funny though. The first time the green party was in the gov, Germany went to war for the first time since 1945 (Kosovo 1999), the second time with the green party, Germany gets new nuclear bombers :eagerness:

Russia considering one-seat Su-34-based aircraft to replace Su-25 fighter jet

A better idea is fixing the Su-25.
Replace those fuel hungry turbojets with modern turbofans. No reason for a subsonic attack jet to have turbojets. Not even in the 70s really.

Oh, and single seat Su-34 already exists, it’s called Su-27 😀

Somewhere along the way the from YF-22 to F-22 the design seemed to have lost a substantial amount of internal fuel capacity. However the fact that a figure of 20,650 lb of internal fuel shows up in many sources has me wondering if there was some space in the aircraft not utilized for fuel that could have been. I do recall they managed to find room for an extra 2,000 lb or so of internal fuel on the F-15C versus the original F-15A.

That’s an interesting point, actually. I doubt it would work like that on the F-22 though, what with internal weapons bays and serpentine engine intake ducts it’s already so densely packed that I can’t see there being much unused space (apart from that reserved for avionics growth capability in the nose, but that wouldn’t amount to much fuel).

I was wondering the same thing. Remember that aircraft hazard document, TECHNICAL ORDER 00-105E-9.
There’s an overview showing fuel tank locations and quantities (page 15.). Their conversion to non US units seems off but I assume the gallon numbers are correct.
It gives the following numbers: (in US gal)

F-1A compartment: 380.8
F-1B pump box: 323.6
F-2 tank: 710.8
A-2L tank: 375.3
A-2R tank: 375.3
A-3L tank: 77.3
A-3R tank: 77.3
A-1L tank: 380.8
A-1R tank: 380.8

Total internal fuel: 3082 gallons. That’s about 9350 kg – or roughly those 20 650 lbs mentioned above. But it’s also more then the official number of 8200 kg.
However, if we omit the F-1A compartment, total is 2701 gal or about 8200 kg – the official number. Note that F-1A is not labelled as a tank, but compartment. This leads me to believe the F-1A compartment is not in use.
Maybe it’s needed to pump around fuel to maintain CG (it’s located right behind the cockpit). Or it can’t be used at all for CG reasons because something changed during development. Or they decided not to use it for whatever reason, but I find that hard to believe given the F-22 is rather short legged.

At best, that is some very crude layman view.

I do realise that.

If you fly supersonic, you can’t “throw” your jet into a Inst AoA, not even a tiny quick one. Your FBW does not allow you to do that due to stresses on airframe and flight safety of pilot.
So that does only leave you with sustained AoA, all the way down through Transonic to subsonic speed.

What’s this AoA talk? Do you mean turn rate by any chance?
But aside from that, there is always instantaneous and sustained rates, supersonic or subsonic does not matter. Inst. simply means there is not enough power to sustain.
There’s also more to manuverability than turn rates. Like roll rate.

When you initiate a turn(AoA) in Supersonic speed, the average turn rate(or call it turn radius if you want) of your jet will be quite bad. This goes for ALL jet fighters. You will ofc make up for that with the higher supersonic speed through that turn, but still the turn radius will be bad.
Edit: Hell you will hit 9G pretty fast and still the sustained AoA will be bad in supersonic speed

Turn rate and radius are not the same.
9g at supersonic speed?

So how the EF and J-20 have such favorable “supersonic manuverbility” completly escapes me. In my mind, this is not correct in any sense.
The thing i’ve get from EF is that it accelerate and climb fairly good. It gets up in Supersonic speed regime pretty fast. It has those semi-recc hardpoints which help matters. But that’s it.

J-20 I don’t know. Not much info available.
But for EF and F-22 this is well known. As I’ve mentioned, they have increased control authority. Bigger control surfaces (F-22) or long arm canards with powerful actuators. Less supersonic trim drag due to increased instability lightens the load on surfaces and makes them more effective at supersonic speeds. F-22 also has TVC.
Disadvantages of delta wing configuration remain of course. But EF’s supersonic inst. turn rate is probably pretty awesome.
Acceleration and climb rate is another issue. But sure, those two excel there too.

Edit:
The delta wing(airfoil) by design is thinner vs the more standard F-16, F-15, Su-27 airfoil. That leaves you with a slightly better acceleration and favorable drag cofficient. But delta wing design also have its drawbacks. If you initiate any AoA over say 10 deg, the Delta wings start induce drag at a much higher rate vs the non delta wing designs.

Airfoil and wing shape are not the same thing. In fact, F-22 wing is more or less a delta. Completely different than Su-27 wing.
Also, airfoils for EF and F-22 are known? Probably not.

thing is, it’s easy to make a powerpoint to say “look what we’ll do”.. it is another story to do it for good.. as said previously, they obviously want the customers to pay for the integration, so it obviously isn’tt so simple and cheap

For sure.
The Terma pylon is a bolt-on system though so integration should be pretty straightforward.

In other news, KAI wants to integrate LITENING targeting pod in 2018.
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/adex-kai-vows-recovery-as-it-eyes-fa-50-deals-442241/

At centerline station I guess, would allow the carriage of 2 tanks, 2 bombs and 2 AAMs.