I agree F-35 and Belgium, however being “better” is not always important. If the evaluators are professional they come up with a list of technical requirements and check each a/c against that list of requirements; not against each other!

If an a/c passes all technical requirements then typically other issues comes into play, including economics, ToT, offsets, and politics.

Who knows; perhaps Rafale, Typhoon and F-35 all three pass the requirements in Belgium. If they do, then F-35 will most likely still be winner. And if they set requirements higher then perhaps only F-35 will pass. Or if they set requirements lower perhaps Gripen E will pass together with Typhoon, Rafale and F-35. In any case the best bet is the F-35 will win in Belgium since this will be the main plane for the US, and also for most other NATO countries as mentioned above.

What’s the Belgian position regarding nuclear sharing? If they want to keep the B61s, all except F-35 are out by default. Rafale could be made compatible I guess, but would they really go down that road for 35 aircraft?

A-20 Havoc
A-26 Invader
A-10

Plus, of course –
A-1
A-7

Plenty of A-s flown by the USAAF & USAF.

Flown yes, but how many aircraft got the A- designation assigned by the USAF?
A-37 and A-10 (plus A-29) come to mind.
In fact, wiki says about the A-45, the last A-aircraft under to old pre 1962 designation system: “It was originally designed as a bomber for the United States Army Air Forces under specification V-8237-1 and was designated XA-45. The “A” ground attack classification was eliminated the next year, and the XB-51 designation was assigned instead.”
From A-1 to A-12 under the new system, only A-9/A-10 were Air Force projects. Then there are the out of sequence examples A-26, A-29, A-37 with the A-29 not in USAF service and the A-37 of course a convenient redesignated T-37. I guess calling it an F-37 would have been too much.

I’ve seen this many times before, but may as well ask now. Why is the AMRAAM on the wingtips and the Sidewinder under-wing? Reducing the load as you move away from the fuselage should lower the bending moment on the wing and improve fatigue life. What gives?

To reduce flutter.
See here or here.

AIM-9X is only cleared on stations 2/8 btw.

But that is exactly the point. Designers of the SuE had no way of knowing about all the crap we want to hang to aircraft in 21st century, and accordingly did not design it with any spare growth room for decades to come.
Aircraft are designed to requirement, and generally do not have big empty voids inside in the case that more internal volume is needed 30-40 years from now. For example, in case of F-16, adding new equipment means sacrificing internal fuel capacity, combined with new engines to restore or improve t/w, it means that more fuel is needed -> hence CFT’s, and so on…

That is not correct, all F-16s with the same number of seats have the same internal fuel load.
Also, it is not uncommon for aircraft to have empty spaces for later growth like the Super Hornet for example. Even the F-16 added quite a bit of capabilities before the F-16C Block 25 i.e. the first version with airframe changes.

hi there Y-20 Bacon, we are actually discussing basic maneuverability i.e. wvr, gun fight.

F-5N wins.
They have the shark nose and enlarged LERX for increased maneuverability. Plus iirc some weight savings thanks to their role like deleted guns.

Seems to be fairly accurate, probably less than a year old, so make 2 dark purple into red and for some reason I don’t see South Africas 26 Gripens. And I recall there being 1 Gripen D in UK as well.

Yellow: destroyed or dismantled,
Green: to be rebuilt to C/D (has already happened)
Pink: storage, to be sold or dismantled

Thanks.
It shows only the original order for the Swedish AF which was for 204 jets. South Africa got new/additional jets, unlike all the other current users. The 2nd crashed Hungarian jet isn’t a loss iirc and the ETPS Gripen is only on lease but should be among those 204.

This might help. Maybe someone with a better understanding of the Swedish language can translate what it says about the 24 pink, 10 green and 32 yellow examples.
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