As someone with more sight into the “austrian” topic I might answer your question.

In fact Austria asked Lockheed, Saab, Boeing and Dassault for Information (RfI). EADS asked: “why didn’t you ask us too?” The Austrians thought the EF would be to expensive, but they never asked about. After that an RfI was sended to Eurofighter as well. Even MiG planned to bit for the order, but was primarily rejected due to political reasons. Saab, Lockheed and Eurofighter answered the RfI, Boeing and Dassault did not. After the EF was selected Dassault suddenly offered to sell 18 Rafale for 1.4 bln €, but it was already to late a the EF was selected and the contract ready. Dassault initially thought that aircraft such as the Rafale or EF as well would be considered to expensive by Austria. But they didn’t ask the Austrians early enough as Eurofighter did.
Finally only F-16, Gripen and Eurofighter were evaluated. Boeing and Dassault didn’t participate in the end.

Boeing didnt answer for the same reason, because the SH was thought to be to expensive for Austria so the US offered the cheaper F-16 only. EADS was really smart here, while Dassault missed the oportunity.
So there was never a technical comparison between EF and Rafale in Austria. EF won over Gripen and F-16 (which is not very hard), but not over Rafale.

You forget the most important
http://www.channel4.com/4car/media/C…-c6-f3q-st.jpg

Holy sh!t! I was expecting Melissa Theuriau but I had to see that creation of hell. 😡 😀

Why a flame war? The Indians would be part of the blue forces anyway…
As there are no aggressor Raptors, the Flanker will just meet its old buddies F-15 and F-16.

PS: There are much more important things happening in the world today. And the foremost is the airing of the Last EVER episode of Stargate-SG1. .

I agree. 🙁

But the Cuban story is funny. Did they hire an Iraqi information minister? 😀

I’m damn sure that the RAAF has predicted that its future air operations will either be
a) in defence of its own airspace & surrounding waters
or
b) in co-operation with the USA

A lot of the discussion of the merits of type A vs type B in this thread (& others!) seems to take place in some kind of abstract location, where the geographical & political environment of the user is not considered. Let me remind everyone that when an air force decides what it wants to buy, right at the top of its list of factors to consider are geography & politics, up there with economics.

OK, if Australia decides it will only fight as another US squadron in airspace cleared by others or defending its airspace against the negligible threat of 4 Flankers, then the SH is a good solution. Then I wonder why the F-111 is still in service and why theres such a fuss about loosing capabilities.

Geography, geography, geography! Look at a map. A Sukhoi over Australia isn’t going to be running around anything, it’s at extreme range & about to turn for home.

I know the distances are huge and the Flanker over Australia scenario is “somewhat” questionable.
But if the Flanker cant do it, the SH is even worse off.

In Australias case, you’re more likely to be talking about refuelling over Australia to reach the more remote bits from the nearest base, than refuelling over enemy territory. As for overseas deployments – well, when was the last time the F-111s deployed outside Australia? I’ve been trying to think of a scenario where they’d be battling through heavy air defences, taking advantage of their ability to refuel outside the range of enemy fighters & strike deep inside hostile territory, & you know, I can’t come up with one.

I dont know what Australia wants to do with their jets. Probably they dont know. The F-111 was the best and only option short of a strategic bomber to reach out and touch someone. If theres no more such requirement, theres no need for pig-like range.

If the SU is so much better, then why would it refuse to engage? Also, if the SU doesn’t engage, doesnt that mean that the SH defended what it was suppose to? If you tell me that the SU would just drive around the SH and get to the target anyways, I would have to reply that you obviously dont know anything about modern day tactics on fleet defense or defending a high value target.

If you have a limited number of SHs as in Australias case, the Su could try to run around the SH or at least run it out of gas to overcome it. Not every target is a well defended CBG.
The other way round doesnt work, so the SH has to engage if the Flanker is defendig, probably resulting in a mission kill.
Of course, with 4 Flankers at hand (Indonesia) the result is still obvious…

A SH isnt a long range striker? What about the B1,2,and 52? All long range strikes will need refueling, period. Doent matter what platform. SH’s are running 8 and 9 hour strike missions into Afganistan and Iraq. So, what long range striker or bomber doesnt need inflight refueling?

What about refuelling over enemy territory. Not every airspace is such a nice place to be as Afghanistan. If you cant cover the distance in enemy airspace on internal fuel, the target is out of range. F-111 compared to SH will put a lot more targets out of range.
Of course, the question here is what kind of target does OZ want to have covered i.e. if 1000nm+ radius is needed at all.

Technically speaking is not better than the MiG-29 or Su-27 in fact in many aspects it is inferior, for example its max sustained turn rate is 20 deg/sec while the MiG-29 is 23.5 deg/sec, the Su-27 matches it in acceleration and is superior in max range

I dont know about exact turn rates, but they are all 9g aircraft.
The F-15 accelerates faster than a Su-27.
The Su-27 is superior in range when the aux. tanks are full, then you can add the external tanks on the Eagle as well.

I like the Eurofighter because sooner or later they will find the way to detect the F-22 and the fight is not going to be as the USAF expects

I really like that statement since its about the 1000th time I read it 😀
Thats bad for the F-22, isnt it. But its even worse for any non stealth fighter like EF, its going to be a nightmare.
Its not like stealth is slowly turning into a disadvantage. Its just the advantage thats going to shrink and thats for every jet, but the relative advantage of stealth fighters vs. so called legacy fighter remains.