When it first came out, it was a step above the rest in agility, power and athleticism. But then it quickly fell back when thrust vectoring and 4.5 gen and stealth started coming out.

It is stuck between 2 eras. It could earn back some of its earlier prestige if they thrust vectored it.

TVC is mainly an advantage for reducing drag during cruise and high-speed turns. I don’t regard it as much of an advantage in dog-fighting. Bleeds to much energy and leaves you as an easy kill for other parties. HMCS+HOBS+LOAL achieves the same thing and better without bleeding energy.

Off all the possible improvement going on Typhoon in 2021 for the RAF, TVC and LERX are among the lowest priority and least effective and likely won’t make it. The priorities break down as follows:

Captor-E Radar 2
DASS upgrade
Meteor
Storm Shadow
Brimstone
SPEAR
Striker II HMD
–
–
–
–
–
LERX
TVC

You knucklehead, you can’t even take on the signifigence of that Russian Gun, can you?
Its the most compact and weight reduced gun ever inserted on these kind of fighters. Its a very good design. It is not very complex, easy to service, and it never fails.
Must be why China use the same gun. lol.

I would be very interesting in seeing the cost of developing the F-35 gun..

Err…. no. It’s a single barrel, single chamber gun attempting the same fire rate as revolver cannons and needs to be replaced, or overhauled after nearly every use, although it was supposed to last 5 firings.

F-35 did not participate in the MMRCA because it did not meet some of the requirements?

(e.g., timelines, ToT, etc.)

So why isn’t it on offer to Pakistan?

They never even put it forward for the MMRCA. India is too closely allied to Russia to be genuinely considered as an F-35 export country.

Fact, US knew they were committed to Rafale and PAK-FA when the offer was made. It’s essentially like offering someone a new car to buy when they’ve just bought one, or putting an item on a 50% off sale when you’re out of stock. If they were to offer it to India, genuinely, then there’d be no reason it wouldn’t be offered to Pakistan too. Think about it.

Hardly.. The F135 has a fan diameter of 109cm. Al-31F of 90,5cm. Pretty much impossible to integrate the F135 on J-20, IMHO..

They could always knock-off a bit of the design though. It’s not as if their many car knock-offs look exactly the same as that which they’ve knocked off. They weren’t trying to get it just for sh!ts and giggles.

Probably Mach Loop.

Rafal / PAK FA

dog fight 1.24 / 2.16
long-range fight 1.3 / 2.52

strike ground targets 0.94 / 1.68
defense 0.52 / 0.96

the total capacity of 4 / 7.32

the superiority of the PAK FA – 83%

Rafale / PAK FA

Bloggability 20 / 7.5

Mystique 33 / 20

The superiority of Rafale is 167%.

Ummm no, there are freebies too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93United_States_military_relations