Did you read the second part of the sentence, or only the part that you wanted to?

Did you notice the smileys part, or only the part that you wanted to?

…can anyone name a major US weapon system that was procured from Europe in the last 40-50 years? AV-8A is the best example I can think of, and it was hardly a major acquisition. The follow-on AV-8B was a McDonnell Douglas programme.

It would depend on your definition of “serious”. The list I can think is not too long:

>AV-8A
>T-45 Goshawk
>UH-72 Lakota

Other than that, the US buys other spare parts, components and subassemplies for existing systems from various allied countries, for instance HAI builds intakes and other stuff for all new-built F-16s.

But I don’t know whether this classifies as “plenty” in pfcem’s universe.

I bet they will have much better air display with PAK-FA as F-22. At least less boring one.

2 years ago, when F-22 appeared for the first time in Farnborough, I don’t recall anyone refering to its display as boring. Not even Russians refered to it as boring…

The fifth-generation fighter twists, turns and rips through the sky, at points seemingly floating through the air like a snowflake, thanks to turbofans that include thrust vectoring.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7510364.stm

But what difference does it make? War is not about dancing, it’s about wrestling.

However, the Americans will again claim that maneuvers are not useful in combat. As had they for Su-27.

Actually what they said was that the Raptor’s most agressive maneuvers can only be performed in high altitudes, but this would not work for the guys on the ground.

See

$200m JSF
or the actual details here
OMG how much!!

it’s like shooting fish in a barrel isn’t it.

Many fishes actually, remember this is a tri-service thing!

😀

Αs a small P.S (and added so as to save BW the trouble of wasting bandwidth ) In the last 2 days the forum has sad to say hit SP levels – and as i defected from there, to get away from that attitude onto here, i am bailing out –

Pardon my ignorance, but in the last two days I keep reading about SP this, SP that, hostile takeover by SP, SP moving in and so on (you get the picture).

I am not a member there, nor a regular visitor, but come on guys it can’t really be that bad, can it? I mean there is always network54 as “badness” reference.

http://blog.francetv.fr/capitaine-ro…e-sur-rafale–

link broken… 🙁

just a reminder, the indian pilots did not fly the single seat aircraft alone.. they flew a dual seat one (basically, a “security pilot was behind, just in case) after training for a day in a simulator.

French can have many flaws, but are not crazy enough to put a pilot with about a day of training alone in a high performance fighter 😉

😀

They’re always free to buy something else, or build their own 5th Gen VLO multi-role aircraft. You have to look at it from the perspective of the investment in intellectual property involved, as well as the potential for security risks.

Yes, you are right; but that’s the very reason that’s not an alliance. Allies don’t treat other allies like that; Salesmen on the other hand do.

As for the investment part, I was under the impression that the UK et al were invited to pay money in advance for the JSF’s development, so as not to be simple customers, but partners. And it turns out that they can’t be not even that.

And what happens when they get hacked and the code is stolen?

Can you please elaborate as to why you use “when” instead of “if”? What makes you so sure that the code WILL eventually get stolen?

Do you have a source for F-35 software codes having been stolen? The only stories I’ve seen were Chinese stealing info off NIPR networks, which is at most FOUO.

The source was WSJ, but it doesn’t really matter as long as LM denies the whole thing. Whoever makes such a claim has to provide proof.

Lockheed says F-35 classified data not breached