Gripen lightweight & F-16 medium?

F-16 on average 50% more thrust and 50% more MTOW. F-16 designed for CFT and 600 gallon tanks.

:very_drunk: So the country who, in the 1990s, needed to purchase foreign avionics to equip its upgraded J-8IIs and AWACs and whose only exposure to radar absorbing materials was from the F-117 shot down by the Serbs, suddenly developed the technologies to match F-22? What are you drinking? :very_drunk:

Chinese and US are joined by hip.

Interestingly, bulk of the Viper sales are still your Daddy’s Block 50/52 with the good old APG-68(V)whatever while all AESA versions (exportable Block 70, F-16IN, F-16V) just don’t seem to attract much attention. Hard to assess the real cost but I’d say that two dozens of Block 50s incl. a modest stock of PGMs and AMRAAMs would cost you ca 2 billion

24 F-16 with weopon and maintainance will atleast cost $5b.

He seems to have some very strange ideas that don’t conform to engineering reality.

If I tell him that a presentation by a qualified EW engineer given before an audience of international EW experts has not confirmed his opinions, he replies with “Flankers carry external pods. so that is only effective and aerodynamic solution.”

In his world, a pod-mounted EW system (with all the drag penalty of an external store) is a more “effective and aerodynamic solution” than an internally-mounted suite whose only drag penalty is that posed by a few small antennas. Perhaps the air that flows over the Flanker behaves differently to the air experienced by other fighters!

Updating the electronics housed in a pod is somehow more difficult than updating similar electronics within the aircraft’s fuselage, he assures us. It is strange that a professional EW engineer and an audience of his peers didn’t agree with his opinion.

In the real world, both types of upgrade take place on similar timescales, but I suspect that he thinks that a new EW pod is as easy and quick to develop as a new mobile phone. Anyone who has experience of designing electronics hardware rugged enough to withstand an airborne or shipboard environment (or even the rough handling of a tactical ground environment) will know the real-world problems that need to be faced, and the time it can take to identify and fix these.

No one saw EW pods on Su-35 untill it show up on Syria mission. so I presume it’s plug and play and not much testing needed.

missile ranges are increasing.

https://in.rbth.com/news/2016/05/19/range-of-russian-s-400v4-system-with-new-missile-reaches-400-km_594431
Range of Russian S-400V4 system with new missile reaches 400 km

hardware of internal EW can be upgraded too

not simple.

just google various upgrade of internal ECM for F-15 , F-16 , F-18E

Are those upgrades done in battlefield?. it took decades to implement them.
black and white pods cap.

fighter jet can move supersonic too

Fighter jets rarely fly supersonic on strike mission and there is no element of surprise and they can be shot down. that’s why you need highly accurate stealthy missile like Iskander that have element of surprise and speed.

F-35 carry ways more fuel than F-16 , F-18 ,AV-8B , Gripen, EF-2000 and Typhoon
It depend on what you want to upgrade

F-35 also heavier than the rest. I am not saying its not better but it is not a decisive jump in capability for fighter that will be in production for next 30 years and used for next 40 years.

And Su-34 have massive RCS compared to F-22 , if you have higher RCS , you need more powerful jamming to cover your ass , it as simple as that

the space inside in Su-34 simply not enough to deal with diverse threats that are in Syria from Turkish AWACS to ground based radars of nato that need counter measure develop in real time.
only the external pods that can be upgraded and shipped in the transport planes directly from manufacture to the field.
The function of Su-34 is to use its radar to maximum capacity to see what happening on the ground at extended distance and than strike with Iskander. The function of stealth aircraft is not to use its radar at all. so it very less useful.

I do not know where you get some of your wilder ideas. At last week’s European EW conference, there was a briefing on the relative merits of pod-mounted and internally-mounted EW systems. It contained nothing that supports your claims that internal suites are ineffective or hard to update.

Flankers carry external pods. so that is only effective and aerodynamic solution.