Just to be a pain :p I submit the following page from a 2002 EADS Eurofighter fact book which shows the LDP somewhere over than the centre station. 😮

If memory serves me correctly when the original release for the austere A-G came out it had something along the lines of “integrating the Litening pod until a more advanced solution can be found/developed”. Assuming one of the driving forces behind Litening was the fact that the Germans & the Spanish already use it….. whats the more advanced solution? Are they refering to integrating Sniper or ATFLIR again on the centre station or doing some engineering so they can fit a pod to a MRAAM station? Or was the original plan for the EF consortium to develop there own all singing all dancing LDP?

Knowing the bean counters I expect they’ll have to fight like hell to get the LDP moved from the centre station having paid for the integration once they won’t want to cough more money to move it a couple of metres!

[RANT]

Anywho….. with all this talk of cancelling/reducing/delaying tranche 3 has it occured to any of the great the good in charge that it could just be as simple as getting the Italians to close there assembly line for T3 & have them assemled by BAE. If the Italians took say 6 planes a year from the BAE line the RAF would save/delay ~ £400 million/year & the Italians could stretch their contractural obligations over a longer period thus allowing them to get on with JSF. BAE could transfer some stuff to Alenia to make up the difference in the workshare & its JOB DONE!! No fines, no ever shrinking capability, no loss of workshare etc etc. It seems so simple & easy there must be something wrong with my logic…. the dumb arrogrant s!#ts in Whitehall would never go for it.

[RANT OVER]