well it sure was for the ATF..the US clearly felt otherwise,recoganized the advantage that it would have and pursued it to the fullest.

and do u think they could justify a 4th fighter to the public..specially when they have marketed that the existing top fighters are good for decades to come.

Whats your point?

Work on the ATF started later and had a lot of stealth knowledge not available to the Europeans at time.

My point is that a stealth aircraft could be produced by Europe IF they wanted to.

The Typhoon and Rafale aren’t as stealthy as the F-117 let alone the F/A-22 and F-35. So in answer to your question no they can’t build a stealth combat aircraft today or they would. That’s not to say that with a decade’s research they couldn’t pull it off eventually but as of today they cannot.

A lot of European countries already have a decades worth of research, I think you are seriously underestimating their capabilities.

No steve that was not wat i meant..i was just saying that the European arcraft manufacterers have seem to dug themselves in a hole by not going in for a much much more stringent RCS requirement.

Stealth wasn’t a primary concern or practical for fighters when the Rafale and Typhoon designs were fixed.

If they started a new design, stealth would obviously be a key feature.

eactly my point..the ATF came out of the late seventies studies…the EF and rafale are indeed a generation apart..and there lies te dilemma..detecting them aint tough at all for the f/a-22,f-35’s apg-77,apg-81 while the other way around u have future AESA’s looking into the .001-.0001m^2 RCS aircraft which is extremly hard detection wise…

Sorry, but I don’t understand your point.

Are you saying that because the Typhoon and Rafale are not as stealthy as the F/A-22 and F-35, European countries are not capable of building stealthy combat aircraft?

well then i beg to differ…why wasnt this know how used for the eurofighter and rafale..then..or are we to say that at that time they didnt have that information?? the eurofighter and rafale are giving up a lot interms of RCS against the f/a-22 and f-35..something that cannot be regained by RAM/RAS alone (something that the 2 US aircraft are also gonna use heavily)..

The configurations of the Typhoon and Rafale are over 20 years old!

You can’t compare them with the F/A-22 and F-35 in terms of stealth, they’re a generation apart.

The Typhoon and Rafale have some low observable features and materials but their airframes were not designed with stealth as a primary factor.

u cant have stealth or affordable stealth or more appropriately WEAPONIZED/COMBAT READY/PRACTICAL STEALTH for 20 million in research..u need billions and billions to be spent on numerous various aspects of stealth to get there..

The UK spent 20 million on the Replica program, they have spent many more millions on other stealth research over the years.

with one aspect of airframe manufactered u cant really claim that they know how to make a affordable stealth aircraft..

You can’t really claim they don’t know how to 🙂

Cool, a single engined YF-23 🙂

So a 20 million pound program was enough for them to match the f-35 in stealth…cumon steve that is an extremely optimistic judgement…what about problems stealth has when it comes to maintance?? possible indcrease in RCS in actual combat situations..?? problems of maintainaning extreme percission while producing stealth aircraft??? these are all problems that the US industrial base has adressed with the sr-71,f-117,b-2,f/a-22 and therefore gives them a wealth of information…if by spending 20 million in research u were able to get a JSF like stealth aircraft (which matches stealth,LO and exonomy) then many many more countries and manufacterers would be lining production lines with such aircraft.

I don’t doubt that the US is the leader in stealth technology, but the JSF doesn’t have the complete range of stealth features the US is capable of.

The JSF and Replica are examples of affordable stealth, the Replica has demonstrated a stealthy body shape and the UK is already capable of highly accurate, precision manufacturing. Stealth coatings and materials have been applied to Tornados and Typhoons too.

In my opinion the Replica program tested existing UK stealth knowledge on a optimised stealthly airframe.

The UK current defense budget is struggling just to get by. Further, with Tyhpoon entering service now and the CVF’s and T45 are on the horizon 😮 The JSF with give it what it wants at a managable risk/cost.

I like the JSF, it’s a very impressive aircraft design and the USA is going to benefit from it a great deal.

The UK however, only needed the ASTOVL capability. I get the feeling that we are going to benefit the least from our investment in the JSF program in terms of the number of JSFs we put into service compared to the amount of tax payers money we put into the program.

UK companies might do very well out of the JSF program, but the RAF and FAA will still only have about 150 aircraft to operate.