right now?

rafale: the aircraft

typhoon: the engines

= rafale with higher IR signature

If you ask me there is a very legitimate reason to have a beef at the JSF. In my opinion the hidden goal of the whole project was to suck up as much R&D money from the europeans as possible, and ultimately kill or at the very least damage their fighter industry. This for instance considerably slowed the development of the Typhoon wrt air to ground capabilities.

Nic

Imagine A-10 in Libya. Thousands of MANPADS, vast numbers of AA guns. You have to get down within range of that lot to use the gun. With Brimstone & the like you launch from safely above their ceiling of effectiveness.

Lose a few aircraft & precision munitions suddenly look cheap.

Brimstone & the like are all nice and good, but you need a cheap and persistent platform for them, rather than wasting expensive fighters airframe life.

It needs to be fast and cheap. I’d say something like Skyhawk for instance.

Nic

If I was a general in a country that risked US invasion, I’d paint all my fighters in tarmac camo 😎

Nic

@Nicolas: Your forgetting A2A which UCAVs cannot do. You now have three airframes on the CV (UCAV, A2A, and cheap multi-role).

You could fit AMRAAMs or METEORs onto an X47B or NEURON/TARANIS. They could work in A2A along your multirole not so cheap SH/Rafale/Eurofighter. No need for a dedicated A2A stealth design.

What happens when you go against an enemy that can jam your comms or (God forbid) hack your UCAV controls? Now you are left attacking him with your cheap multi-role fighters or your stealthy A2A.

When your enemy is going to attempt to jam your UCAV control it’s going to emit quite a lot of stuff, so it’s going to be easy send some HOJ missiles against it, or at the very least to detect it via ESM and target it with IR missiles.
– For strike you use autonaumus UCAS (Reuseable stealth missile more or less).
– For air defense I bet your opponent won’t try to jam anything, and is only going to try and sneak unnoticed.

The point of a single, stealthy multi-role force is that they ALL can do whatever is needed. The days of single-role fighters is over.

And they cost twice the cost of a good multirole fighter for a benefit that’s going to be useful 1% of the time (IE real war 1st day of war), while you could do it more cost effectively with a dedicated fleet of UCAVs + cruise missiles.

Given that the FRP F-35 is only 15%-20% more expensive than the F-18E, having two different fighters (higher parts, training, & support costs) is not worth the miniscule difference in total lifetime savings (if there is any).

20% of 200 billion leaves you with quite a lot of dough to make a stealth UCAV operational, and that’s if (very big if) your numbers turn out to be correct.

Nic

Not every mission requires stealth

Which is why you should keep a less expensive fighter AND a dedicated stealth UCAV for when stealth is required. Much better bang for the buck, no compromise for your multirole fighter, and no compromise for your stealth attack UCAV.

Nic

Why not a rent of Rafales until the F35C finally arrives?

Buy the same than the french navy, with an option for buyback once the RN doesn’t need them anymore.

Nic

**** is going to hit the fan way before next decate though.

Nic