In the french doctrine, the radar is there to bear your missiles onto the target, not to serve as a mini awacs. So either Dassault, Thales, the adla and the MN are stupid or their are confident the current number of modules will be sufficient.

With plans to add more aesa arrays for 360° coverage, electrical power and cooling could become an issue when you have 1500 modules up front already. I don’t know if it could be an issue, but definitely something to think about in my opinion.

Nic

In my book, 100% ToT means all the knowledge to maintain and upgrade the aircrafts. Build new parts, integrate weapons, upgrade software and so on.

I don’t think it means teaching Brazil to develop a new plane from scratch.

Nic

This plane looks very good, and the paint scheme is just awesome…

I wish they used it for some fighters

Nic

Which is a pretty silly point:

a useless version added costs, delay, complexity, and compromised the overall design of other versions. It’s not even certain right now that this version isn’t going to be axed. How this could be considered a positive is beyond me.

awesome program management guys!

Nic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Fayette_class_frigate#Taiwan_frigates_scandal

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/news/30iht-t1_88.html

This is probably the reason why France didn’t want to sell Micas to Taiwan after the frigates scandal which had huge repercussions on the french political class. It seems it’s not easy to trade with Taiwan and keeping your hands clean.

Nic

I agree that the pdf is pure marketing. Whats the point comparing the gripen NG with planes that carry twice the armament?

I for one don’t buy into the “huge” difference in operational costs, especially with latest generation planes. I’ve never seen hard numbers to confirm those or even to compare with other planes.

Nic

Well since fighters spend most of their missions in peace time training missions, with at most 1 center fuel tank, drag isn’t going to be a huge issue most of the time; and in this day and age saving on HUGE amounts of fuel is quite nice indeed.

Should the turd hit the fan, drag may be superior at first but then it goes lower as stores and fuel tanks are expended, and as I said in another thread, accompanying stealth ucavs don’t need training flights.

Nic