I’d like to know first if spectra really is manufactured by thales US before even trying to guess how it works.

Nowhere other than on this website you can find that Thales is made in the US, and I seriously doubt that it is.

Googling SPECTRA + Thales USA doesn’t bring anything other than keypublishing 😉

As for the swedes, it’s BS, it’s the Swiss that have been contracted to manufacture a part for the AESA, as Scorpion said as a way to offset an eventual Rafale purchase by the swiss.

Nic

This is getting ridiculous. Everyone and their mother want an assembly line.

Nic

Sorry to revive a very old thread but I think I may have found why the SEM doesn’t fly with 1 ventral tank and 2 GBUs on the wing points.

On post 376 of this page http://www.air-defense.net/forum/index.php/topic,10082.360.html Pascal says:

Point central de fuselage
élément important:
il me semble que quand ce point est servi le chassis canons est déposé

Central fuselage point
Important fact: it seems to me that when the ventral point is taken, the gun has to be deposed.

So the MN would keep it free to be able to use the gun for Afghan missions.

Nic

Being one of Chenault’s flying tigers.

P40B+a prize in gold for every enemy plane shot down and a pretty nice jacket. 😀

Nic

F-35 is a bomb truck, not a fighter.

I normally stay away from threads like this, but the above comment made me snicker….are you serious? I assume you’re part of the F-35 test program and thus you know how it flies and fights?

As for your F/A-18 vs. F-16 comments, I’m also inclined to laugh. Both are good at air-to-air combat, but each must be used to its strengths. Rest assured, an F/A-18 is more than capable of beating an F-16, if the right tactics are used. The same is true of the F-16’s capability to defeat the F/A-18…again if the right tactics are used. They simply approach the same mission in a different manner, and are thus suited to certain situations better than the other jet.

I’ve said my peace, but I couldn’t let comments like that go…now I’ll go back to my threads about old airplanes. 🙂

The point that they both evolved from pure light weight figthers (YF16 and YF17) still stands though; unlike the F35.

Nic

Well IIRC new intakes have already been designed by dassault, and it is said their RCS is lower than the current ones.

Nic

PS: please rafale fans don’t feed the troll, it’s pointless debating with him.