No, because even a Rafale fanboy won’t claim that aside the 9 t , the Rafale will be able to carry 8.3 ton of fuel :diablo: Because an F 35 will …

It could carry a billion tons for all I care, what counts is the combat radius at a similar payload.

F-35A：600 NM／1,100 km （AIM-120*2 + 2,000 Ib JDAM*2） as per toan’s figures is definately nothing spectacular for a plane that flies “clean” and that carries that much fuel! The fuel costs alone for any F35 user are going to be huge, especially when we consider 98% of the flights are going to be peacetime but operators are going to pay for that drag anyway while other aircrafts could do training missions with say 1 supersonic belly tank.

Nic

I see that you continue to compare the F 35 with a clean Rafale/Gripen. Yes, those little planes offer a superb performance… in an airshow. 😀
Load them with even a moderate combat load and see what hapens.

BTW, the max. speed of the production F 35 will be 1.8M.

Its not because the loads are carried internally that they have no hit on performance. They still weight quite a bit. And for a comparable payload the rafale would need only two middle wing hardpoints, while carrying the same AtoA load on the wing tips only with minimal drag penalty, and twice the load if you want to use the fuselage poins, which also have minimal drag penalty.

A F35 can’t even carry internally the loadout that the Rafale carry in Afghanistan!

Nic

If the quest is for non-US materiel in the fighter force, option 2 seems like a very workable proposal.

The BAF wants a new fighter. It prefers the Gripen, presumably because it is aware that it needs to operate within a budget and this is done most easily with the Gripen. Gripen would be cheaper to buy, cheaper to fly, cheaper to maintain and cheaper to arm than Rafale.

I am not sure how many Gripens are sitting around collecting dust in Sweden but I guess some of these could be leased at very low cost for a few years while an EJ engined Gripen NG was developed in conjunction with the Brazilian aviation sector.

That would mean:

– Adding the cost of the lease to the cost of the purchase
– Adding the development cost of integrating the EJ200
– Adding the cost of the EJ200 itself, because there is every chance that it costs quite a bit more than the F414

What a joke… So the parameters known all along, that the president would judge the factors in accordance with sovereignty, e.g. geopolitics, taking into account FAB’s analysis, is now alleged to be illegal ‘by a Brazilian individual’. Get real, the US’ record on export controls, not to mention coup-d’etat’s, and UK’s contrary stance to Brazil’s solidatirity with Argentine position re: Malvinas just might suggest there could be strategic issues involved with becoming dependent on those countries for what is to be the sole modern fighter platform of FAB… Which exists to defend Brazil’s sovereignty, i.e. independent policy. Nobody would be surprised if US or NATO countries did not buy AA-11 just because it offered superior capability for a better price. If every factor came down to a 1 dimensional “economic principles”, there does not need to be independent countries, for every country would be under one ruling regime.
Honestly, I don’t think pulling tricks like this, or the insubordination of ‘leaking’ illegitimate ‘rankings’ is going to work out in it’s protagonists’ favor. Clearly there are factions in Brazil that are quite more content to align themselves with US policy, internationally and domestically, but tricks like this to bypass the ‘political’ and ‘democracy’ aren’t going to impress their opponents.

So far the deal is dead for them. So their only chance is to try making the current gvt position untenable and/or try to delay the bid until the next gvt is in power. They may anger the current gvt, but it’s not like the current is going to pick the Gripen anyway.

Nic

Hahaha Saab is willing to use all the dirty tricks…

I hope there’s a tanker nearby, if you haven’t already used that fuel.:rolleyes:

obviously you’re not going to need it until at about 1/3 of the mission. When you should burn the most fuel because of take off and climb and because of the extra weight (as you haven’t used much fuel nor expended your weapons.

Nic