Most Phantom kills achieved by the mirage were done with the older Super 530F, and two (at least) by R550. Only one have been made by the more potent Super 530D.

BTW, what kind of antiship missiles did the Phantom carry?

Edit: It seems to me that the Mirage F1 is the more versatile plane in the lot. It can do antiradar, antiship, AtoA, AtoG, CAS, Reconnaissance, EW support with various weapons and pods… and with a single variant.

Nic

“However as I mentioned above, it suffers from relativley short-range compared to the F-4, and it has a lack of situation awareness due to lack of a two-man crew”

actually, the JA-37 had way superior situation awareness due to their network link betwen the aircrafts.

I was going to say the same thing.

I also wanted to add that the Mirage F-1 has a small advantage in AtoG (and maybe even dogfight) in the form of its 2 DEFA 30mm guns. And also that the F1 participated in war missions against Lybia (reconnaissance prior to Jaguar strikes), and Yugoslavia with the AdlA (10 F1 CT and 6 F1 CR during operation Allied Force). It has been operated by South Africa against Angola and Mozambique (whatever you say in english). The *unnamed* website shows those (confirmed only) victories from the Iran/Iraq war

Mig 23: 3 F5E; 10 F4 (D&E) and 2 F14A +1 damaged (wow)

Mirage F1-EQ: 1 F100; 2 F5E; 9 F4E and RF4E +1 damaged; 2 F14A +1 damaged

F4D/E: 24 Mig 23; 1 F1-EQ (plus two where the kill is confirmed, but they are not sure whether it was really a F4 that made the kill); lots of Mig 21, Su 20, Su 22…

As a side note, most F1-EQ shot down have been shot down by F14s… not too bad for the little french fighter.

I wouldn’t conclude much regarding the Mig 23 from those stats, because I don’t think the Russians trained the Mig 23 pilots as well as the US trained the IRIAF, or even the french trained the Mirage pilots. One can observe that the kill ration favours the Mirage when meeting the phantom, although a few kills were made against RF4E.

Also note that there are many kills that are not attributed to any plane. So this post is pretty useless anyway as it doesn’t depict the whole picture 😀

Nic

Buy some Rafales 😉

I just love the Rafale, and I happen to think this is good news.

The order is cut of only 8 fighters, which isn’t all that much overall, but it means the Rafale will get a PESA radar from F3 standard already, which means the Rafale will probably be equipped of an AESA way before the Typhoon, and will be able to make good use of the Meteor soon as the missile enters service. I have heard that France was studying an IR version of the Meteor too…

I think the title of your post is a bit misleading though, as it focuses on the negative, while I think the news is actually positive.

Nic

True, true.

Nic

He was not spot on.

Nic

Interesting thread.

Personally I don’t see a reason why a VSTOL version would have any advantage over a CTOL version.

Maybe you have to pay for the catapult and arresting hook, but it isn’t an insurmountable cost. I’m sure the extra cost of the VSTOL F35 more than balances the cost of cats’n’hook.

In my opinion, even if a VSTOL carrier can launch planes a wee bit faster (I’m not even sure it really would), then here are a few things to ponder.

1. CTOL carrier could send its planes earlier, hence you have no rush to put your planes in the air
2. CTOL planes would carry way more ordinance, so in the end it’s a moot point to put one or two more planes in the air in fifteen minutes, when half the number of CTOL planes need to be launched to carry the same payload.

Besides, US, french and many other aviators never seem to have had much problems to land planes on a carrier, why would RN aviators do? If anything I would guess they are very well trained, since the Sea Harrier was a very difficult plane to master, especially in take off or landing phases.

Then, for a seaborne plane, I don’t see how a STOVL craft would bring any flexibility, because no matter what the size of the carrier is, the plane will still need said carrier to land. So what’s the point of being able to land on smaller AC carriers?

Then there is that Hawkeye argument… how can you compare the capabilities given by a Hawkeye, and that of a clumsy hypothetical helicopter-borne AEW platform? This is just ridiculous.

I’m sorry but I fail to see ANY advantage of a (edit) VSTOL variant except very very tiny ones, like “what if a catapult is broken”

Nic

Fonk, I think you’re going way over the top when you compare Scorpion to Jack… it’s an insult in my opinion, and the two haven’t shown the same form of behaviour.

Maybe you feel that scorpion needs knowledge about this or that domain, but he hasn’t lied or tried to drawn the fish like jack does all the time… nor has he ever attacked anyone’s character or nation…

It’d be nice to keep things as civil as possible whenever there is no need to be confrontational.

Nico