i can’t give exact figures, but from what i remember upgrading from M88-2 to M88-3 will give 20% more thrust and thus all-round improvements in performance. what was especially touted was an increase in durability and maintainability. basically the higher thrust means u can get the same thrust output from the M88-3 as from the M88-2 at lower revs, meaning engine life is increased. specific fuel consumption is the same too despite the higher thrust, so yes range is quite significantly increased given the same flight regime.

as for stealth… let’s just say that no matter how much they “downgrade” the F-35 its RCS will remain much better than the Rafale’s, simply because it was designed to have “full spectrum stealth” unlike Rafale and is shaped and has IR reduction measures to do so which cannot be taken away by “downgrading”. i’m not sure if downgrading involves removal of the F-35’s RAM though. basically though as long as you have to hang weapons externally from an a/c it will never stealthy; even an undowngraded F-35’s RCS will jump tremendously once any external stores are carried, so it depends really on external stores. if the F-35 carries external stores RCS won’t be significantly different. if the F-35 flies clean however then its stealthy design will ensure a much lower RCS than an always-carrying-external-stores Rafale, downgrade or no.

i dont think they’re fast enough for modern SSNs. u need to be able to do way above 35kt to do effective ASW. hmm, i imagine an enormous zeppelin shooting out sonobuoys and with a big MAD tail! honestly AEW is a much more realistic role.

incendiary AMRAAM warheads. or get close and rake with HE-I shells from M61A2. it would be harder now that they’re filled with helium, but poke holes in enough of the zep’s gasbags and it’ll go down.

whoops. my bad. but the title seriously says DF-31. it’s the fault of the guy who posted that pic for mislabelling it. i think its some overzealous chinamen believing the Vandenburg LGM-30 launch to be a DF-31 shot in china.

no!! the two characters before the -31 on the thread title are “Dong Feng”, or East Wind. that means the guy saw a DF-31 launch from someplace called “Da Mo”. i’m chinese. i should know.

definitely not a Harpoon. it’s some kind of ATGM, but also not a TOW- TOWs have thin rectangular unswept wings, not the large swept ones seen here, and have only 2 sustainer engine nozzles not the 4 that this missile has (2 on each side)… maybe a HOT, or some Russian ATGM.

it’d be much more cost-effective to just continue renting An-124s like they’ve always been doing. why spend big $$$ when a cheap solution is already available?

besides the europeans aren’t going to need a 150-ton-payload strategic airlifter anytime soon. french and germans have lived with nothing more than Transalls and C-130s, and with few expeditionary ops likely in the forseeable future it’s nothing that can’t be handled by some cheap rental An-124s.