Maybe because they were designed with the same type of role and targets in mind – the interception of bombers trying to enter huge continent sized countries?

er, in the case of the US, you have a large country relatively densely populated with bases relatively close to each other, not speaking about a complete radar coverage which would allow for interceptors to take off on time to get into position more easily

USSR was a country which, for an immense part was unpopulated and bases were very few and far between… with a radar coverage that was quite harder to achieve.

so on one hand you had the possibility to scramble interceptors close to the flight path of the intruders and on the other you needed interceptors that could take off, dash to the area where it seemed to be some bad guys coming, find the bad guys and shoot them down before they do their job

result, on one side you have a single engine interceptor with a decent dash capability and an average radar for its time, and on the other, a Mach3 monster carrying a huge radar with a datalink implemented as soon as practical to improve detection capabilities over large areas where radar coverage wasn’t satisfactory

What do they need these wind-torn rocks for anyway?

for the sake of the argument, one may ask the brits the same question 😀

argentina may say it’s on their doorstep, but the UK… 😉

@ Corrosion

had the IAF select only one aircraft, there would be no second part of the process (L1 selection), so they needed another aircraft, even if they wanted the rafale alone.

Now, of all candidates, the only one that proved to be consistently costlier than the rafale (effect that could be reinforced through “clever calculations” if needed, was the eurofighter. So, if they wanted to get the rafale, they HAD to take the eurofighter with it for the “financial part”.

@ quadbike

you stated:

And the accountant would be right to do so. Defense is about spending the money prudently to get the capability one needs.

I personally am praying for a CAG report that will put the MRCA selection in scrutiny so much so that they will cancel the whole thing and buy F 35 via FMS.

how do you put together the two parts of your post is beyond me:

“prudenly spending” with the F-35 choice right behind (unfinished platform whose costs have exploded litterally and still nobody can say for certain how much more it will cost (not forgetting that, if India ordered it, it would be deliverable about a decade after the MMRCA is supposed to start being delivered… if it’s finished by then, that is…)…

… and it still would have to prove it fulfills the needed capabilities, which is far from certain yet…

Now that LM picked up production of F-16 again,
there is an politically acceptable option in North America.

you forget the SH which is, from the political PoV just as acceptable 😉

Rafale, Eurofighter, SH, Gripen NG have two things in common: They are all 4.5 gen fighters, and they have all lost competitions the last few years.

F-35 has so far not lost a single competition, in spite of being delayed and in spite of increased cost.
.

ROFL!!! :D:D:D:D:D

The F-35 still has to participate in a single competition… until now, it’s politicans who bought LM’s promises, once it’s really pitted against those “4.5 gen” platforms (if LM ever dares to do so once the thing becomes more or less operational) some of the “buying deciders” may be happy about the delays ( as they’ll probably be long retired when that happens)

Pure conjecture, again with no basis in fact, unless of course you’ve flown the F-35 and used the system. 😉

what you call “conjecture” is what other people call “logic”

for a MAWS to be of any use, it has to permanently “see” a wide area ( you don’t necessarily know where a manpad may be fired against you) while an IRST requires precise image of a detail.

so on one side you have an angle of something like 160° per camera and on the other you need a 1° or a couple at most. You can turn it any way you like, you can’t have both simultaneously, since, at best, you can implement an image crop of the big one, but it won’t give you any fine details (or you’d need an image resolution that no computer could manage in real time today – and if you say that this is a conjecture, than you really have no idea about the subject)

er, one question: which aircraft use towed decoys today?

um yea, whatever LM claims must be gospel :rolleyes: Only thing LM cares is making money selling planes. It makes claims a lot of which are exaggerated and unsubstantiated. F-22 has NEVER been deployed in combat ONCE and looks like it won’t be throughout its lifetime. F-117 was claimed to be stealth and guess what happened? detected and shot down by technology from the early 1960s 😎

I never believe in radar-evading jets. Radar wave is a kind of light wave. If you can see an F-22 with your eyes, a radar can see it as well. 😀

LM’s saying is gospel? You only forgot to tell I’m an LM fanboy…

Priceless… 😀