if they keep the timeline, they’ll probably just get some more F-15Ks and that will be it… otherwise, uncle sam will explain them that they will but the F-35 a bit later and they’ll do so.

I can’t even understand why Eurofighter consortium wastes their time and money on that joke

Given the number of islands they have worry about, its seems insane to me Japan should pass up the F-35B, even if they develop something like the F-3. Any defense planner with a modicum of sense would build the F-35 at home and then design something bigger if the budgets allow. Otherwise they would be putting all their chips into one high risk gamble, which even if it pays off, wont have a STOVL capability.

what would seem unsane is the idea to buy F-35 with the aim to protect territories….

that things is primarily an attack aircraft, made to go bomb stuff and not made to intercept or do air combat as a primary mission. there are clearly better performers in that role today

especially the F-35B which carries the whole machinery to do its “vertical trick” at the expense of something much more useful up there:something like fuel…

@ J Boyle

Dassault is a private company (claiming that the state owns 51% of it is wrong, as 51% belongs to Dassault family) and their employees are civilians, unlike that “air force major” from the USAF that the article quoted above talks about

as for “not the same”, a fighter without the functionning ejection seat requires either to stay on the ground or have a pilot ready for a suicide mission (the A4s had to go into contact with warships at extremely low level, getting shot at from every ship in the area and having harriers covering tjhos ships to get by as well… a kind of situation where you’d prefer to have a way out as all allied pilots since WWII), so repairing a malfunctionniing rail or maintaining ejection seats through the conflict gives the same result: delivering ordnance during that war

as for “stating the obvious”; any politician talking about somebody else’s duplicity makes me smile… regardless of nationality :rolleyes:

seems that a more “creative” way was found to meet some required specs… rather than working on the development of the aircraft to meet them, they adjested the requirements (lowered them) to what the aircraft is capable of doing:

http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/133255/pentagon-relaxes-f_35-performance-targets.html

three? if my memory serves well, two were lost in a collision and one went beyond a runway end, but was repaired.

when would be the third loss?

@ Breguet

there’s a much simpler way to deal with it: they ask for other sources, you gave them

now they say it was probably taken out of context

ok guys, your turn: prove it!

funny how some go against the super tucano (or AT-6 in case it gets there) while in the same time nothing else today can fit the role.

the afghans don’t have any support capability for anything more complex, and as for flying these things, there would, almost, be more competent guys to do so around here on this very board than in their entire air force today. Introducing a jet, with its complex systems would be an overkill, not to speak about the fact that it would probably rapidly become useless with the lact of proper support

For their environment and infrastructure, the simpler, the better. A skyraider or an IL-10 (to take one from “both sides”), reengined with a turbine for logistics reasons if anything, would suit them much more as their enemies have no airforce nor real AAA capability, than anything modern, stuffed with electronics that beg to fall apart in the harsh environment it would have to operate within…

And as what the Swiss government has declared recently: the 2009 eval is not accurate enough. So the Swiss government and military made another new evaluation and then decided to choose Gripen.

thing is “they declared”…

no new evaluation has been made, which is the whole point and also why they will make another evaluation soon; funnily though, the “evaluation” obviously is to be conducted after the decision has been announced (one may wonder what logic is behind making a decision and evaluating your choice after you made it) and after the pressure due to the protests (probably the one and only reason the new trials will take place).