TooCool_12fFunny how the “name of the swiss minister is irrelevant”.. he’s the one to pick the fighter that swiss air force declared not suitable for the job in the first place, and he did so on the grounds of the price only (which would mean that the evaluations were useless)… not everyone will act the same.
The Gripen E still has to prove its worth, as it’s still in development (a couple of years late if I’m not mistaken).
I guess the aircraft in question are Rafale, Eurofighter, F/A-18, F-16 and Gripen E. Or might LM pitch F-35?
you can forget the F-16. it lost to the F-18 a couple of decades ago already. There’s no way the swiss take it into consideration.
as for the others, the price gap between the Gripen and the others has narrowed, as it is significantly dearer than the Gripen C. Rafales kept being upgraded and the F4 which will probably be offered may should be quite well placed. The F-35 will have (finally) some returns on its real costs and capabilities to be expected but one can wonder if LM will accept an evaluation. They already said, for Canada, that there was no need for an evaluation and paper data was sufficient… If the swiss declare that they are sufficiently grown up to make up their own mind on facts they can observe, how will that go with LM is a question that might get an interesting answer soon. The Typhoon looks less and less interesting for the swiss IMHO, as the partner nations all seem to look for the F-35 (depending on their cash availability) to take over a number of missions, limiting the Typhoon to A2A role. One can wonder what upgrades and support the new customers can expect over the next several decades if they buy it from 2025 onwards…
basically, the competition should be between
Gripen – cheapest, but lesser advantage than before
Rafale – fully versatile more capable and proven, but somewhat dearer than the Gripen
F-35 – bringing the “5th gen tag”, but at what real price/capabilities combo and, most of all, will it even accept the real and complete evaluation based competition ?
TooCool_12fon the other hand, the back end seems to be pretty “plug an dplay”, as they could switch antenna types (AESA – PESA) with no problem… but, since there’s more space in the nose, and a bigger plate could be fit, one can wonder if they’ll see it as being in their best interest to give a better radar (bigger antenna, more T/R modules, so more power and so on with the same back end) on a Mirage 2000 compared to the Rafale…
TooCool_12fThe problem is that people want something to be true and don’t look at facts.
Every country has its own needs. If it shares the same needs as another nation, they can cooperate successfully and have a common aircraft. But when interests diverge, it becomes much more complicated. It is not that “Rafale should only be replaced by a pure French aircraft” but rather “what needs France has?” and then “who shares the same needs?”
France has opted for a single model air force, as they find it more economical to manage a pool of fighters so the flying hours and maintenance can be optimized. They have the Air Force and the Navy, so that fighter has to be able to perform all the missions one can ask from it from land or sea (CATOBAR)
What other country shares those needs? there’s only one that “may” share them: the USA. They have the Air Force and the Navy (and the USMC on top of that) , with carriers operating CATOBAR aircraft. And with the F-35 they try to do what the french have done with the Rafale: one common aircraft that does it all (more or less).
Now, if you put that into european fighter project, it is quite obvious that what France wants should fulfill all the missions of the other partner(s) as well, but in the same time, what France wants goes beyond what other partners are after.. From there on, how can one be certain that Germany (or UK, or Italy, or Spain or anybody alse) will be ready to participate in expenses for, say, the naval version of the aircraft? If one looks at the recent history (Typhoon) it is clear that it will be more political than anything else, and each partner will try to get as much as workshare as possible, while limiting the expenses to only what his needs are. With one partner, it may, eventually, be possible to negotiate a way to finance it anyway, and even that is far from being easy, but add some more and it becomes a nightmare, where only the smallest common interest will be covered and the rest will be only source of delays and negotiations, and so on…
So there’s already one problem with the idea of “european fighter”.. There are people who’d want the UE to behave like USE.. United States of Europe. But that USE simply does not exist. After all, the USA buy a fighter for the USAF or USN or USMC, not for Texas, California, New York and so on, each and every one having own requirements and fighting to get its share of manufacturing work. In UE, every country wants its share. In the USA, there was a competition, manufacturers competed, presented their projects and the winner takes it all, makes the aircraft as they see fit, where they see fit. If the european countries want to make a common fighter that will benefit from common financing capabilities, they have to do it properly, meaning, define requirements that cover the missions of services who will need it, define the budget to develop it and then, let the manufacturers present what they can produce, and let the winner do it. And if it’s Dassault, the Dassault makes the fighters for everybody. If it’s Airbus, then Airbus makes the fighters for everybody, and so on…
TooCool_12f@ TomcatViP
managed efficiently means built it so as to gain from economy of scale which would lead to cheaper aircraft to buy, insure continuous financing of initially planned capabilities which would insure it gets what it was supposed to get rather than being eternally promising capabilities on paper to the customers…
What numbers do you want to look at? foreign sales? between alleged corruption in Austria, possible corruption in Saudi Arabia where the british prime minister asked publicly to the prosecutor to look elsewhere to protect british jobs? Or do you speak about domestic sales? they were four countries buying it, it sold more than double of the Rafale and yet costs more for less capabilities.. What’s more, they’re even trying to get rid of their used ones..
For once you say something correct, concerning yourself, that is:
Blindness itself would have had more foresight!
TooCool_12fToday, it is 20 years since the F-22 first flew (not counting the YF-22 prototype), and it’s still alone in its league… future 5th gen fighters may come into service in the next 4-5 years at best and they may be, or not, able to detect it. The USAf can count ont an infrastructure combining SIGINT assets, AWACS and so on second to none.. While I find the F-23 beautiful and am sure that it would make a great fighter, the choice of the USAF to go conservative may be also considered as “F-22 wil be good enough, so more risk isn’t necessary”.. until now, it proved to be exact
TooCool_12fAs to the French and Germans getting to choose who joins their fighter project (you mean the French), I seem to remember a Gallic shrug when I suggested the French idea of a third partner in FCAS wasn’t helpful.
I merely underlined the fact that the statements by other nations saying “we’ll be on board” are nothing more than wishful thinking at this moment as they have zero capability to decide anything about it as of today. They can only ask (or propose) for a partnership, but absolutely not say “we’ll be on board”.
Now if you want my opinion, it is that a partnership may be done, but it would require to have partners with similar needs and who agree to make it a competition with industrial proposals on the table at the beginning, made by industrials and with economy in mind… as soon as you let multiple partners putting stuff together, with a monopoly “this company will do that” with no competition, and every country asking for its share of work before anything else, you’re heading straight for a disaster. Just look at the Typhoon and Rafale.. France, alone, progressed faster and better than the Eurofighter consortium, while obviously one can’t reasonably say that the french had a stronger economy and more people available to work on it than the four partners united. But with each country pulling the things its way and dragging their feet when they considered it wasn’t in their immediate interest to go forward hampered the development of that fighter to the point that even today it is far from being where it could’ve been if it was managed efficiently.
TooCool_12freminds me of the british statements not so long ago… but the fact still remains, he wants his country to be part of it. But in the end, it is the germans and the french who are the only ones to decide whether they want somebody else to participate
TooCool_12fNot true. The navy has supply ships & leased Ro-Ros as well as warships, the air force has tankers, a significant number of A400M, quite a few Transalls still . .. . and a robust civilian economy to draw on in need.
It’s more projection capability than most of the world’s militaries.
their equipment is sized for self defence. they can send some troops on the ground, like on a peace keeping mission (with lots of others beside them), but intervene militarily somewhere on their own is excluded
TooCool_12fTejas, JF-17, MIg-21..?
TooCool_12fA tremendous lack of global vision…
It reminds me our discussions, not so long ago with your foresight of the absence of needs for an advanced technology fighter for Eu nations in the future… Med shores were just a peaceful prosperous places and only the angry Amerikans would find a justification to operate there…
If you want to understand the world around you, you should stop looking at it through your “wishful glasses” and see the reality that surrounds you. I tried to remind you the problem Airbus is facing:
– Germany has zero ancient colonies and zero countries they are supposed to “protect”. They have zero projection capability and their politics have zero projection plans. It is not about “vision”, it is the reality.
– From there on, that country on which Airbus has to count for developing a new fighter, must see in that fighter the tool that will fulfill their own needs… suffice to look at the Typhoon development process and delays to realize the “me first and I don’t give a rat’s s$$ about others” mentality that germans adopt when it is about paying for new developments.
Now with that two points, it is understandable that Airbus doesn’t want the german government to have an aircraft at its disposal that they (the politicians) may consider as a viable solution for their needs. Your statement about china’s competition is irrelevant for the simple reason that Airbus may have to face on international market, but only if it can manage to develop that fighter in the first place, and that comes way after the germans agree to finance it. And they will finance it, not to fight china that is on the other side of the planet where they have no business to make war in any way, but only if they see it useful to them, over german soil, in german skies, in the middle of Europe. Once more, the mentality of sticking own armed nose into others business anywhere around the world is the characteristic of only two countries: USA and France. Anybody else (and they aren’t that numerous), will eventually join a coalition to score some good points with the “big guy” who makes it, but won’t ever go to war on their own anywhere else, except to defend themselves if they were attacked on their own soil. Germany even less than that
TooCool_12f“competing with the design” when speaking about the German Air Force and chinese design is somewhat misplaced… Airbus needs Germany to fund its new fighter. German government won’t have to face Chinese Air Force nowhere in near future (and probably not before several centuries to the minimum).. Therefore, while they may have to compete against chinese designs on international market, german government doesn’t care about it. What Airbus doesn’t want above all, is another fighter in the house that may look interesting for the government to keep.. regardless whether it’s justified or not.
Anyway, a few officers said they’d like to have the F-35, but it is up to the politicians to decide, so… we’ll see
TooCool_12fWhat Airbus probably is afraid of is that buying the F-35 leads the political leaders to spare themselves a hassle of developing and financing a new fighter while it would be so easy to just keep ordering additional new F-35s as the Typhoons start to need replacements as well. They may get some work share on these F-35s but nowhere near the level of work if they have their own fighter that they sell
TooCool_12fAs I said, “nobody expected the germans to buy it anyway”
TooCool_12fyes, I didn’t express myself correctly.. I was thinking about equipping fighters with it.. as there was already a testbed on a large aircraft (747, from memory), but the space needed for it didn’t allow the use on small aricraft
TooCool_12fwhat’s new here anyway? Italy and GB already asked for the latest toy on the shelf. German high ranking military said they’d like to have it. the politicians still have to give it a go, but for the Typhoon, its development and upgrades didn’t wait for german announcement to have problems
As for the Rafale, while it could replace the Tornados easily, nobody expected the germans to buy it anyway, as it would be complicated to pretend to sell teh Typhoon (as they still try here and there) and buy the first competitor to it at the same time. Now, considering the future developments of the french fighters, saying “France doesn’t have the money” is incorrect.. they have the money they decide to invest in it. If it’s too low on their list of priorities, there will be no funding. if they decide it is needed, the funding will be there… it only depend on who’s in charge at a given moment
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