what I do believe is that engineers from both sides of the atlantic know their business much better than most on this board, and they certainly have their reasons.

saying “canards are worthless because the US don’t use them” is just as valuable as saying, “tail elevators are useless because europeans don’t use them”..

every nation decided to follow a path that looked best for them, considering their experience, knowledge and budgets.

if one was a bit on the trolling side, he may say that tail elevators are really crap, since it takes such enormous amounts of money to make aircraft like the f22 or the f35 to get into service 😉

Right, IT FAILED… and the aircraft lost control because of it. Even if a redesigned FLCS fails, IT STILL FAILS. No FLCS=no control of the flight surfaces, period.

just about this one:

if FLSC fails, any modern fighter is in deep shi… the F-22, F-16, eurocanards, etc… they all are aerodynamically unstable and need a functionning FBW system to stay airborne.

So, now comes THE question: since the FLCS is mandatory to keep the modern aircraft fly, regardless of their configuration (canard, elevator, pure delta, etc…) what’s the point in your remark in an “elevator vs canard” discussion? :confused:

Opposition parliamentarians said an air force study concluded that
Rafale could not match up to such aircraft as the Eurofighter, F-22 and
other advanced combat platforms.

doesn’t it sound too similar to the brasilian mess to be a coincidence?

kuwait said, right after UAE exercises, that they were interested in the rafale after what they saw… six months later, we get an “air force study”,airforce that made no tests of the aircraft yet, saying that the rafale is the worst thing available on the market today…

that simple fact alone talks a lot about the seriousness and neutrality of the “source”… 😀

Thats quite an old document. From the 2008 LM Norwegian air force presentations we have a range of 610 NM on internal fuel with two Kongsberg JSM/NSM plus two AIM-120 , with EFT´s it goes to 728 NM. Nevermind that the external tanks have been erased from the development spiral right in 2006.

that document is still online… and on LM’s site… is there anything more recent?

It exceeds 700nm, with 5500lb combat load on internal fuel, and >900nm with EFTs.

LM disagrees:

http://www.lockheedmartin.com/data/assets/aeronautics/products/f35/A07-20536AF-35Broc.pdf

on page 6 it’s written clearly: on internal fuel it has 590 nautic miles combat range for teh AF version and 600 nautic miles for the navy version

the ferry range is 1200 nautic miles which means that, no matter what load you put in (even nothing except fuel) you’ll never be able to go beyond 600 miles and back on internal fuel

now, maybe you know better than LM who builds it and sells it (and usually talks more than positively about it)

a tomahawk 😀

For now, the rafale is beter for sure.. the f-35 not being operational.

how well both can really do their job depends on data that isn’t available to public anyway.

If the radars use lower band frequencies, both will have to rely on their electronics to get through, and there, it’s pretty much “all classified”

F-16A Block 15 sustained is:
9G at Mach 0.9 at 3000 feet
7G at Mach 0.9 at 11000 feet
5G at Mach 0.9 at 20000 feet
3G at Mach 0.9 at 34000 feet
1G at Mach 0.9 at 55000 feet

So Block 15 would be roughly 6G sustained at Mach 0.9 at 15000 feet.

Only have one sustained figure for F-15C
5G at Mach 0.9 at 25000 feet.

The real question is – will the F-35 EODAS cueing make a sustained fight necessary?

Anyone have similar figures for the Su-27 and/or MiG-29?

er, do you mean that your performance benchmark is a fighter model that flew back in 1980?

if we are talking air to air combat load, rafale, gripen or typhoon all can do better than 5G sustained at M 0.8.

They are made for that.

As for “production models will have max speed of M1.8, usually, it’s the prototypes that go to highest speeds and then, one goes a bit back for safety and durability reasons…

Unless they push the tests that far (and it’s not been done yet), there’s little to no chance that a production model gets any faster