well… I didn’t think somebody would consider himself targeted by that remark… or at least show it… 😀

the whole “walk home” part was just a little ironic.. the whole idea being: you buy stuff you’d need in event of war.. not just for parading on a national holiday and do some training exercise here and there… so saying “it’s an overkill 99% of the time, when they are in peace” doesn’t stand… what you need is to fulfill your wartime requirements

😉

Perhaps in a war…but 90% of the time (for CONUS training missions rtefueling fighters and the odd AWACS and transport) they don’t need the extra capacity.
A nephew is assigned to a 135 ANG unit, he says most of the time they carry loads that a stretched 737 could handle.
With your argument, why not buy 747s or better yet, A380 tankers?

teh whole idea is that, what armed forces buy is tools to wage wars… it’s their job. In peace time, they train for war, all the time. Sometimes they do a humanitary mission, but most of teh time, it’s training.

WHen you get to war, the more you can do, the better… imagine for a second that you have an air raid and your fighters going home refill and the last two come behind tankers and hear:

“well, guys, that’s it, we have no more left, ya know, in peace time we wouldn’t have used it, so we didn’t choose that option.. have a nice walk home, see ya…”

would be a great morale booster

P.S. for all who are slightly slow to understand, obviously, no aircraft would be left behind in a real mission, but you would have to take another tanker in the air or send less fighters, which may hurt your mission capabilities somewhat… that’s why you need to get the tools tailored for your primary mission which is war, not just for training over your homeland

What if SAAB/Sweden would throw in a couple of Erieyes in their offer. Would that be enough to counter these old Mirage 2000s?

(I know Brazil uses Erieye and they have been a huge success there, specially in catching 1000s of drug smugglers and closing down hundreds of illegal air fields in the amazons)

😀

“these old mirages” are not exactly “old”.. for about half of them, their first deliveries date from 2003 (basically, these are still “new” aircraft), and the other half is older upgraded airframes, delivered in the 90’s and upgraded after 2003 to 2000-9 standard (basically, rebuilt “new” a couple of years ago)

what I find strange is that brasil basically, bought their Mirage 2000Cs (french decommissioned fighters.. now these are old 😉 ) some 5 years ago and want to retire them already… which may indicate they just needed an air superiority fighter until a more modern one comes into service (the F-5BR obviously wasn’t enough for that role). The UAE mirages should give them a significantly increased capability, in A2A as well as in A2G

I think it is a fantastic political move for France but certainly not a fantastic business for Dassault after the latest price reduction of almost 2 Billon dollars for 36 fighters.

it all depends.. with greece pulling the Euro down right now, that price reduction could be insignificant for Dassault.

If the aircraft are paid in dollars, all they have to do is change them in euros when euro becomes sufficiently low… (should be around 1.16 dollars around this summer, according to some specialists, while the “high” price initially announced was with 1€=$1.50 approximatively )

make the calculations, Dassault may even earn more money than expected (thanks to greece’s current problems)

So are the sensors in the DEWS system.

what I meant is that they are integrated in the aircraft, so their sizes, shapes etc are made according to what’s available.

If you want to adapt other stuff inside (especially stuff intially developed for another aircraft, with different locations, etc…), you have to fit them in, meaning sometimes you have to “push square boxes through round holes” if you get my meaning… sounds simplistic, but yet, reworking various things can lead almost to redevelop new ones.

from there on, when you take the cost, we come back again to “will it be worth it, considering the numbers of airframes involved?”

as usual, yet, such categoric claims for items that, by nature, will evolve before their acquisition is done are amusing, to say the least.

besides, Erkokite, you’re wrong on one point, F-35 didn’t loose wight… it got even heavier which is what led to “weight reduction program” that’s now being done to try to bring it back as close as possible to where it was supposed to be (the weight already considered as “too heavy” in that report if I’m not mistaken)

of course it’s totally hypothetical 😉

and we both agree that, if UK participation in a RN rafale was crucial, it would most certainly eliminate teh rafale

however, both, the navalized typhoon or gripen, if ever someone decides seriously to make one of them, would need development, and that means fundings (and a bunch of years of testing)… how much would the UK be willing to spend if that was the case?

correction, it should take less time.. for now, we don’t know how many more delays there will be 😉