I would suggest to you that: “If the work on UAVs keeps up to its present pace” then the manned fighter will never be obsolete. All of the development so far will ensure ONLY that UAVs and UCAVs will replace manned platforms for a relatively narrow spectrum of niche roles.

And I bet that one of those niche roles is flying into heavily defended airspace on first day of war to take down the air defences.. (isn’t that the JSF’s niche role) and all without risking a pilot.

I have to agree a manned platform give several advantages especially Intel and recon assets (Jstars/Astor/Nimrod R), but are they enough to risk losing the crew of a strike asset?. as for SA the present BVR doctrine gives no benefit for a pilot being in the aircraft over a remote pilot.

If you break down a strike mission into its components – then targets of opportunity are very rare and with ToT now measures in seconds, and small area kill boxes i think it would prove hazardous for those little detours based on a pilots initiative.

When this sort of thing does happen it usually turns out to be a wedding party/tractors pulling refugees/men loading oxygen bottles into trucks/bus load of nuns etc getting hit and not valid targets.

You’ll notice the caveat in my post of ‘manned fighters presently on the drawing boards will be obsolete faster’, I’ve always felt that having a a stealthy plane just to be able to drop short range cheaper weapons was a very dumb idea..
More expensive stand off weapons seem the better answer – but admittedly its not nearly so sexy as a black stealth jet.

Cheers

Japan is very unlikely and India is a outside chance for the Typhoon. As for permission. If, you believe the Typhoon is sold without strings you are sorely mistaken…………;)

What strings??

Another thing I was wondering, when they’re deployed & nothing happens, (i.e. nothing is fired at them), can they be “whined back up” into there pod/enclosure or do they just get “severed” & dropped into no-mans land? (Hopefully not dropped into enemy territory for obvious reasons)

The Eurofighters Tow Radar Decoy cannot be reeled in, it can only be cut and dropped (over a friendly airfield is preferred), interestingly there was a stow option on the cockpit control panel, but this was a preproduction item as the weight of rewinding equipment was thought to be not worth the weight/complexity penalty.

Cheers

How can the Germans for example look at themselves in the mirror when they loan Canada a squadron of Leopard 2A6’s to fight in Kandahar and refuse to send any of their own crews to do the job themselves. For shame!

Err its called lend lease IIRC and the USA trumpeted it as a war winning contribution in WWII and Europe should be grateful.. So how much did the Germans charge the Canadians? is it the same rate as the US charged? or did the Germans lend them for free..

Its all about perspective – Its not Germans war is it? why should they fight a American war?.. (remember WWII was shorter for the USA for just this sort of reasoning..)

Perhaps the UK should withdraw its forces and use them just as supply chains for the real fighting forces of the USA, selling fuel and equipment as required all charged at an appropriate rate of course (We could call it Lease Lend to avoid confusing it with the US contributions in the last big one)..

That way the UK could contribute in a war winning way.

Funny how perspective can change things.

cheers

You can believe what you want to believe but Japan, Australia, and Israel aren’t begging for Typhoons now are they? 😉

Begging?? I doubt they would beg for any fighter aircraft.

Japan still has an interest, but it would be quite a turn around if they bought anything other than US!.

Australia are wedded to the JSF much like Norway and the Dutch but without the fake competitions.

Israel.. lol the USA will pay for the Israelis to buy whatever the US wants them to!.

Hell I’d wager even the Dutch would take Typhoons if the partners paid for them like the US does for Israel.

Cheers

Remember the unsubstantiated claims that the F-22 & Typhoon “played together” prior to 2008 turned out to be pure fiction. Flying in the same airspace during the same week & “playing together” are two different things. 😉

It was the UK side that first leaked it, along with an ~80 mile detection quote.
🙂
Which prompted an almost unprecedented response from the USAF.
First all the planned sorties were canceled. ( this was reversed some time later when common sense prevailed.)
Second an official denial – something along the lines of “they were never in the air at the same time and the F-22 had wing tanks on and rcs enhancers on at the time it didn’t happen.;) really when did they start commentiong on operations like this??
Third a hats on talk regarding security was hastily arranged for RAF personel.

Its been a really touchy subject since then, you can’t get much out of anyone currently in the RAF, USAF, Eurofighter or Warton.

[QUOTE=pfcem;1340589]When they did finally “play together” the comments from at least one Typhoon pilot (which has made its way into the public) was “Well, if you can see the bloody thing you have a chance… not a great chance but about the same as an F-15 or F-16 has against us. The problem is the AAMRAM is up your a$$ long before you can possibly see it. Quite discouraging ‘do’ at Nellis, really.” Quite revealing considering how over confident Typhoon pilots are vs an F-15 or F-16.

What Typhoon ones?

IIRC they occurred in the High Rider deployments.

Err your placing faith in that one comment that made its way into the public?????, would that be an substantiated claim too??? lol.

The rough guide I have managed to gather is ther F-22 dominates in BVR (as you would expect) But It doesn’t have it all its own way 100%, but I can’t give any ratios or scores, WVR the Typhoon seems to have the edge, once again it doesn’t dominate the F-22 100%.

But can I prove it to your satisfaction……. Nope…:rolleyes:

Cheers

IMHO its a balanced peice, the F-22 is on a knife edge, and is showing all the signs of being in great peril due to the Bush era’s bad management, the financial crises is just the icing on the cake, even without it the defence budget was growing too large to be sustained and would have reached the critical point in 2010-2012 period, the the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have hastened the time where harsh decisions have to be made.

The present administration will have the defence budget planned out for the next couple of years, but the Obama administration have got to make some drastic changes, I don’t know how the changeover works but I would imagine the president elect has some input to the direction the last budget Bush makes.

The F-22 is an exotic beast, and given the choice between it and the f-35 the US would be foolish to cut or delay the F-35 (I know that hasn’t stopped them being foolish in the past:eek:.)

There have been some Obama appointments that do not give the F-22 supports much hope.

Cheers

Remember that L, S and X-band broadband jamming usually accompanies an attack (that’s why EA-6Bs and EA-18Gs exist and if EB-52 ever gets funded, they will jam HF, VHF & UHF). By raising the noise floor, cell phone based (and other non-transmitting like Kolchuga and Vera-E) radar becomes useless. Unlike non-stealth airplanes, it doesn’t take much noise to mask a VLO radar return. And knocking out the power grid which supports cell towers can be made a priority too.

It was my understanding that the source of transmission was immaterial for some of the celldar type radars, the jamming aircraft would actually help the radar picture with any transmissions.

And the fact that cell phone towers also have backup power (approx 24 hours) or small generators, like most tv/radio stations.

Thats quite a targetting list to compile and execute before the real fight begins.