Anything with a missile or bullet attached to the EM is serious.. even old obsolete systems, to say anything else is foolish.

Just curious here so bear with me…

Rafale flies for a maximum of 10 hours before its oil levels are a problem (according to a post by Eagle1 on the Rafale news thread).

How does this compare with Typhoon? How long can Typhoon remain airborne for?

For that matter, how does that compare to other types I’m wondrin’

Typhoons flew from the UK to the Falklands with a single stop at ascension that would be ~14 hour leg, does anyone have the exact time for operation Tempest Trail?

Cheers

Held by mainstream UK defense “journalists”?

Not held by the swiss air force if we are to believe the technical evaluation report.

Nic

Hmm seems you may have missed the bit where the evaluation was subject to a capability weighting that measured the maturity of the proposed aircraft upgrades and reduced the capability in relation to the maturity level at time of test, and not the final capability level of the upgrades..

i.e. if your proposed upgrade was more mature your capability was given a higher score, less mature penalised the capability score.

That weighting if removed and showed the actual upgraded capability as planned may reverse the recommendations of the technical evaluation.

Cheers

But what will you post if either jet wins??

This is my take

Rafale:-

Well done, finally an export to celebrate, Winning such an important order secures the Rafale for the next decade in what I think was one of the closest and Fairest competitions I’ve yet seen.
Though quite disappointed as I wanted the Typhoon to win, I wish EF luck in the forthcoming competitions

Eurofighter:-

Fantastic – Just what EF needed, this secures Upgrades for the lifetime of the aircraft and puts typhoon in the driving seat on the export market, we could see the start of the domino effect regarding exports in the middle east, Rafale has now got to pull a rabbit out of the hat with regard to an export, I’m not sure where though, but Brazil seems a good chance.

What would your thinking and write for both?

Cheers

Its perfectly easy gentlemen.

Its Design, then Test, then Build. If you do it in any other order its get screwed up.

BTW Australia has just “won” manufacturing of titanium parts worth A$177M by BAE in Adelaide with some government aid, but the government won’t say how much they had to invest to get that work!!.

I think they they are scrabbling for anything to make the decision look good.

One of the tasks of the Australian DMO was to “Manage misinformation in the media”
Does anyone have any references to any media release that would apply to, or a press release to counter miss info??? or am I being a bit cynical?

Why not a rent of Rafales until the F35C finally arrives?

Buy the same than the french navy, with an option for buyback once the RN doesn’t need them anymore.

Nic

Why not share the carriers with the French, the UK supplies the ships, France supplies the Rafales and both crew a carrier each!!

Its so simple and would cement the UK and French commitments made last year.

( This is a no fee idea, but a knighthood would be acceptable.)

More verbiage. Why do you think that delays in the project and the financial woes of Europe and the USA mean that the F-35 is not a capable platform or affordable?

Its neither capable or affordable, what evidence do you have to support that?.

Its been promised that’s its going to be capable, and affordable but thats from the same people that told us its all going rather well, and will cost $40m.

If you are still thinking that the JSF program is now on track and turned the corner (like all the other times) then I fear I have some bad news for you about the Easter bunny and father Christmas.

“Hang onto your hats the rides going to get bumpy”

No you’re absolutely right. Obviously Lockheed Martin should start weapons testing in black-out conditions and conduct high altitude and supersonic launch of live weapons and then work their way back to inert captive carry scenarios?

Why not? its how they are doing the manufacturing..

First start to produce aircraft, then do the flight testing, then find problems, then work out the bugs, then retrofit to the mistake jets….

Funny how your taking the pi55 when its exactly the problem.. 😀