Well the article above covers the history of AAMs up to 1989 / 1990 so I’m looking for more recent data really.

In short how many truly BVR kills have there been in the history of air combat?

so you would expect a 15% increase in range if you increase the the fuel by 30%. Here it seems we are doing significantly worse.

Not quite… An 8% increase on range is a 16% increase on distance travelled. Hence the maxim that external fuel uses half to use half appears to remain true. This might not appear to make sense but think of it in this way…

Internal fuel has no drag penalties, and gives a range of say 500nm. Add empty EFTs and your range will drop due to the extra drag. Add fuel to the EFTs and range to the same fuel state (on internal) will drop again due to extra weight / fuel burn. So you’ve use half your extra fuel to get to the 500nm point which means you have 15% ‘extra’. This is roughly 8% out and 8% back.

I thought the hover tests had yet to be carried out.

Well we just bought 3 evaluation copies for £500 million, which is about $750 million.

Yes they are early batches, though considering the controversy over Tranche 3 of the Typhoons (at about $60 million dollars each) and the state of the defence budget (Afghanistan doesn’t help) I think you can see the problem.

I wouldn’t be so sure that the UK has committed to the F35. We’ve certainly invested heavily in it, and gained a 20% workshare (unbelievable value for money so long as lots are produced), however the unit cost of $215 million is simply staggering considering our requirement and finances. The workshare is not dependant upon UK orders, we’ve already invested the money.

The RAF want amore than 100 aircraft, to be jointly shared with the carriers. This simply won’t happen, even if the unit cost was to halve and they wanted it as the FOAS. Simply too expensive.

Still can’t see Tiffies flying from the PoW, STOBAR wouldn’t provide much in terms of payload and CATOBAR is unlikely for numerous reasons, even if the Typhoon was suitable for deck ops.

Just a journalist being crap, which is what they’re there for generally. 🙂

Unfortunately missile boats make rather naff naval vessels. Great for looking warry and posing with lots of missiles but difficult to use effectively.

They were seen as a cheap way of defeating large vessels but they arn’t all that cheap, have limited sensor fits which often don’t work particularly well due to poor seakeeping and have great difficulty in protecting themselves.

The trend recently has been more towards corvettes and vessels which offer a bit more than just a bean count of missiles. The missiles themselves are almost irrelevant as you need proper targetting to use them effectively.

The Lynx / Sea Skua combination made mincemeat of the Iraqi attack boats in the Gulf, though as you point out not every Navy has a similar capability.