http://www.defensedaily.com/pentagon-exploring-plan-to-lock-countries-in-on-f-35-buys/

Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, emphasized that officials were still in the early stages of discussing such a plan and said it wouldn’t be useful until the program itself was more stable and under consistent, higher rates of production. Persuading countries to formalize quantities would avoid price fluctuations that come when numbers are lowered or pushed back, he said.

Kendall noted that like the United States, other countries are experiencing budget difficulties and have their own political processes and military procurement priorities, but said once countries have worked through their plan it could be beneficial to get them to commit to numbers through price incentives.

“Looking forward, we would consider an idea that would provide some positive and negative incentives for people to sign up to specific numbers of buys, once their political process supports that so that you would incentivize everybody to stay in,” Kendall told reporters on a conference call. “There’d be a positive incentive for meeting your commitment and a negative incentive if you didn’t.”

“We haven’t gotten to that yet, but it’s something we’re just barely beginning to talk about as a possibility,” he added.
There are seven international partners at varying tiers of investment on the F-35’s development, including the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Turkey. Some have changed their plans because of budgeting issues and political pressures, in part related to technical and design problems that have caused costs to skyrocket and massive delays.

Lockheed Martin [LMT] is the prime contractor for the stealth aircraft. Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies [UTX], is the engine maker.

Canada has been re-evaluating its participation in the program, although a Reuters report earlier this month said a government task force intends to recommend the purchase of 65 F-35s. Italy and Turkey are also taking a second look at their role and may delay their plans to buy the aircraft or reduce the numbers.

Israel, Japan and South Korea have announced plans to buy the F-35s as well under the U.S. foreign military sales program. After Japan announced it had selected the F-35 in a competition more than two years ago, Tokyo quickly warned that the decision was conditioned on getting costs under control.

The Pentagon is continuing to work to bring cost down by keeping pressure on the contractors to improve performance in engineering and production, and by also looking at ways to lower operational and sustainment costs once the airplanes are delivered in the fleet.

Kendall conceded that over the last year the F-35’s reliability, meaning the failure rates of the aircraft systems and parts, has only made small gains. “There (is) some marginal evidence of improvement but it’s not enough,” he said.

However, the program has been implementing “specific plans for how to get them where they are to where they need to be,” including by finding better ways to measure performance and failure rates, he said, adding he expects that to begin paying off in the near future.

“It takes a little while to see those results when you look at the whole fleet of aircraft, but in the more recent aircraft with the fixes in we should be seeing results pretty quickly,” he said.

Without funding, the core team for EJ200 has left MTU few years ago, with hardly a quarter of a dozen development engineers being assigned to this program today. I’ve had a lengthy talk with my colleague who is ex-MTU, having worked on MTR390 and TP400 in the past.

This is the fresh situation @ MTU, anyway. Unless there is some large team at RR or Avio he did not know about, the EJ200 is practically dead as we speak. From what I was told, the EJ230 is a paper concept with quite a way to go if funding ever becomes available.

Got any details?

Paper concept??? Here it is being tested:

I doubt they’ll bother with the TVC element because it’s surplus to requirements with modern avionics and missiles.

A lot of insecure people on this forum.

Also, LOL @ using Ethiopian war as proof R-27 is terrible.

Russian pilots operating them.

I could be super generous and account for pitot intake at Mach 1.97:

0.97/0.91 = 1.066 (Difference in efficiency at Mach 1.5)

0.92/1.066 = 0.86 (Adjusted to provide same intake efficiency at Mach 1.97 relative to Variable ramp)

0.86/0.73 = 1.18 (Difference between adjusted efficiency and actual)*

Note this is unfair because Typhoon only has a fixed ramp which will yield roughly the same difference as variable ramp at Mach 1.5 but less at Mach 2. So this calculation greatly favours F-16.

[(1.97*1.18)/1.5]^2 = 2.4

[32,500-(1-1/2.400]/30,000 = 0.632 Net TWR

Still almost 10% down despite best possible case. So no, F-16 can’t out-accelerate a Typhoon, no way no how.

According to the calculations I’ve made, its 1.11 vs 1.063; 4,4%. Remember “empty” F-16 also includes two AIM-9s, wheras Typhoon does not.

Oh great, more made up figures. The 16 ton figure for the Typhoon does actually suggest 4 MRAAMs and 2 ASRAAMs the way it’s written. The Typhoon TWR is 1.15 – the end. The F-16E TWR is <1.07, assuming it doesn’t also contain more fuel than the C like the F-18E does vs F-18C. Which is another thing. The F-16E’s fuel fraction is about 25% vs 31-32% for the Typhoon.

Again, you are assuming too much with limited knowledge. Assume any k you want, we are talking about M1.5+ speeds. That is 508m/s, You are multiplying your Cl with 258402. Lets go numeric, for F-16 at M1.5 30k feet, Cl will be 0,07. Speaking of Typhoon, 37% improvement in wingloading will reduce it to 0,05.

Assuming cd0 = 0,01; you are looking at (0,01 + kTyphoon * 0,0025) versus (0,01 + kF-16 * 0,0049) How much “k” you will need to overcome 83% increase in wing area with 35% increase in thrust? As you need to drop Cd by 62%, you simply cant. Plus cd0+kCl^2 is an emprical formula. Its not valid for any AOA

Now would you like to try going numeric again, except this time factor in for the reduction in speed of sound and density at 11,000m….. instead of trying to do Mach 1.5 at sea level.:apologetic::highly_amused:

Go to airfoiltools.com and find me a single airfoil that will make a difference in drag

BS. You cannot assume ANYTHING about kCl^2 with respect to wing loading. Its ONLY dependent on airfoil data. A design can always have same wing area but change airfoil to get different cl/cd relation. On the contrary, a deltawing SHOULD use thinner airfoils to improve drag charactheristics would have smaller “k” than a conventional wing.

I have enough tool right here thanks. I’m not talking about aerofoil differences, I’m talking about the reduction in trim drag accomplished through using a combination of increased stability margin and canard augmented lift. Wing loading is fundamental to Cl.

Agreed on these. Yet none of these are good enough to conclude Typhoon can climb and accelerate better than Typhoon.

Agreed. However the Typhoon is stated to climb faster than an F-16 virtually everywhere. Flug-revue stated that the climb rate of a Typhoon with 4 BVRAAMs and 2 ASRAAMs is 25% better than an F-16C with 2 AIM-9s. Given that that’s pretty much a good measure of acceleration with a vertical climb, I rest my case.

We have published data from Typhoon’s manufacturers. I shared relevant pages from F-16’s flight manuals -which is also manufacturer data- and shown F-16 can do the same just as quickly as Typhoon. There is no scientific reason clearly proves those factual numbers are wrong and Typhoon should have better acceleration or climb than an F-16; It has some features, but F-16 stands less draggy. None are enough to clear edge.

So I assume those numbers are correct and I conclude is as F-15/Su-27 can climb accelerate better than F-16, they can also climb and accelerate better than Typhoon.

You haven’t shown me jack really and you can’t calculate for **** and don’t even understand the variation of density and speed of sound with altitude.

Your last statement lacks logic, because the same things you point out in the Typhoon vs F-16 comparison also apply in the F-16 vs F-15/Su-27 comparison wrt wing loading and TWR.

The real problem is that you’re taking a 30+ year-old multi-role design and expecting it to beat a modern air superiority design.

Go look at some NACA airfoil specifications before providing misinformation with your lacking knowledge base. Below 4-5 degree AOA, Cd change is barely noticable. ANY supersonic level flight occurs *well* below 3 deg AOA. Inlet has nothing to do with this. Like what you said, at higher speeds aircraft require less cl and less AOA, Cd difference gets more and more negligable. On the contrary, high speed aircraft (like MiG-31 etc) are actually designed to fly at higher AOA at high Mach numbers; because halving wing area will directly half the drag, but will not noticably increase Cd.

Those are some nice hand-drawn graphs.

Laughable as you assume uninstalled *Static* engine Thrust and SFC values apply for Dynamic flight range, and laughable that you are assuming max dry thrust speed of Typhoon is equal to Su-27’s wet one. Such values continiously change due to airspeed and altitude.

Yes and the EJ200s were specifically optimised for altitude as we’ve found in another thread.

I don’t have fuel consumption data for Su-27 itself, but speaking of MiG-29; Fuel flow at max thrust at M1.2 S/L is 16,5 kg/s, M2.2 at 16000 meters is just 6kg/s. At M1.5@ 16000 meters, a MiG-29 will only reqiure 3,3 kg/s fuel at MAX AB. This is for both engines. compare these to wet SFC of RD-33s (4,24 kg/s each) and see how fuel efficiency is trippled or halved according at different conditions. Pessimistically assuming half AB is required to sustain M1.5, MiG-29 will be able to maintain M1.5 for 35 minutes and still have fuel for take off and landing.

Flinging fuel into largely expanded gas in a jet-pipe will never be as efficiency as heating condensed gas in the combustor post compressor, or anywhere near.

Don’t believe in that non sense that EF weight is closer to F-16. why F-16 is rated at 10 tons external load. look at the runway length and top speed in your document. aircraft with superior TWR can lift at very short runway.

LOL. Don’t believe reality.

The proposal for the carrier variant was STOBAR – that should tell you something about required take-off distance and thrust.

It is not excuses. It is giving you history lesson. This is Ruaf Su-27 now. training/maintainance levels are far better than any EU countries can dream about it.

Yeah I was giving you a history lesson. Here it is again in case you missed it:

AIM-120 >> R-27

EF is not 11 tons. It is closer to F-18E weight. and combine engine thrust is 18tons. EF will have worse TWR than MIG-35. There is zero percent chance carrier version can be developed from it. for Carrier version aircraft has to be ver light weight from start.

Empty a Typhoon weighs 11 tons, just as an F-16E weighs 10 tons empty:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-16_Fighting_Falcon_variants#Specifications

See page 10:

http://www.eurofighter.com/downloads/TecGuide.pdf

mroe than 10 year old missiles on soviet factories with pilots not properly trained for years, missiles not maintained. between 1991 to 2000. except for missile exported to China/India/Malaysia etc. there wasn’t any new built.

Excuses excuses. With that kind of shoddy maintenance, maybe Su-27 will have very poor range indeed and just fall from sky.