How about Eurofighter front sector comparison with a single centerline tank and the 4 semi-recessed Meteor? All else clean. Still no? Close?

We were discussing frontal cross section, not performance or capabilities. But if we are going to be fair, then you should have the same basic capabilities between the aircraft and add an eternal EO/IR sensor plus it’s pylon as well. I believe the Typhoon uses the Litening and to have anywhere near the same range performance, the Tiffy needs 3x drop tanks…

The numbers go into a dive EXTREMELY quickly when you start talking about jets in a combat configuration as opposed to clean…

As for your mythical F-16XL, I’m not even sure why you mentioned it? It doesn’t and won’t ever exist. The closest you’ll get is something like this:

care to keep discussing draggy airframes?

considering the “front section”, according to these drawings, simply through a area measurement in photoshop it comes out that:

Typhoon has 11% less frontal surface
Rafale has 7% less frontal surface
Super Hornet has 25% more frontal surface.

however, if you’re to measure the frontal surface of an aircraft for what counts (transonic area rule), I doubt that the F-35 will be very happy with that.. it’s easy to see that there’s no section reduction at the wings section, which means it has a pretty nasty “peak” that will increase its drag in transonic.. it will overcome that drag through high thrust, but that means it will gulp fuel as if there was no tomorrow…

basically, it has to stay subsonic

Just fuselage, or did you include the wings too? 🙂

However to be somewhat accurate and realistic, why don’t you add weapons, pylons, fuel tanks and EO/IR sensors to those cross sections and run the figures again?

All variants of the F-35 can fight in that front sector configuration. Not one of the other fighters can go into combat like that…

It is a bit of a trick to compare F35 and Rafale front profile actually. If you look at the side profile, the Rafale canopy sits on top of the fuselage, and it iself tapers all the way to the back.
The F35 however has a hunchback profile all the way back to somewhere between the tails, where it tapers abruptly. If you look at LM video of the plane they allways hide this detail, to make it look less ugly/bulky.

So the F35 is far from a teardrop design. This may matter less in the supersonic regime, as there are other factors that come into play.

My guess howerver is that the F35 will be less of a player in sustained turning.

Please show exactly what you are referring to. Here are the side on views you requested.

F-35A.

Rafale.

You’re not perchance referring to the F-35B are you?

I’m not sure what you are referring to about L-M “hiding” side on profiles of production representative airframes. There are literally hundreds of photos out there, from EVERY angle…

Just one shot, side on is all that is needed however…

Others already have.

F-35 cross section compared with F/A-18E.

F-35 cross section compared with RAFALE F2.

F-35 cross section compared with Eurofighter Typhoon.

It is called volume efficiency – the F-35 takes up close to the same space (length, span & frontal cross section) as the Rafale but fits a lot more within that space. I am not saying that the F-35 is not ‘daggier’ than the Rafale but there are quite a lot of people in making their ignorant ‘estimations’ as to the F-35’s drag are actually thinking it is larger than it really is. It is obviously ‘bulky’ but bulk in and of itself does not create a lot of drag…

Super Hornet, Rafale and Eurofighter all have to fit 2 engines inside their airframe, whereas F-35 only has to manage one…

🙂

Don’t you need more than a pair of EF-18G to realistically replace the capability of one EA-6B? One limitation people don’t seem to grasp with the EA-6B role is it’s not just the number of jammers, its also the number of technicians in the seats that matter. It would have been more cost-effective to overhaul the EA-6B to fly another 6,000 hours! That’s not even dealing with the overhead cost of keeping them on station at the distances a strike package operates! They really needed to get a bigger airframe than the Super Hornet for the role.

How many EA-6B’s does Australia need to replace?

:confused:

Uh… Except Sweden can, and could probably turn a profit off leasing fully supported Gripens at the maintenance cost of Block 20 F-16s, whose support infrastructure isn’t included in that lovely “free” price. Regardless of the merits you suppose, they weren’t given a chance to present their best offer because Romanian MinDef didn’t make an open RFP.

Didn’t Romania send out an RFI some years ago? The American’s announced the free F-16 platforms in their DSCA announcement in 2008. Are you honestly going to argue that nearly 2 years is not long enough for SAAB to realise that if a competitor is offering a free platform for the initial stages of a contract all the way back then, then perhaps they’d better update their proposals to match?

As to your other ideas, will Sweden provide an upgrade to base infrastructure, air traffic control systems, the physical strutures for maintenance, support and training facilities for free as well or in reality, will Romania have to pay for this stuff irrespective of which fighter is chosen?

Instead of having a massive whinge, when an opportunity is lost, perhaps they’d be better off concentrating on making the best offer in the first place…

Ten years & four months in RAF service so far, & intensively used ever since.

Out of interest, I have no idea of the respective usage rates, BUT

RAAF’s have been used intensively as well, for a similar period of time as the RAF and have a planned LoT of 2030…

Just thought I’d add that in there…