Lockheed Martin Meets 2017 F-35 Delivery Target

Delivering targets for Rafales since… soon

As a program target, the F-35 has already surpassed the Rafale’s total production. Export targets? F-35.

Oh you mean real targets? Sure, the Rafale can get some kills on the F-35 at Red flag then leak them all over twitter and youtube to make our Francophile friends feel good about themselves for a day.

I was under the impression those RAAF F/A-18’s were flogged. I remember reading a RAAF doc mentioning airframe life was expiring on majority of the fleet and it was considered uneconomical to extend.

Exactly what Canada is buying for a half billion will be interesting to see. Upholder Class hindsight seems to be a distant memory.

All future US F-35 bases are required to have a runway of at least 8000 feet or 2400 m btw.

Yes and no, it is dictated by minimum safety margin in snow and ice and training requirements, noise issues. Most every USAF base has main runways longer than 8000 feet. Several of the AGS bases in consideration do not. But they have access to longer main runways of the airport in some cases for flight conditions requiring the 8000 ft minimum. The other consideration was noise, the runway minimum was also driven by mil power takeoffs and minimum safe abort on these longer runs.

It’s driven more by USAF regulation and attempts to control noise pollution coupled with the lack of a drag chute option for US F-35A on icy runways. Should Norway opt to follow through with drag chute (so far they are only funding development and testing), they could operate the F-35A on shorter runways even in icy conditions

Australia is planning on deployments of F-35A to airfields shorter than 2400m (but main base is RAAF Williamtown which is long). Not much snow or ice in Australia though.

Edit- Much hey was made by some over the 8,000 foot runway minimum. It is a USAF regulation same for F-15E, F-16, F-22.
http://govdocs.rutgers.edu/mil/af/AFI11-2FTV3.pdf

Last time I checked, “mandate”, would be the exact word to describe members agreeing to take a course of action. As in “NATO mandate set a minimum GDP for defense”. No it’s no contractual, it’s what was agreed upon by members. Hallow, grasping at semantic straws now.

It’s getting painful at this point.

Please explain how the AMRAAM has anything to do with situational awareness. He specifically states the Mirage 2000C was outclassed. That is not just due to the AMRAAM, it was due to a significantly more powerful radar with LPI modes, sophisticated NCTR, JTIDS, AN/ALQ-135. The RDI was considered roughly comparable to the F-16’s AN/APG-68, even by the Greeks who operated both (actually they stated the APG-68 was comparable to the later RDY, the original Greek 2000C had RDM-3)

Why are you talking about the 530F and RDM radar ? We are talking about the 530D and the RDI radar which entered in front line service in 1987, it is perfectly valid for 1989.

For very good reason, at the start of 1989 France had 50 odd Mirage 2000C of which 37 had the RDM radar. There was one unit going through IOC with the RDI and 530D. If your going to claim these were operational, then so was the AMRAAM that was being fielded by the 33rd TFW (and actually more AMRAAM had been manufactured than 530D by ’89).

By what logic you can claim the RDI and Super 530D was superior to the AN/APG-63 or 70 MSIP II and Aim-7F/P, I cannot guess. Both were look down/shootdown capable, the latter radars had much longer range and superior NCTR capabilities.

Whatever the bad rep the Aim-7 gets, it was an effective weapon by ’89 in the M/P variants, that was lighter than the Super 530D, longer ranged, and the F-15 was capable of carrying more than two.

Not going to get into your comments over the Super 530 shooting down an Iranian F-14, except that Iraq had 88 Mirage F-1 and were supplied with super 530F missiles. 9 of those were lost to coalition aircraft with zero confirmed kills (conflicting reports on the EF-111). Not to mention, the Gulf War was not a proud moment for the Armée de l’Air, they were relegated to secondary roles as they found out they were ill equipped for modern air warfare. The embarrassment led to a considerable modernization push and integration with allies. The result was effective force by the end of the 90’s.

I don’t think anyone believes the F-35 has the whole market sown up if only for the fact that when you buy into the F-35 you buy into a primarily US support program and security structure. If you’re not prepared to live with those constraints then there remain other options. If you accept those constraints, then little else compares.

Excellent point, the recent M-E arms splurge solidifies this idea. UAE is lobbying hard for the F-35, but is exploring other options as well. The purchases of Qatar also show this trend. If you aren’t a NATO nation, diversify your arms suppliers. The F-35 will come with strings attached, and so European offerings will have a market In the Gulf states for years.

For me it’s sufficient to see all those European nations who once operated two hundred F-16s, and after 30 years of steady economic growth can’t gather enough money for more than three dozens of those affordable fighters with CPFH only 14% more.. you know, there is the accouting gymnastics and then there is the budget reality..

And the US operated more than 3,000 tactial fighters then and NATO nations were actually spending close to the require GDP % mandated by partners. That has now become a punch line for Trumpism, while most NATO nations don’t even pretend to pay lip service to defense spending mandates. Nothing to do with the F-35 per se.