Hi sbs,
Thank you for pointing out that my point appears practical. It
isn't my point, its the upgrading doctrine of most modern air
forces in the world today. You must realise "Omnirole" does not
mean "can do only one thing", it means "can do EVERYTHING" - a
point that you may have mistaken.
It seems that you are extremely worried about the "replacement" of
our fleet of "strike" aircraft. What I tried to explain in my
previous post is that you do not have anything to worry about with
regards to replacing the cute little Skyhawk. All three of the
aircraft under evaluation are not just worthy successors to the A4,
BUT will carry a helluva lot more, fly a whole lot further, deliver
the payload more precisely and have the means to fly back "hot 'n
fighting" much more capably than the A4SU ever will. If you want to
talk numbers, the Eurofighter (which by the way I don't fancy
anyway) carries a 6500-7500 KILO payload versus the A4's 8200 POUND
one (thats roughly 4000 kilos). Strike Eagle can pack 10.5 thousand
kilos. Rafale can carry 8 thousand kilos.
With regard to the "legs" of the Typhoon, open sources state that
the full-load combat radius (hi-lo-hi) is 1389 kilometers, well
above your 500+ km estimate and not much less than the Strike
Eagle's 1463 km rating. With twin drop tanks, it can go up to 3706
km, again not very much less than the Strike Eagle's radius on
tanks.
Bottom line is - EF isn't neccessarily worse than any of the other
two contenders - you just personally don't seem to like it! That's
fine though, for a forum. But we need to be sure of the facts
before slagging anything. Just go to Google and read up more on the
planes. Its great fun and fairly informative. And please don't mark
me as a Typhoon fan either - if it were up to me, I'd go for the
Rafale in a heartbeat. But I reckon its good for Singapore that our
fighter aircraft purchase decisions are not made by the likes of
you or me!
I hope I have laid your concerns to rest.
Cheers
