No offense, just a healthy discussion / food for
thought....
I am no pilot but looking 45 deg downwards on the ground
(frontal section) might be - not a problem for A2A combat but not
sure for A2G combat.....
Rafale is about 50% composites, compared to Typhoon (80%).
This comes from the famous Dassault quote: "If it looks good, it
flies good".
I shall not go into a discussion on whether Rafale or Typhoon is
well designed from an aerodynamic, purpose-built point as I am not
qualified. There are persons out there in WAAF that have been
asserting that Rafale's design is superior....
In that respect, it ain't about a French poodle vs. a British
bulldog, but rather which is a well-designed hunting dog. BTW, MIW
website article on Typhoon starts off by comparing it to a horse
created by a committee.....i.e., a camel!!!
Could not put it better. From a project risk point of view, the
Typhoon is the most risky because it is so early in its
development.
I personally think it is too early to conclude that the Typhoon
will be able to do better what the Rafale can do now in six months.
There can be delays due to a host of problems ranging from
diffiulties in ironing out the kinks, software problems, etc.
--> growing pains. Then there is opeval. where the planes are
put through the paces of real flying by oeprational pilots. This is
where the rubber hits the road....
I sure do hope the evaluators (and I think they will) do a no-bulls
assessment of the risk and capabilities of each NGF contenders. We
have had enough of hype (and suffered a lot too) from the IT, and
stockmarkets.
Throw in the political wrangling of the partners of workshare vs,
costshare, vs. cost per plane, etc., change of government which
results in a change of priorities (e.g., Germany torpedo-ed the
project so as to save money for East-West integration).
That to me appears to be the main selling point of the Typhoon.
However, I am not sure. You have different countries working on
different parts of the plane. And I think there is little or no
overlap / duplication. Would a scenario arise where say country X
refuses to sell us the landing gear cos' of XYZ reasons?
I would therefore submit that the permuations of possibe lack of
spares are more....i.e., we need to be friends to all.....as
opposed to one or two countries.
That is true. But if we have access to French weapons and
technology, and use it to integrate onto our existing fleet,
including the JSF.......heh heh heh....
The French weapons were rather under-estimated I must say....
The NGF is supposed to last 30-40 years? Hence, I would think the
JSF would intially be pitched to replace the aging F-5s after 2010
(not necessarily one-to-one replacement in terms of the roles
though).
Cheers
