A great read:


What Now, Icarus? Is Western Combat Aviation Falling Out of the Sky?


The future of Western combat aviation today rests largely on one airplane: The Pentagon's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The Defense Department currently plans to buy 2,456 of these Lockheed aircraft for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. As a "multi-role" fighter-bomber, it will ultimately replace almost all tactical aircraft now in our inventory, except for the F-22, for which production beyond 187 aircraft was canceled this past summer. Major allies, including Britain and much of the rest of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Israel, plan to buy the aircraft. Sales to many others are postulated, and those who do not intend to buy the F-35 plan to copy it to the extent their treasuries, government bureaucracies, and technological development permit.

There are, however, a few problems. The F-35 is unaffordable. It is a technological kluge that will be less effective than airplanes it replaces. And it will increase our own combat losses.

That is not the consensus now; many will vociferously dispute each of the assertions stated above, and below. But, in time the finger pointing will start. That's when someone will have to pick up the pieces to give our pilots a war winning aircraft. The road between here and there will be neither smooth nor pretty, but it is time to take the first step.

A financial disaster? How can that be? Visiting the F-35 plant in Fort Worth, Texas last August, Secretary of D Robert Gates assured us that the F-35 will be "less than half the price ... of the F-22."

In a narrow sense, Gates is right. At a breathtaking $65 billion for 187 aircraft, the F-22 consumes $350 million for each plane. At $299 billion for 2,456, the F-35 would seem a bargain at just $122 million each.

F-35 unit cost will ultimately be much higher. In 2001, the Pentagon had planned to buy 2,866 aircraft for $226.5 billion - $79 million per airplane. It was in 2007 that the expense increased and the quantity went down; resulting in the current - $122 million - unit cost.

In the next few weeks, the program will have to admit to another increase. Gates and his Deputy Secretary, William Lynn, have re-convened a "Joint Estimating Team" (JET) to reassess F-35 cost and schedule. Last year, while a part of the Bush administration, Gates basically ignored the Team's recommendations, but the new JET is about to reconfirm them: the F-35 program will cost up to $15 billion more, and it will be delivered about two years late.

Those findings address only the known problems; there's a huge iceberg floating just under the surface. With F-35 flight testing barely three percent complete, new problems - and new costs - are sure to emerge. Worse, only 17 percent of the aircraft's characteristics will be validated by flight testing by the time the Pentagon has signed contracts for more than 500 aircraft. Operational squadron pilots will have the thrill of discovering the remaining problems, in training or in combat. No one should be surprised if the final F-35 total program unit cost reaches $200 million per aircraft after all the fixes are paid for.

None of these prices is "affordable." The latest version of the F-16, heavily laden with complex electronics and other expensive modifications, costs about $60 million, twice its original price - in today's dollars. The A-10, which the F-35 will also replace, cost about $15 million in today's dollars. Thus, to replace the almost 4,000 F-16s and A-10s built with just over 1,700 F-35s, the Air Force will have to pay far more to buy half as many airplanes.

In an age when the Air Force budget looks to increase only marginally, if at all, while simultaneously planning to buy several other major aircraft (new aerial tankers, new transports, new heavy bombers, and new helicopters), this plan to distend the fighter-bomber budget is a fool's errand.

While most, but not all, in the Pentagon and Congress remain oblivious to the unaffordability of the F-35, some of its foreign buyers are becoming horrified. Despite their governments' investment of hundreds of millions, parliamentarians and analysts in Australia, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands are expressing real concerns. The F-35's single largest international partner is the United Kingdom. There, the Royal Navy and Air Force have just decided to reduce their F-35 buy from 138 aircraft to 50. The reason: "We are waking up to the fact that all those planes are unaffordable."

The problems with the F-35 are not limited to its cost.

As a fighter, the F-35 depends on a technological pipe dream. Having failed to develop in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s an effective (and reliable) radar-based technology to shoot down enemy (not friendly) aircraft "beyond visual range," the Air Force is trying yet again with the F-35, like the F-22 before it. Both have the added development of "stealth" (less detectability against some radars at some angles), but that new "high tech" feature and the long range radar have imposed design penalties that compromised the aircraft with not just high cost but also weight, drag, complexity, and vulnerabilities. The few times this technology has been tried in real air combat in the past decade, it has been successful less than half the time, and that has been against incompetent and/or primitively equipped pilots from Iraq and Serbia.

If the latest iteration of "beyond visual range" turns out to be yet another chimera, the F-35 will have to operate as a close-in dogfighter, but in that regime it is a disaster. If one accepts every aerodynamic promise Lockheed currently makes for it, the F-35 will be overweight and underpowered. At 49,500 pounds in air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 pounds of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight and acceleration for a new fighter. In fact, at that weight and with just 460 square feet of wing area for the Air Force and Marine Corps versions, the F-35's small wings will be loaded with 108 pounds for every square foot, one third worse than the F-16A. (Wings that are large relative to weight are crucial for maneuvering and surviving in combat.) The F-35 is, in fact, considerably less maneuverable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 "Lead Sled," a fighter that proved helpless in dogfights against MiGs over North Vietnam. (A chilling note: most of the Air Force's fleet of F-105s was lost in four years of bombing; one hundred pilots were lost in just six months.)

Nor is the F-35 a first class bomber for all that cost: in its stealthy mode it carries only a 4,000 pound payload, one third the 12,000 pounds carried by the "Lead Sled."

As a "close air support" ground-attack aircraft to help US troops engaged in combat, the F-35 is too fast to identify the targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire, and too short-legged to loiter usefully over embattled US ground units for sustained periods. It is a giant step backward from the current A-10.

It is time to start climbing out of the F-35 hole. Needless to say, the complexities of Pentagon procurement regulations and especially the circle-the-wagons mentality of the Pentagon and Congress present serious hurdles to be overcome, most of them ethical.

First is the need is to accept the facts as they exist, rather than as Lockheed and self-interested bureaucrats in the Pentagon would prefer them to be. That will mean accepting the JET recommendations as currently written - not watering them down to make them palatable, or ignoring them as they were in 2008 under Gates' first term as SecDef.

Second would be exercising the professed spirit of the new Weapon System Acquisition Act, signed into law by President Obama last May. While the fine print of the new law is hopelessly riddled with loopholes to protect business as usual, the bill purports to control costs and inspire competition, especially the "fly-before-buy" competitive approach that has worked so marvelously well the few times it's been tried.

This is the same vision that President Obama expressed to the VFW in Phoenix last August when he said he wanted to stop "the special interests and their exotic projects that are years behind schedule and billions over budget." Clearly, no one has told the President that the F-35 is a leading poster child for the evils he condemned.

Third, the biggest step, would be to suspend further F-35 production until the test aircraft, all of them now funded, can complete a revised, much more thorough flight test schedule. Once we know the F-35's realistically demonstrated performance and problems, and the full extent of its costs, we can make an informed decision whether to put it into full production. To do that, the upside down F-35 acquisition plan -- which buys 500 aircraft before the "definitive" test report (the one that only flight tests 17% of F-35 characteristics) is on Gates' desk -- needs to be radically recast into real fly-before-buy plan -- just the kind of plan the new Acquisition Reform Act advocates, albeit feebly.

In the almost certain event that the F-35 is found by uncompromised, realistic testing to be an unaffordable loser, there are viable alternatives. If an active consensus develops to reverse the current aging and shrinking of the existing tactical aviation inventory (as opposed to today's silent conspiracy encouraging those trends to worsen), a short term, affordable fix to restore combat adequacy is needed: Extend the life of existing F-16 and A-10 airframes for the Air Force and to continue purchasing F-18E/F aircraft for the Navy and Marine Corps. For the part of the inventory that most urgently needs immediate expansion, the A-10 and the close support mission, hundreds of airframes now sitting in the "boneyard" can and should be refurbished -- at extraordinarily modest cost.

Just a life-extension program will not address long term needs. Accordingly, competitive prototype fly off programs should be immediately initiated to develop and select new fighters to build a larger force that is far more combat-effective than existing the F-16s, F-18s, and A-10s. Just such programs -- that lead to an astonishing 10,000 plane Air Force within current budget levels -- are described in detail in "Reversing the Decay in American Air Power," a chapter in the anthology "America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress" (Stamford University Press).

You can almost literally hear the howls of protest right now. The F-35 is too big to fail. Gates himself seems trapped by that logic; he said "My view is we cannot afford as a nation not to have this airplane." We take the opposite view. The F-35's bloat -- in cost, leaden weight, and mindless complexity -- guarantees failure. It will shrink our air forces at increased expense, rot their ability to prevail in the air and support our ground forces, and will needlessly spill the blood of far too many of our pilots.

We have to take the first steps to better understand the extent of the F-35 disaster and to reverse the continuing decay in our air forces.

Pierre M. Sprey, a long time military reformer and a designer of extraordinarily successful combat aircraft, helped me write this commentary. Both Pierre and I are contributors to the aforementioned anthology "America's Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress."

Pierre M. Sprey, together with USAF fighter pilots John Boyd and Everest Riccioni, brought to fruition the F-16; he also led the design team for the A-10 and helped implement the program. He is one of a very small number of Pentagon insiders who started the military reform movement in the late 1960s.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/winslow-t-wheeler/what-now-icarus-is-wester_b_337564.html

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Quoting a Turkish forumer:
"It's a well known fact that most of the boys or girls living in south-eastern Turkey are losing their virginities to horses or dogs of their villages, so I don't think this will suprise any Turk in this forum; we are used to these kinda news..."

"If the latest iteration of "beyond visual range" turns out to be yet another chimera, the F-35 will have to operate as a close-in dogfighter, but in that regime it is a disaster. If one accepts every aerodynamic promise Lockheed currently makes for it, the F-35 will be overweight and underpowered. At 49,500 pounds in air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 pounds of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight and acceleration for a new fighter. In fact, at that weight and with just 460 square feet of wing area for the Air Force and Marine Corps versions, the F-35's small wings will be loaded with 108 pounds for every square foot, one third worse than the F-16A. (Wings that are large relative to weight are crucial for maneuvering and surviving in combat.) The F-35 is, in fact, considerably less maneuverable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 "Lead Sled," a fighter that proved helpless in dogfights against MiGs over North Vietnam. (A chilling note: most of the Air Force's fleet of F-105s was lost in four years of bombing; one hundred pilots were lost in just six months.) "

numbers talk...

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Quoting a Turkish forumer:
"It's a well known fact that most of the boys or girls living in south-eastern Turkey are losing their virginities to horses or dogs of their villages, so I don't think this will suprise any Turk in this forum; we are used to these kinda news..."

I would take the comments of the ex F-16 designer with a grain of salt.

Lockheed martin is both the designer of the F-16 and F-35. The above text would suggest something like car manufacturer BMW with all the improved technologies would design a worse car now than 30 years ago. How much would you believe that?

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Turkiye Turklerindir (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk)
Power is the ultimate afrodisiak (Henry kissinger)

no company would admit they sell a bad product nutuk...

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Quoting a Turkish forumer:
"It's a well known fact that most of the boys or girls living in south-eastern Turkey are losing their virginities to horses or dogs of their villages, so I don't think this will suprise any Turk in this forum; we are used to these kinda news..."

no company would admit they sell a bad product nutuk...
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Agree, but let's look at it in a realistic way.

First Dienekis do you have engineering experience? I for my part am electronics engineer. Can you even imagine the technological difference we have now with 30 years ago, the computer aided designs and simulations we have now, the electronic possibilities, the ways to calculate radar reflectances of the airplane in computer simulations etc. etc. too many to summarize them.

Also in mechanics, nowadays it is posible to make the finest laser cuts to achieve the perfect wings for an aircraft, to use the most advanced composite materials, to build the strongest possible engines etc. etc.

From engineering point Dienekis I simply do not believe that the F35 can be worse than those old designs.

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Turkiye Turklerindir (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk)
Power is the ultimate afrodisiak (Henry kissinger)

so does this mean that you geeks actually accept the fact that the F35 will come out in 2013 because first of all you guys over exaggerated with 2020 now you guys are over exaggerating what a junk it is ahahaha stupid greek propaganda at its best

nutuk m8 i'm also an engineer, mech. engineer and i hold a master's degree in engineering. what you say is 100% correct, technology is advancing and obviously now things are way ahead than 30 years ago. but this is kinda irrelevant.

P.M.Sprey talks about fundamental stuff. and he gives numbers. no matter how manufacturing technology has been perfected, when it comes to airplanes the laws of physics that apply will never change. if you plane is underpowered or has aerodynamic deficiencies you cannot compensate by using better radar or making it stealth. read this paragraph:

"As a fighter, the F-35 depends on a technological pipe dream. Having failed to develop in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s an effective (and reliable) radar-based technology to shoot down enemy (not friendly) aircraft "beyond visual range," the Air Force is trying yet again with the F-35, like the F-22 before it. Both have the added development of "stealth" (less detectability against some radars at some angles), but that new "high tech" feature and the long range radar have imposed design penalties that compromised the aircraft with not just high cost but also weight, drag, complexity, and vulnerabilities. The few times this technology has been tried in real air combat in the past decade, it has been successful less than half the time, and that has been against incompetent and/or primitively equipped pilots from Iraq and Serbia. "

this is the whole point: he argues that "stealth" doesn't really work and if you remove the stealth factor from the F-35, the plane sucks.

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Quoting a Turkish forumer:
"It's a well known fact that most of the boys or girls living in south-eastern Turkey are losing their virginities to horses or dogs of their villages, so I don't think this will suprise any Turk in this forum; we are used to these kinda news..."

Why would you remove the heart where the plane is based on?

Dienekis m8 warfare principles have changed like the technology, you as engineer can't be blind to that. Todays radar possibilities where unthinkable in the 70'ties, todays stealth radar crossection designs without computers where impossible in the 70'ties!

Talks of the F35 being underpowered is an overstatement IMHO, the F35 has the most powerfull single engine that is out there and a second type of engine will be developed as well.

If you ask does the F35 have no areas where she has shortcommings, I'd say ofcourse like all other planes also the F35 has some areas of minor. But let me put it this way: neither Turkey nor Greece have the money to buy multiple types to cover all areas so we have to chose the best option. For us that is the F35.


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Turkiye Turklerindir (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk)
Power is the ultimate afrodisiak (Henry kissinger)

It will certainly be better than anything which Greece and Turkey currently have.

In the 1970s, for the power of my current computer, you needed machines all over a 100 m2 room.

Ne kadar bos konusuyorum yaaa, tam geveze bir gerzek oldum

****The above text would suggest something like car manufacturer BMW with all the improved technologies would design a worse car now than 30 years ago. How much would you believe that?****

Thats what I had in mind when I upgraded my XPs to Vista What a bad idea


***** Can you even imagine the technological difference we have now with 30 years ago, the computer aided designs and simulations we have now, the electronic possibilities, the ways to calculate radar reflectances of the airplane in computer simulations etc. etc. too many to summarize them. ****


True. But if the fundamental design and combo of those goodies are false, then screw it all together.


****Talks of the F35 being underpowered is an overstatement IMHO, the F35 has the most powerfull single engine that is out there and a second type of engine will be developed as well. ****

The article mentions specific reasons why the F35 is underpowered. What you are stating here is pure nonsense.


****I would take the comments of the ex F-16 designer with a grain of salt.
****

I would take the comments of every legendary designer quite seriously. For example, I would have "opean ears" on Mr. kalashnikov's comments on future rifles...

J J 6 o'clock

While supersonically the F-35 is limited to a seemingly unimpressive Mach 1.6 in level flight, Davis explains that the JSF is optimized for exceptional subsonic to supersonic acceleration.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/081107-f-35-fighter-jets.html
New Fighter Jet: Controversial Future of the U.S. Fleet

By Dave Majumdar, Special to LiveScience.com

Ironically, the Navy version, which has larger wings but a lower G limit of 7.5G, has the best turning capability of the three F-35 versions Beesley explained. The Air Force version, meanwhile, has the best acceleration and is rated for 9Gs, Beesley said. Davis, explaining that the Marine Corps deemphasizes manoeuvrability in its air combat doctrine, said that the short take off, vertical landing (STOVL) USMC plane has a 7G limithttp://www.livescience.com/technology/081107-f-35-fighter-jets.html

Thunder Supports Rafale

http://rafale.freeforums.org
http://rafale.freeforums.org/rafale-vs-f-16-aerodynamics-compared-t69.html

The problem with the F35 is not the current state of technology. The main problem is the USAFs and pentagons requirements under which the engineers designed the aircraft.

Too many compromizes, too much programme complexity.

And good engineering, as far as I know and from what my teachers always said in the classes is bound to simplicity, not the other way around. Keep your designs sa simple sa possible...

---

"Learn how to control your demons"

Keep your designs sa simple sa possible...
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Good Greek philosophy, with palanx you'll come far

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Turkiye Turklerindir (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk)
Power is the ultimate afrodisiak (Henry kissinger)

No need to be sarcastic Nutuk.
The JSF project is disputed by many western media.
Apart from the possible aerodynamic shortcomings, apart from the uncertain LowObservation performance, there is too much risk involved in the program. Risk that can lead either to cost, or to reduced performance (as it has happened already with its weight)

'The F-35 offers much. What started as the appearance of a well thought out plan becomes more and more of a gamble as years go by. More layers of program risk are showing up. In order for the program to stop giving a hint of looking like the 787, or even the A-400, platitudes have to be traded for altitude. Time is very very short. FY2011 and FY2012which can only offer more U.S. federal budget painare not all that far away.'

http://www.f-16.net/news_article3610.html

A-400, does this ring a bell?
Main reason for this project's problems that led near CANCELATION, was too much risk.

And the JSF is going to be a design tested IN PAPER (in computers actualy):
'Only 17 percent of the test evaluation of the F-35 will involve flight test discovery. The rest will depend on a variety of studies and analysis in order to qualify the design. So far, what is billed as the most advanced fighter jet ever, has the slowest flight test program in history. Yet it is expected to pick up pace and become one of the fastest flight test schedules to make up for lost testing. For example fiscal 2009 was supposed to have over 300 flight tests. At this late part of the year they have a little over 30 for FY2009. FY2010 will have over 1200 flight tests on the scheduleplus the make up work from FY2009.'

Yeah sure, also the LCS costed too much, had initial problems

And what do we see? Voila LCS prevails

It's simple, the US will do anything to remain at the top of the foodchain so F35 will go ahead no matter what!

Neither the Fafale nor the EF2000 has the budget of the F35 (not even a quarter of it) -> Technology = money!!!!!



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Turkiye Turklerindir (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk)
Power is the ultimate afrodisiak (Henry kissinger)

One thing the Americans are good at (and they're not good at many these days) is making weapons. I just can't imagine they would be so stupid as to spend billions (many billions) to develop something that was total rubbish. I'm just not buying that. The only thing we can do is wait and see what is produced. If I was Greece I definitely wouldn't be signing any deals or committing to anything. I would just wait.

Nutuk
if the flyaway cost of a F35 reaches 120mio$ a piece, how many you can afford?
40?
60?
In what timeframe?
Are they gonna be enough to fill your operational needs?
Are they gonna be the best choice given the cost?

What was the initial cost when Turkey joined the project? The total project cost i mean.
Is there any doubt that Turkey is waiting international develpments before commiting to an uncertain black hole?
Since you are mentioning LCS, if US can affort a major cost blow (like it has done before in many projects) can Turkey afford to go along? When UK and Australia are bailing out (even partialy?
Since the are mentioning US, arent the americans the FIRST to cut down on F35 numbers due to cost?

@Vlix

RAF/RN will cut their F-35 orders to only 50 planes while USAF herself declares that this fighter wont hit FOC before 2016!!lol
Price will be much likely close to 200mio $ for the A-model.


All this while turcos canīt find money for their CCIPs,the new F-16-50+,patriots etc,etc
They canīt even find money to order finally their AIM-120C7,lol.
LOR for 107 missiles was given in 2008,still no LOA.
They still have to live with their 138xAIM-120B for 209 F-16 since their ****ty AIM-120A are over 20 years old and useless.

Maybe they have money, maybe they dont.
May they have in the future, maybe they wont.
This is not my point.

The question here is whether the JSF poses a good choice now for them to cover their operational needs.
Because like we did in the 80s (reject F15 due to high cost), it is always a balance between the capabilities and the cost.
To me it is very possible that turkey will belate its order waiting the cost to finalize, possibly order less AC at the begining, waiting for future cost reduction and/or leave the door open for another design if F35 proves unworthy of the hype.

And we are goign to do the same, thus wait and see, and bargain.

@Vlix

This is what I say too.Lets wait few more years.HAF is far superior untill THK recieves all squadrons of new F-16-50+ & CCIP.These squadrons wont be ready before 2015-2016.
What we need is modernization of F-16-50 to full blk52+ standard and modernization of our blk30 to CCIP lite with JHMCS & link 16.

I couldnt agree more.

"Major allies, including Britain and much of the rest of Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and Israel, plan to buy the aircraft."

Hm, who's missing from that list? A certain "superpower"?

"Both have the added development of "stealth" (less detectability against some radars at some angles), but that new "high tech" feature and the long range radar have imposed design penalties that compromised the aircraft with not just high cost but also weight, drag, complexity, and vulnerabilities. The few times this technology has been tried in real air combat in the past decade, it has been successful less than half the time, and that has been against incompetent and/or primitively equipped pilots from Iraq and Serbia."

This I disagree with. I'd like to see some support for this claim. He's saying stealth has failed half the time in Iraq and Serbia. Based on what, ONE F-117 being shot down by the Serbs?

"If one accepts every aerodynamic promise Lockheed currently makes for it, the F-35 will be overweight and underpowered. At 49,500 pounds in air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 pounds of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight and acceleration for a new fighter"

Ouch.

"Nor is the F-35 a first class bomber for all that cost: in its stealthy mode it carries only a 4,000 pound payload, one third the 12,000 pounds carried by the "Lead Sled."

Ouch.


"The problem with the F35 is not the current state of technology. The main problem is the USAFs and pentagons requirements under which the engineers designed the aircraft.

Too many compromizes, too much programme complexity.

And good engineering, as far as I know and from what my teachers always said in the classes is bound to simplicity, not the other way around. Keep your designs sa simple sa possible"

I agree. I've been suspicious of the F-35 for a long time, because the requirements just seem impossible. It has to do too much, with too much sophistication, at too low a price. This plane is portrayed as an F-22 with VTOL capability, for half the price of the F-22, and that just doesn't make sense.

The F-35 is a good strike aircraft, some consider to be the grandchild of the worthy A-7, however this aircraft was never intended for CAP roles. The philosophy behind the F-35 is to operate under the wing of F-22's and F-15C's in a battlefield of complete US air domination.

Turkey is not America or Isreal to fight wars against inferior Arabs where F-35's will operate unopposed against Arab Sa-2/3/4 air defences and Mig-21/23 airofrces. Turkey is up against a formidable NATO adversary with modern western training and state of the art weaponry fielded in large numbers. Unless the Turks go for the F-22 or the EF-2000, the color of the Aegean will remain blue for ever.

"nutuk)
Neither the Fafale nor the EF2000 has the budget of the F35 (not even a quarter of it) -> Technology = money!!!!!"

You CLEARLY have NO idea.

F-35 technologies are already matched by Europe, EASELY,as for Rafale its developement path puts it firmly at equal level to F-35 for 2020.

The point you make about budget doesn't apply here.

Europe doesn't WASTE a quater of what the USA are wasting, the same technologies developed in France cost 35% less than those developed by BAe in the USA or L-M for the F-35 programe.

In some sectors (360X360* AAM detection and cueing capabilties, multi-bandwidth IR) Europe is even in FRONT with demonstrated results, no need for youtube videos.

As for those criticising Pierre M. Sprey, it is obvious that they don't know what they are talking about.

HE was the guy who put on paper (design) the F-16 specifications according to John Boyle and no one can argue against the fact that F-16 is still demonstrating superior performances to that of F-35 today despite Lockheed Martin brainwashing PR.


Thunder Supports Rafale

http://rafale.freeforums.org
http://rafale.freeforums.org/rafale-vs-f-16-aerodynamics-compared-t69.html

Re Vlix, you shouldn't worry too much about the money problem.

Turkey's need is 120 aircraft but that doesn't mean she will order all 120 at once but more probably like the F16 in three batches (Peace Onyx I,II,III). Three batches like 40 + 40 + 40.

The same with Greece who states a need for 6 FREMM's, the order will neither be at once but probably more like 2 + 2 + 2 or best case 3 + 3.


Re Sampaix,

Buddy the rafale is 4th generation, how much you pimp up the bird it won't change shape or grow internal weapon bays. The weight of the plane and nose radome limit the size of the radar she can carry, so all three airplanes (EF2000, Rafale, F35) will have similar sized and capable AESA radars yet the F35 with her stealth body and internal bays will always stand in advantage as less detectable.

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Turkiye Turklerindir (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk)
Power is the ultimate afrodisiak (Henry kissinger)

***yet the F35 with her stealth body and internal bays will always stand in advantage as less detectable. ***

Says who???

J J 6 o'clock

F-35 is a piece of chit.

Greek: U214 is the best of the best, it will decimate the Turkish navy single handedly

After a while when the Greek has ohi money: U214 sucks, it tumbles, it's noisy, it stinks.




Greek on F35: F35 is chit, it's a worthless slow fighter even the A7 is better


After a while if Greece ever selects the F35, the same Greek: F35 is formidable, stealth, state of the art blah blah blah



Yeah we know

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Turkiye Turklerindir (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk)
Power is the ultimate afrodisiak (Henry kissinger)

*********Greek: U214 is the best of the best, it will decimate the Turkish navy single handedly

After a while when the Greek has ohi money: U214 sucks, it tumbles, it's noisy, it stinks.




Greek on F35: F35 is chit, it's a worthless slow fighter even the A7 is better


After a while if Greece ever selects the F35, the same Greek: F35 is formidable, stealth, state of the art blah blah blah
***********


You dont know $hit. Papanikolis is a troublesome submarine. Being testbed for a long time had a negative impact on the boat. The rest U-214 are fine. It has been said several times b4.


As for the F35. Come on. Forget about the Greeks. Most western specialized or not media criticise the project. Even within LM there are doubts about the outcome. Just pay attention to the Australian MoD reports solely. And recently to the Jewish ones regarding the skyrocketing cost per unit. F35 will have the destiny of F-111.

I am more than certain that circles within THK will have doubts about F35 as well.

J J 6 o'clock

Nutuk

We are talking about engineering here mate, the man who talked about simplicity in designs was the cheaf engineer in McLauren F1 team.
But then again good engineering for you is to design a car trying to be as fast as F1 racing car with the ability also for off-road driving.

You can do it offcourse but it want be neither the faster or the best off- roader in any case, regardless the amount of money you will spent. Its plain physics.

The same goes for F35

---

"Learn how to control your demons"

Well we Turks don't care about simplistic engineering but simplistic killing.

Kill the enemy, how doesn't matter. If the kill rate of the plane is good, we don't care wether it is an agile plane or not.

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Turkiye Turklerindir (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk)
Power is the ultimate afrodisiak (Henry kissinger)

Nutuk
that was realy deep....

'100 mio for a simple Israeli JSF'
http://www.defencenet.gr/defence/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9497&Itemid=46

http://hashmonean.com/2009/09/10/no-deal-jsf-f-35-saga-continues-israel-still-loitering/

"But 100 million for a stock variety JSF nulls one of the main JSF thrusts & selling points, its former afford-ability. At that rate Israel clearly cannot pick up the numbers previously envisioned. At higher rates it becomes questionable whether we can pick up any at all..
The Israel Air Force had initially hoped to sign a letter of agreement in the coming months, but officials said that until the differences were resolved and a price was determined the contract would be postponed. If that happens, the arrival of the aircraft initially slated for 2014 will also be pushed off. The plane is not yet operational and is not even in production, a senior defense official said. The first military to get the plane will be the US, then the UK and then Israel. Commenting on the price, the official said that if the plane crossed the $100 million mark Israel would have to seriously reconsider how many aircraft it will purchase"

Just a question
if you are willing to give 100mio$$$ for an uncertain design, why dont you give the same for THIS beauty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-15SE_Silent_Eagle

Now this is a real air-dominance bird! You could kick our ass right here right now!

ps1. This is for my friend Nutuk who likes the killings no-matter-what-the-cost
ps2. SE is as written to have comparable RCS with the export JSF....
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