The comment about Germany wanting to make an F-18 equivalent 20 years too late is even funnier when you consider that Germany wanted to use the F404 engines from the F-18 instead of developing the EJ200:
That comes from a letter written by Ministerial Director Wolfgang Ruppelt, Head of Armaments Department at the Federal Ministry of Defense.
ASRAAM in the corner with restricted export
Germany: “Do we buy F-16s or F-18s to replace our F-4s? Nah, just upgrade the F-4F.”
So was Ferranti’s fear of veto on exports completely unfounded? Because in the letter Flame posted that seems to be their concern.
They might have get their parts to a US supplier for their engines however. And then ITAR can gets in the way.
I would assume an american design would integrate more US made parts
ASRAAMs seeker pre whatever upgrade they call it over there on the island was wholey identical to 9Xs and entirely a US development, no? So they have a veto on it because because of that.
MSD-2K was created by AEG & GEC-Marconi with minimal US involvement, and due to Germany holding a license for the APG-65 anyhow, they could do whatever they wanted with it (pretty sure they’re the ones behind Greece’s ICARUS F-4s too).
I think this is more of a case by case situation, but at the end of the day Ferranti’s fear was still warranted. I wouldn’t want US meddling in a European project in any way if possible… especially considering they’ve vetoed Germany’s F-104 zero-zero capable seat upgrade just a few years earlier, and we all know how that ended don’t we.
Other countries (Sweden^^ e.g.) get TT gaps fixed with foreign nation imports. Or even full subtree imports. Germany gets nothing it seems. Dutch F-16? Polish F-16?
Hunter shhhhh
I’d push for Austrian or Swiss rather than Netherlands and Poland.
AIM-9L and AIM-7 only F-18C would be a valid 12.0 for Germany, or 9Ms for 12.7.
Been awhile seeing you lol
Yeah the plane no one asked for. I don’t like it.
I mean, the Brits wanted it lmao
APG-73 didn’t have a CW illuminator so AIM-7 can’t be used.
AIM-7F/M don’t use CW illuminators to begin with, they’re backward compatible, but that’s not their primary method.
Or trusting the americans
7F should require CW illuminator since it doesn’t have monopulse seeker
Ok, I stand corrected then
why did the Germans upgrade the F4F?
they originally planned to use the fighter from their multinational program but the Tornado ADV prototype ended up… bad
so they started another Multinational program
so what are we gonna do now? we don’t have any budget left for a new fighter now and the ADV is going to be a disaster which they didn’t want to invest in
now because it’s temporary why not just keep the Phantoms until the next Multinational fighter is ready and we can invest more into it so it actually does succeed this time
then the GDR collapsed and the Luftwaffe chose MiG-29G and F4F-ICE as their fighters until the EF2000 was ready
buying a whole new weapon system for 10? maybe 20 years isn’t worth it, especially considering the Bundeswehr’s immense burocratic barriers which slow down how quickly entirely new material can be recived (see G95, trials started in 2016 and are just about to finish) but do not necessarily apply to modification programs
The AIM-7F supports both CW and HPRF guidance
also the hole GDR collapse and following reintegration kinda took up a lot of funds, which naturally came from the Bundeswehr since they got the GDR inventory and troops, were limited in size anyways and their primary enemy was in the process of self destructing.
Point being, no funds for a temporary solution
no funds, no more reason for a new Jet now and a new one (EF2000) was already in the making too
kind of similar to the JA37D which was a temporary solution while the sweds were waiting for the Gripen to arrive