remember the 18 F-15C equipped with AN/APG-63v2 AESA radar, in service about a month after the F-2 funny enough? i really doubt THAT was geting the F-22 budget
Maybe ‘reliable’ was the wrong word. ‘Viable’.
If it was easy - everyone would’ve had AESAs fitted decades before.
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”
innovation isn’t easy, but it must be done to progress and maintain the technological edge
Yes the singular squadron that got AESA.
You’re ignoring that once you have developed an AESA you can develop many similar systems, such an expense was deemed realistic for F-22 programme but that would obviously have a crossover into developing AESA’s for things like the Arleigh Burke’s, or the F-15’s APG-63V2 or AWACS.
The F-22 was a justification that provided what is in most other countries terms a literally bottomless budget.
…yeah - but you still have to fund the thing. Remember this was at a time when the USSR had blown itself up and govts all over the place were looking at their defence budgets and going ‘do we REALLY need to spend all this stuff?’
You cut your cloth accordingly. I think Typhoon was one of the few multi-national projects that worked and delivered - no mean feat in the immediate post-Cold-War.
I wonder if the EFT’s internal dispensers have such wiring possible.
Not even that but when EFT was being re-conceptualised and developed in the late 80’s they fully expected the Cold War to go hot and the fight to have to be fought with Phantoms and Tornado ADV’s. You can very clearly see why they’d opt for a risk reduction.
Would you rather have a great M-scan or the equivalent of the F.2 tornados concrete radar.
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Depends - Blue Circle was immune to jamming!
what about the PAVE PAWS system in 1978? or MiG-31 radar? face it, europe was behind again by the time the first EFT testbeds flew in 1994
The MSD-2000 & ECR-90 had been under development since the mid-1980s. The decision on which one to use was meant to be made in 1988 IIRC, but thanks to the Germans refusing to accept the ECR-90 despite every other nation wanting it, the decision got pushed back to late-1990.
An AESA radar was not a sensible choice for Eurofighter at the time. It was originally meant to enter service in the mid to late 1990s, and as we know no-one managed to get an AESA radar into service until the early 2000s. So they were correct in their judgement that it was not practical to develop an AESA radar in time for a late 90s in service date. It made sense at the time to develop a best in class mechanical radar, and then upgrade to AESA once technology had matured.
Plus as I said there was not a hope in hell that Germany would have ever entertained the thought of an AESA radar.
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thats a fair point regarding germany, and timing, but either way EFT ended up going into service about 3 years after the first operational AESA fighters
Damn Germans :P
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They probably regularly think ‘Verdammt Britischers’.
It’s all good.
I mean, they even took a bit of an issue with calling it Typhoon - what with the whole rocketing WW2 thing…
better than spitfire II, at least for the Germans
it would be so much more fitting than typhoon tbh
I never disagreed with that statement, though I draw objection to the word behind, they were monetarily limited, but they had developments in such systems within a similar, if slightly later timeframe. Firstly, you’re lumping it in as Europe but Rafale exists with a PESA in such a timeframe, secondly prototype arrays began to appear around that sort of time. Also PAVE PAWS isn’t fighter mounted, and the Mig-31 is a PESA on an aircraft that is inept at literally everything else.
The difference between Meteor’s introduction and AIM-260’s will be ~10 years. That’s a similar timeframe to the first fighter-borne AESA arrays and CAESAR, you would likely vehemently deny that the US is behind in fighter-borne missile technology.
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Alas, with Tempest being the name for the next one. We just need a Hurricane and the Ghost of Sir Sydney Camm will be well-pleased…
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You mean that 20 m diameter early warning radar? Not really something you can bolt on a fighter is it?
That radar weighted over 5x as much as the CAPTOR-M and from a quick read online it doesn’t seem that the performance was spectacularly better. Being PESA isn’t everything.
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I think that’s a fair position to take from them, but Eurofighter Typhoon was the correct name to choose.
no, we are behind in long range missiles, was an oversight from focusing too much on GWOT, i do agree with you on that.
AIM-120D is still a solid missile, but I’m glad the F-22 is getting the missile it really deserves this year
imagine if the Germans made their own CCA and called it the V-1