So you think Lockheed Martin is being scummy, that’s nothing new. Look at what happened with the F-104’s. That has nothing to do with the US government.
The British corporations in charge of developing and producing the Eurofighter sabotaged themselves, the British governments’ requirements and timelines sabotaged themselves. The entire Eurofighter project was delayed more than it needed to be (the same can be said for every modern fighter program, though)… and you’re talking about defense contractors wanting to skim every nickel and dime they can out of big government like it’s a bad thing.
The Meteor and AIM-260 integration on F-35 happening at the same time doesn’t surprise me one bit.
will the british typhoons get anything like the gbu-39 that we can just lob a bunch of (excluding brimstones) or will the only gps stuff we get be paveways, stormshadows and such?
currently integrated are just paveways, stormshadows and brimstones. gbu-54 is being integrated right now (and so is taurus) and maybe, just maybe, spear-3. but thats supposed to be an f-35 weapon and it seems like they’re mostly using eurofighter for testing. AGM-88E-2 is also being integrated
this is what happens when they’re mostly deployed in anti terrorism operations. dont need glide bombs or a lot of paveways for that
Going by this thread and from what I understand from the Typhoons entry into service (From books like Typhoon by Mike Sutton)
The Typhoon was intially brought into service for the A2A role to replace the Tornado F3s as a priority, but the Harrier Gr7/9 and Tornado Gr4 had A2G pretty readily covered so it was considered a secondary priority. Also up to that point, pilots were trained for fightrers or mud movers. The Typhoon required them to be trained for both and the book literally had to be written on how to employ the Typhoon in both roles
So for a number of years they were A2A only. By 2008 they were upgraded to the FGR4 with the A2G loadout and first delivered A2G weapons in anger in 2011 in Libya during Operation Ellamy.
So from 2003 to 2008, they were the F2 and were only really performing QRA
I think this is just one bullet we must bare. At least it hopefully gives more time for the Brimstones to be sorted. That way we have FGR4 with mmV birmstones and not SAL only.
Honestly half of me wants us to wait out on the FGR.4. The F.2 is a natural progression from the Tornado F.3 AOP/FSP, and it is superior in practically every sense of the word.
