Theres no evidence thus far of serious British involvement, no cash down-payment, no paperwork, no statements. Hence why i posted about Project Moonflower, maybe there is something hidden in there , or maybe it just confirms the widely accepted “thanks but no thanks” between Reagan & Thatcher administrations. Its there if folk want to dig deeper.
The evaluations were in the US but that’s about it. British pilots flew F-117s in squadron service but did so as erstatz US military (would a US pilot in a RAF Typhoon make it a US plane?).
It would be a stretch even during WTs endgame. There’s probably an unbuilt British project that would be better placed .
But imo none of this will prevent Gaijij who will add it if they want it so i will merely sit back and enjoy the show.
It would be able to carry the GBU-27, a bunker buster variant of the GBU-24. It’s going to worse than the GBU-24 in ground RB I imagine, but likely this will be its special weapon in the possible SEAD mode, where there may be strategic (underground) targets/storage that can only be easily dealt with with the GBU-27.
Britian never operated the Mig-21. Britain has a stronger argument for getting the F-117 than a Mig-21 in my opinion and Britain has a SIGNIFICANTLY closer relation to the US than India.
In the hypothetical future, where Britain does start running out of new vehicles to add, including from its massive pool of paper aircraft. Then something like an F-117 could make an interesting event vehicle.
I dont really want it, its going to be a really bad and niche aircraft within War Thunder, probably totally DOA. But:
If tested/evaluated aircraft become options for nations in the future, then Britain was actually offered the F-117 and did evaluate it, I think we have the docs from the National Archives for those evaluations. But ultimately the Jaguar and Torando are both superior aircraft.
Considering event vehicles imo should be rather random/unique and our last 2 have been somewhat lackluster and just modified version of existing TT aircraft, then it would be more interesting than either of them. But it would be way down on my list compared to them. If it was a ground attack aircraft (again…) then id vote for a Vulcan or TSR2 over the F-117.
But there is a thread that exists for the F-117 way into the future at the very least
That would make every sales pitch a reason vehicle X could go to Country Y. Any brochure picked up at an air show could be used as evidence of a potential procurement.
And the lss said about rhe AJ the better. That is the poster child of Brochure inclusions. To be fair it was a very detailed proposal and most if not all the equipment included did/does exist, but not as envisaged. They should have brought forward the Asian subtree instead to fill the gap with a real life F-16 variant. Ah Gaijjn, always with the controversy…
No, it’s illustrating the absurdity of a GB F-117 as if they can get it, why shouldn’t the US get a Typhoon seeing as how the US has greater claims towards the Typhoon then GB does towards the F-117.
The F-16AJ has absolutely nothing to do with the F-2. Instead it was competing with the F-15J in the 70s and was rejected a decade before any FS-X offers were even made.
Strictly speaking the F-2 isn’t even based on an F-16 (at least not directly), but the Lockheed SX-3, a further developed version of the SX-2, which itself was an Agile Falcon variant proposal for Japan.
The closest F-16s to the F-2 would be equally recected F-16C Block 32 and a lightly modified version of the same aircraft proposed early on for FS-X, neither of which led to anything other than rejection.