Fair.
But I’m very biased and unsympathetic towards CAS arguments when 9/10 countries SPAA is in the depressing state that it is lol.
No. Didn’t think F-15E was necessary when F-15C / F16C duo was already dominating either. But nothing I can do about that.
Everyone has a gen 4 and has had one for a while now
Yea, nothing against you but we always get this from the other major nation players especially, saying minor nations don’t need anything but then turn a blind eye to the fact they get stuff they didn’t need either (like the F-15E to your point).
Might be a reference to Germany, who have a gen 4, two of them even, but only a gen 3 platform for their fox 3 carrier.
They do now, but there was that prolonged period where the likes of UK/SWE were stuck on Phantom/Tornado/Viggen whilst everyone else was on fourth.
Also, I know Germany has Mig29, but their best thing is still a Phantom, so I still accept the argument they’re stuck in last gen to an extent.
Tornado is a 4th gen lol, so is viggen
*with worse flight performance than most 3rd Gens
They fixed the tornado fm iirc, it’s much better now than when it was new
Even fixed, it’s still awful compared to actual purpose built fighters.
An F-35 is much worse in a dogfight than an F-22 but both are still 5th gen fighters no?
To this day, I still think the funniest thing snail has ever done is denying FGR2 9L’s at the same time they gave them to EJ Kai, on the basis that Japan would be suffering without a top tier longer than Britain, and then they immediately add 16AJ and Britain waits an eternity for Gripen lmao.
Yeah. But I’d hesitate to call Tornado a ‘fighter’.
There are dedicated a2a versions, but they all are capable of a2a
It’s like saying the strike eagle isn’t a fighter bc it trades some pure performance in a dogfight for better strike capabilities, it’s still able to carry missiles and everything just like the dedicated air superiority C
Ehhh. I don’t think they’re comparable examples.
F-15E is a strike aircraft, developed from what was originally a thoroughbred ASF platform.
ADV is an interceptor, developed from what was originally a thoroughbred IDS platform.
The former still holds almost all the A2A advantages of its predecessor, and the latter is shoehorning A2A into a platform which hardly had anything going for it in that regard to begin with.
Wasn’t tornado meant to be able to do both from the start though? It was intended to have multiple specialized versions, it’s a multirole after all so it’s still definitively a 4th gen
Ehhh, yes and no.
From what I understand, GB/GER/ITA all wanted it to be a strike aircraft first and foremost, it was only really Britain who wanted an interceptor variant, to replace the aging Phantom / Lightning fleet, in the role of defending against a hypothetical Soviet bomber scenario.
Britain was looking at other options to this end, there was the proposal for the swing wing Phantom (F4-[FV]S). There was ideas floated about buying F-14’s. There was even a British / French project (AFVG) to develop an interceptor which eventually collapsed - and you can see the inspiration from that in what ultimately became Tornado.
Yes, it’s still technically a fourth gen, but i still wouldn’t call it a fourth gen fighter.
Indeed. It is Britain who has the biggest desire for home defense since other nato air forces would cover Germany and Italy more. Italian ADVs were the result of leasing.
Yeah it’s more of a multirole than fighter, but everyone has had a 4th gen for some time now so saying they’ve been a generation behind is a stretch
Just say USAF lol, no one else in NATO is capable of covering all that, largely by themselves
Chap, the reason thar Britain wants better interceptors is they need to put quite a lot in W. Germany.
I was talking in the past tense in that comment.
Britain obviously has a true 4th Gen fighter now and has for quite some time (Gripen), same for Sweden.
I was just referencing the time where they did not, where both countries were in a similar state of struggle to what Germany currently is. (To make the point that Japan, comparatively, is not doing too badly rn)