US airforce finally admitted that they have worse planes.

[viper]

Post

Ok, sorry for delay, gran had to go into hospital, was there all night.

The Rafale, Gripen and the Typhoon are the main 3 future european weapon systems, and these 3 I will analyse.

First of all compared against the main US aircraft (future and current):
F-15
- In the BVR (beyond visual range), the Rafale and Typhoon are considered more capable than the USAF\'s premiere fighter due to more advanced radar. The Gripen is currently seen as an equal to the F-15 with the Amraam, however in the very near future both Typhoon and Gripen will be armed with the Meteor, meaning that the F-15 can be engaged beyond the range of the F-15\'s Amraams.
- WVR (Dogfight), the Rafale and Typhoon are both much more manouverable that the F-15, the Typhoon also has a better thrust to weight ratio. The F-15 has just been armed with the Aim-9x however, the europeans have 2 dogfight missiles that are much more advanced, one of them the US opted out of in order to develop the \'9x\'. The Typhoon is being armed with the ASRAAM, this is the best dogfight missile in the world, uses the same sensor as the \'9x\' but is longer ranged and much more manouverable (it can turn 270 degrees straight off the launch rail). Outside of the UK, the Typhoon and the Gripen are being armed with the IRIS-T which is also more advanced than the \'9x\'. In dogfights, this is where the Rafale is lacking, it uses an IR version of their Mica BVR missile, this missile is small, long ranged but not very manourverable, a \'15\' with 9x\'s has the edge over it.
F-16
- In the BVR, it is the equal of the Gripen (Gripen has a variant of its radar) but the Rafale and the Typhoon have a superior radar with multiple target attack and scan (ie not just normal tws where 1 target is attacked) where it can fire on up to 4 targets at the same time (pull the trigger and 4 missiles launch).
- In the WVR, the recent Singapore tests have shown that the Rafale is inferior to the F-16 in a dogfight, losing all but one of its engagements there. The Gripen, which is as manouverable as the Rafale, it stands to reason that this is also inferior in the dogfight (Norwegian air force can better answer this as they play with the Swedish regularly...ek, wanna chip in here?). The Typhoon has a better thrust to weight ratio and is more manouverable than the F-16, also packing the new WVR missiles, it is a formidable beast!
F-18C
BVR - Same as F-16
WVR- The current multirole mainstay of the USN and the Marine Corps, this aircraft has a very high angle of attack in a dogfight which makes it comparable to the F-16, however has a lower thrust to ratio resulting in all three of the European aircraft to be able to tangle safely with it, however anyone in the Finnish air force can probably elaborate on this (they fly F-18\'s).
F-18E/F
The new variant of the F-18 which has almost completely replaced the F-14 in service (hence the F-14\'s absence from this report).
BVR - The capability of the F-18E is on par with that of the Typhoon, not in missile range where the Typhoon is superior with the meteor but in the amount of missiles it can carry.... no less than 12 BVR + 2 BVR in a maximum load. This is a far greater amount than that of the Gripen or the Rafale, who are heavily limited on A2A weapon carriage.
WVR - The F-18E/F is a extremely manouverable beast, it can out turn an F-16 and when coupled with the \'9x\' it can bring its weapons to bare on a target quickly. As a result of this, it is Typhoon\'s equal in the WVR arena. And outclasses the Rafale and Gripen in this area. However, the Super Hornet has one major weakness... it is massively underpowered, this means that it has a very low thrust to weight ratio and bleeds energy heavily in sustained turns such as a dogfight, meaning during a sustained fight, the Rafale and the Gripen would have an edge being high energy fighters.
F/A-22A
BVR - The current daddy of the BVR world, not because of the amount of missiles it carries or their range (which is comparitively poor to all other fighter aircraft) but because of its stealth. The F/A-22 can fire BVR missiles without ever turning on its own radar giving away its position. How is this accomplished? Due to the 5 super computers inside the F/A-22 it can datalink to other \'22s\' that are further away or an AWACS aircraft and use the data from their radars to target aircraft, creating an invisible enemy. If it wasn\'t for the stealth technology then this would not be the case.
WVR - As I said earlier the \'22\' is currently the most manouverable western dogfighter, this isn\'t because of advanced aerodynamics but because of one thing... 2D Thrust Vectoring (The russians have already got much superior 3D thrust vectoring systems). The allows it to out turn anything europe can throw at it... but the F/A-22 has one major drawback... the weapons storage locations. The WVR missile racks are in the fuselage in the center of the wing root.... this is an idiotic place to put it, the F/A-22 is equiped with the JHMMS (I will talk about this later) and as a result of the location of the \'rails\' it is difficult for the fighter to fire on aircraft \'above\' it as the missile has to be programmed to delay before turning or it would smash straight through the wing. So in a turning fight, if the pilot of a Typhoon (Gripen and Rafale do not posses the PIRATE sensor) is on his toes, he can defeat a F/A-22.
F-35
Well what can I say about this useless piece of...well.
BVR - The British and American versions will have a slight edge over the other export versions IF it is using an internal weapon load only, (which is a pittiful 4 missiles). I say this as these 2 variants will have full stealth attributes much like that of the F-22 BUT all other export versions are going to have dumbed down stealth capabilities making them easily killable. If the F-35 is also carrying external weapons, then this is a different matter, the Typhoon and Rafale will be superior in the BVR arena then due to an increased weapon load and a faster speed (able to lob missiles further), the Gripen will be its equal.
WVR - As reported earlier, the manouverablility of the F-35 is going to be rubbish, even with ASRAAM (british version), all 3 of the european aircraft will be litteraly able to run rings around it, this aircraft is quite poor.

Ok, thats the US aircraft done, I will do the Russians later as I have some work to do.

Re the backwards finding missiles.... Certain variants of Russian aircraft (Su-34, Su-35/37, Mig 1-42) have a rear facing radar in the tail area, this allows for the targetting and firing of missiles backwards in defence, even BVR R-77 Adder missile systems. The wests answer to this is helmet mounted systems... The Rafale has its own indigenous one which is similar to that of the US one... the JHMSS (*joint helmet mounted sight system*) which can target and engage targets in the front 180 degrees field of vision as it is slaved to the missiles sensor so can only target what the missile can see. In the west the Typhoon has the best system and it is what it gives it its edge in dogfight combat.... the PIRATE (yarr! ). This is a more advanded version of the Russian IRIS EO system. It is an infrared sensor on the nose of the aircraft that is slaved to sensors in the pilots helmet and display. Whatever the pilot can look at, this sensor can to, and as a result, coupled with the extreme manouverability of the ASRAAM/IRIS-T missiles, the Typhoon can engage targets in a dogfight as long as the pilot can see them visually, which is a tremendous edge over all other western fighters.

To finish this post, some images of some of the lesser known items mentioned above:
Meteor

Aim-9x

IRIS-T

ASRAAM

Gripen

Rafale

F-18E

Typhoon T1 (the less capable trainer variant that beat the F-15 and the F-16 in Singapore)

Typhoon F2 (main variant


PART 2: RUSSIA AND CHINA, COMING SOON