UK-Japan-Italy Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) News & Technical Analysis

Aviation Week did a piece on the planned GCAP engine demonstrator:

https://aviationweek.com/defense/ai...-engine-focuses-thermal-electrical-management
Following the unveiling in 2018 of proposals for what was then the UK-only Future Combat Air System, Rolls had indicated it could adopt a three-stream adaptive- or variable-cycle architecture. Early graphics suggested the engine could employ a controllable third-stream bleed system. However, further analysis of adaptive architectures appears to have prompted a reassessment, particularly now that engine development work has widened to three countries.

“We understand the adaptive engine, and we have looked at that technology for the mission set this aircraft will face, and we do not believe it earns its way onto the aircraft,” Tivey explains. “You will get benefits from such an engine—an economy mode and a warfighting mode—but the trade-off between the cost and the capability is a pretty fine one, and we do not think it is justified in the mission set for GCAP.”

Today, the primary building blocks for the future engine have prioritized thermal signature management and electrical output. The result will be a power and propulsion system that Rolls considers more integrated into the aircraft platform than any engine before it.

Tivey describes the engine as “fundamental” to the integrated systems onboard the aircraft, rather than simply a separate subsystem that has been bolted on. Rolls engineers have been part of the GCAP and UK Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative (FCAS TI) development efforts from Day 1, he says, noting that the propulsion and power system directly influences the fighter’s design.
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Titus said:
I've always liked French military aircraft, especially their Aesthetics. But I would always rank their aircraft as competent rather than outstanding, like most Soviet designs and maybe the Grippen.
Mirage 2000 is the most attractive fighter-bomber around (my opinion) but has not risen beyond F-16 in capability.
Grippen only managed to achieve status of Euro F-20. Sorry.
The truly impressive European projects have been team builds: Tornado, Typhoon and A400M and also some of the British aircraft, like Canberra, Belfast, Vulcan (and maybe Victor), Lightning and Harrier.
British aero industry outperformed for decades while the rest of Europe sufficed or teamed up to accomplish.
(Dangerously close to going off topic here...)
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I think French did make VTOL

Dassault Mirage IIIV and Dassault Balzac V
only one I like "Super" Mirage 4000 design before they switching to Rafale and as 4000 is much long range and faster, big than Rafale.

sad thing about British Aerospace we last build real full British build is possible Harrier before joint with American. since this we often merge with euro project ie Tornado, Typhoon, A400M. we not yet product full British alone since 60's/70's

Personal i think Gripen is Best Single Engine Multi-Role Fighter in the world, maybe Korean's F/A-50 is second choice for me.

Best Twin Engine in Euro is Eurofighter Typhoon with Rafale close behind. yet Rafale is best Carrier in the Euro.
Mirage 2000D i actually like them, and i wish they merge with British or standalone Fairy Delta 2/3 for British use as they French use it to developed Mirage I think...

which American destory British Aerospace Company ie Avro, Blackburn, English Electronic, Fairly, Bristol, Vickers, Sanders-Roe etc that why we force to merge all brilliant company and plenty design ideal and build test and best of the best into BAe System. yet BAe System is more good at work with other nations to build into one.

Comet transport (they learn lesson was turn square to circles and tell world do it safe and would go best sell) and TSR.2, Fairy Delta, SR-177 all cause American Political pressure, anyway.

I truly hope GCAP back to pole position once again, depend on F-47 vs GCAP, maybe FCAS (SCAF)
 
djpowell1984 said:
I truly hope GCAP back to pole position once again, depend on F-47 vs GCAP, maybe FCAS (SCAF)
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I expect them all to be fairly different, with GCAP being a long range striker, while FCAS will make due with shorter range, but being also able to conduct carrier ops and being probably a more compact airframe. F-47 will most likely be the most exotic, capable and expensive of the bunch. Simply because the US has done more research in the critical fields, more money to throw at it and because they have a very clear vision of what it would face in combat.

I don't know about y'all, but to me it always seems like GCAP and FCAS were started simply because the Eurofighter, Rafale, F-15J are getting old and a replacement will be due starting in the 2030s to 2040s. They're not born out of concrete threat or threat environment. While NGADs F-47 is born out of the needs formulated by the Indo-Pacific region and by the expected capabilities of the PLAAF and PLAN that need to be overcome, while also wholly outperforming the later crop of 5th generation fighters which have become more common over the years and are able to match or at least come close to the F-22 and F-35 in some regards.

And I think that these, to me at least, different motivations drive completely different approaches to next generation air warfare.
 
EmoBirb said:
I don't know about y'all, but to me it always seems like GCAP and FCAS were started simply because the Eurofighter, Rafale, F-15J are getting old and a replacement will be due starting in the 2030s to 2040s
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Wouldn't it be useful if there was a strategy published that you could read that went into these issues?
 
Scott Kenny said:
Japan had a horrific economic bubble burst on them, the resulting recession/depression lasted more than a decade. And then when the 2008 global financial crisis hit them, it'd been less than 5 years since they recovered from the previous bubble!
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Still, their factual aerospace high performance fixed wing result is F-1 and F-2, for over half a century. This isn't much. Yes, there are support and special planes, yes, there's significant and important japanese aerospace upstream.
In other areas (ships, even armor!) Japan just does better.
Scott Kenny said:
China's problem is QA (and IP protection), both of which are cultural issues to address.
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At least in private market it appears to be working. But it increasingly seams that it's just everywhere, because it's one same talent pool.
Scott Kenny said:
Russia sitting behind anyone in physics and math? Or engineering?

Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
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I am not saying behind in the same sense as, I don't know, 1960s China. Russia is in high stem league consistently, since Catherine.
But there are consistently countries putting more names into physics books, and which produce finer engineering, a bit earlier. Because of that, no one is desperate to stop Russian cars.
Eu engineering itself is world level - in few cases where (unified)Europe somehow gets its act together, down to the last bolt. But those are rare and almost never military.

This is why, it's absolutely ok to expect GCAP to succeed. But succeed in tornado / jaguar / eurofighter way, not in the f-15/22 or even flanker one.

In this particular category, single European countries consistently outdo their cooperation. That, ironically, includes Russia.
 
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timmymagic said:
Mirage 2000D/N better than Tornado? Errr...no...
Rafale better than Typhoon as an air supremacy platform? Err...no...
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Not to get into too much of a digression, but this is exactly the point. Tornado and Typhoon were both very "spiky" designs, i.e. optimized for a narrow set of performance metrics tied to a narrow set of missions. On the other hand, it is VERY hard to achieve a balanced multirole design that can perform well at both air combat and strike missions... this is where the designer's cumulative experience and know-how gets to shine.

The result is that the Mirage 2000 family was much more versatile and adaptable than Tornado, which was over-optimized for low altitude / ground pounding and whose RB199s and swing wings were ill suited to medium/high altitude combat (compared to contemporary F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s and Mirage 2000s).

And likewise the Rafale is proving to be equally more versatile and adaptable than Typhoon, which was over-optimized for supersonic air combat and suffers (for example) from a landing gear arrangement and long arm canards that turn every heavy weapons integration into a headache, while also significantly reducing external fuel load and range, and making for trickier high alpha / low speed combat performance.

So back to GCAP... while I think the partnership seems to be progressing quite well, I fear that some of the design choices (which also means user requirements) may end up being too narrow... at least based on past track record. Though still early days.
 
timmymagic said:
Mirage 2000D/N better than Tornado? Errr...no...
Rafale better than Typhoon as an air supremacy platform? Err...no...
Alpha Jet better than Hawk? Errr....no...

What's their Harrier equivalent again?

Tell us about French air to air missiles in comparison to other European designs? Air to surface?

What was your point again?
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Mirage 2000 produced decent, modern and affordable 4th generation fighter, which Dassault had to kill against the pleadings of screaming customers, to give Rafale a chance. Mirage 2000 filled every niche - fighter, interceptor, striker, reconnaissance. Mirage 2000 springed into life 3(!) aircraft, which jumped in to copy its success and fill its abscence: JAS-39E/F and both generations of Tejas.
Ah, yes, mirage 2000 gave France proper 4th gen ahead even of Soviet Union, and received additional modern multirole capabilities ahead of Russia.
Mirage was and remains relevant nuclear deterrent, because, yet again, one country.

Tornado was born too late for what it was - 1970s tech single trick pony(or, to be exact, 3.5 single trick ponies) in 1980s world. Which would've been maybe fine, had Europe actually produced more important aircraft. It did not, and thus the most important european aircraft of tornado era is called F-16.
Was tornado an export success? Yes, in reverse, - everyone who could, jumped off this ship before too late.
And uncompetitive bribary scandal for its single export success.
Tornado provided users with either belated swing-wing 70s striker, or even more belated phantom replacement. Decade or even two decades after similar aircraft went into service elsewhere.
Is Mirage a better aircraft project than Tornado? Unconditionally, it carried France through as aviation design powerhouse, powerful modern airforce and big exporter with connections, which still pay France back(former mirage 2000 customers tend to be french equipment lovers). For much lesser cost. Tornado discouraged even its proper users.

timmymagic said:
Rafale better than Typhoon as an air supremacy platform? Err...no...
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You chose specific capability. Right now, with exception of Kuwaiti and Qatari typhoons, Rafale is indeed a better air supremacy platform. It is, at very least, not stuck in the 1990s for its main fire control sensor. Who's better for how many percent is secondary; what matters is whether aircraft can do enough. Requirement for the nation is capability. Competent aircraft is enough. World beater is extravagance. Rafale does wonders at maintaining this "competent aircraft". Eurofighter, with all its ambitions, struggles to just keep up.

But again, let's just compare two programs.

Rafale produced two aircraft - for both french navy and air force, which won competitive bids against typhoon literally everywhere where even was a competition. It's export success is such, that it literally carries armee d'air on its shoulders, replacing PESA variants with the most modern AESA ones in the French service. Otherwise unaffordable to french budget. Rafale covers, as of now, every niche, with exception of SEAD. Fighter, interceptor, striker, reconnaissance. Rafale has already springed into existence 1 aircraft program, which is very specifically modelled to imitate it (TEDBA). It won France more than one new aircraft market.
Rafale in its current form maintains two nuclear capabilities - land based (sub-strategic) and carrier strategic strike.

Rafale is consistently updated and kept up to date - being effectively best "overall capability" proposal on the market, fighting well even against F-35 orderbook (which is stuck in weapon integration).
Is Rafale a full success? Well, not really: as an air superiority fighter, it was in preeminent position just for a few years. After that, F-22 happened (and later F-35, J-20, Su-57). With that in mind, it's still a solid fighting option everywhere outside of stealth domain.
Development cost for Rafale (ca.2000) - 8.6 billion Euros.

Typhoon - oh. Typhoon export success (lack of it - other than Austria) in competitive environment is well known. It's a bribe aircraft, carried as a dead weight on budget. They almost won over Turkey - but, because Europe, even without competition at all, you can see how well it goes.

Typhoon is one aircraft (nothing bad with it) for several air forces, with patchwork of underperforming equipment and weapon integration programs. Typhoon fleet, for almost everyone, is still stuck with a great, ca.1990 level, planar array radar, with obvious consequences for available modes (and their quality) and ew resistance even against dated DRFM jammers. Eurofighter consistently got capabilities late, and somehow, Europe, manages to not cover the entire spectrum yet. That's despite having access to everything off the shelf (french had to catch up bitterly - and still(!) did everything earlier. Note thatn sometimes french had to go by themselves through generations of equipment - like with damocles/talios). Some eurofighters carry storm shadows, some still don't carry TAURUSes.
DASS is un-updated slowpoke (to the point where it gets pushed away by Arexis from a competitor). Radar development is a mess (20 years of arguments to end up with 3 uncompatible radar systems, exactly a decade after RBE2?).

Yes, Typhoon, if we skip away radar and EW (lol), is an excellent fighter, and an incomplete strike aircraft for permissive environment (paveways/ljdams and brimstones). Is it a world leading fighter? F-22 was here within a couple of years of its introduction, DOA.
At this point, we add F-35s("strike fighters"), J-20, Su-57.
Is it a good striker? With Storm Shadow - certainly, though, as we know, rigged Ukrainian Su-24mr can do that too (unlike german Eurofighters, which can't even deliver tauruses). Bomber? For permissive environments, as yet again, it lacks proper tactical stand off weapons, allowing safe low altitude deployment. Yes, it has unique CAS/anti armor capability - but that's really, really niche.
As usual for patchwork program - most eurofighters lack something as basic as ASCM (only marte er, see customer list). Not nuclear either, because US said they don't want to. No reconnaissance.
Long story short, eurofighter advantages go down to composites and engines - which is, again, demonstration of european tech excellence, producing wtf results. Development cost of Typhoon (2003) - 19.5 billion Euros (i.e. 2.5 times).

timmymagic said:
Tell us about French air to air missiles in comparison to other European designs? Air to surface?
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Rafale: Mica ER/EM, MICA NG - in a pipeline. Meteor - available on Rafale. AASM family (100/225/500/100kg warhead-class boosted/gravity bombs with laser+in/gns, IIR+in/gns or in/gns). Exocet. SCALP. ASCMP.
Lacks: SEAD weapon (but spectra allows AASM pinpoint targeting - i.e. it was mistake of original plan). MRAAM option at the moment is lagging behind (meteor covers for that). SDB class weapon.

European:
IRIS-T(everyone), ASRAAM(UK knows better). AMRAAM(US). Meteor - available on Eurofighter. Pawevay/LJDAM(US)/JDAM(US) (227/454/907 kg grabity bombs with laser+in/gns or in/gns). Marte ER(really only in Qatar right now). Storm Shadow (not Taurus). Brimstone.
Lacks: SEAD weapon (and no roundabouts for that). Half the normal a2g weapon set(especially for non-stealth jet). Stand off for Taurus nations. SDB class weapon (was supposed to, but delays).
Really a mocrocosm comparison of a national program v a patchwork program.

timmymagic said:
What was your point again?
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The point is that it's very visible, how Europe, enjoying higher industrial position, economies of several member nations and arguably better "base" aircraft platform, underdelivers.
Will GCAP be magically better? I have doubts. There are exact same pieces of success inbedded:

1, completely different nations with different priorities (if one considers Japan to be better than Germany - i'd beg to differ).
2, signs of falling behind in concepts, despite excellent execution (again, for better or worse, chinese already fly without vericals).
3, long planned program time even before delays (typhoon being born couple of years before F-22).

Does it mean that GCAP will be bad? no. World beater? Just like Jaguar, Tornado or Typhoon. Too much misses to expect a hit.
 
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EmoBirb said:
I expect them all to be fairly different, with GCAP being a long range striker, while FCAS will make due with shorter range, but being also able to conduct carrier ops and being probably a more compact airframe. F-47 will most likely be the most exotic, capable and expensive of the bunch. Simply because the US has done more research in the critical fields, more money to throw at it and because they have a very clear vision of what it would face in combat.
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You've got that backwards.

GCAP is closer to a Typhoon in terms of being primarily air-to-air in terms of mission set. Japan needs a plane that can fly to the extremes of their islands or the east edge of their ADIZ and then fly BARCAP patrol for some time. The UK needs a plane that can fly long BARCAP over the North Sea, GIUK Gap, or even up around the curve of Norway. Italy needs a plane that can fly BARCAP over the Med Sea. GCAP will still be able to carry air-to-ground weapons, but it's going to be more like the F-14 or Typhoon: optimized mostly for air-to-air, with bays big enough for some A2G ordnance.

FCAS is a carrier-compatible striker that can do some air-to-air. At least in terms of what France wants out of it, and we already know that France has no qualms about withdrawing from a multinational project to get their needs met. I haven't heard much about what Germany wants out of FCAS, other than a big enough production run that they can afford some planes. I think Germany wants a more air-to-air capable airframe than a striker, but they're not really writing the specs for FCAS.


EmoBirb said:
I don't know about y'all, but to me it always seems like GCAP and FCAS were started simply because the Eurofighter, Rafale, F-15J are getting old and a replacement will be due starting in the 2030s to 2040s. They're not born out of concrete threat or threat environment. While NGADs F-47 is born out of the needs formulated by the Indo-Pacific region and by the expected capabilities of the PLAAF and PLAN that need to be overcome, while also wholly outperforming the later crop of 5th generation fighters which have become more common over the years and are able to match or at least come close to the F-22 and F-35 in some regards.
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I hope that's been addressed already. There's been a very concrete assessment about what each side needs and what each side can bring to the table, particularly for GCAP partners.
 
I think it's enough with the back and forth about different European projects. If you folks really want to discuss who did better; joint European projects or when the French did it alone, I think it's time to start a new thread.

Now let's get back to GCAP. one very important news lost in the midst of off-topic discussions
TwoStep said:
Aviation Week did a piece on the planned GCAP engine demonstrator:

https://aviationweek.com/defense/ai...-engine-focuses-thermal-electrical-management
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So, basically no ACE for GCAP, at least that's what RR is arguing for. Which makes me wonder, because I always thought of ACE as a cruicial piece in the puzzle to enable extremely long-range, while still designing an aircraft that is only barely big enough that it still qualifies as a fighter jet.

This would rather mean that they would need to rely on extremely large internal volume for fuels, or some uncomfortable tricks like external fuel tanks that drops with its pylons, coupled with self-sealing ports, in order to meet the suggested operating range with sufficient play-time on station.

What's concerning me is that the interview makes it sound like it's more of a funding issue than technical issue. They would like to have it, but can't afford it, in terms of development costs or procurement costs, or most probably both. Though I wonder what it means in terms of "particularly now that engine development work has widened to three countries."

Japan has been researching potential ACE design implementation based on the XF9 before they joined to form GCAP. I wonder what the implication of RR's assessments is for that effort as well.
 
While we can go "gee whiz" over various technologies, and demand the addition of X or Y on a platform. The key military question now being posed is "can we afford this" and by "afford" one must think far beyond simple headline figures of monetary value.
The Old God of War is being reanimated from it's long slumber.
Logistics is back.

Boutique wars of choice with exquisite systems of high cost and limited production look far too fragile from the perspective of a years long conventiomal slugging match that sees your homeland and it's facilities directly attacked in the process.

GCAP may face use in such a slugging match and this is probably shifting emphasis away from bleeding edge technology if that technology doesn't deliver commensurate superlative increases in performance.
 
Maro.Kyo said:
So, basically no ACE for GCAP, at least that's what RR is arguing for. Which makes me wonder, because I always thought of ACE as a cruicial piece in the puzzle to enable extremely long-range, while still designing an aircraft that is only barely big enough that it still qualifies as a fighter jet.

This would rather mean that they would need to rely on extremely large internal volume for fuels, or some uncomfortable tricks like external fuel tanks that drops with its pylons, coupled with self-sealing ports, in order to meet the suggested operating range with sufficient play-time on station.

What's concerning me is that the interview makes it sound like it's more of a funding issue than technical issue. They would like to have it, but can't afford it, in terms of development costs or procurement costs, or most probably both. Though I wonder what it means in terms of "particularly now that engine development work has widened to three countries."

Japan has been researching potential ACE design implementation based on the XF9 before they joined to form GCAP. I wonder what the implication of RR's assessments is for that effort as well.
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That is very surprising for me, 3-stream engines make a huge difference in fuel economy (~38% improvement in a mixed subsonic/supersonic flight per the AETP/F135 sized engines), which means that a GCAP with traditional turbofans is going to need a lot more fuel volume than say the F-47 in order to cover the same range/loiter requirements.

So even if RR was able to solve the electrical generation and cooling while using a traditional turbofan, it still makes a huge impact on required internal fuel capacity.

Alternatively, the traditional turbofan will be an interim engine in planning terms, which would make for absolutely legendary range for a hypothetical "definitive" version of GCAP refitted with 3-stream engines.
 
But how much maintenance does 3 stream need?
How easy is it to produce parts for it?
What we don't know is what real world data the Japanese research effort has produced
RR has reams of data on designs going back decades. But hard prototype hours of engine operation isn't one of them for this sort.

All sorts of devils lurk in the details.
 
zen said:
But how much maintenance does 3 stream need?
How easy is it to produce parts for it?
What we don't know is what real world data the Japanese research effort has produced
RR has reams of data on designs going back decades. But hard prototype hours of engine operation isn't one of them for this sort.

All sorts of devils lurk in the details.
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More maintenance, more complicated parts I'm sure.

But can you ignore a 19% increase in combat radius because of the 3-stream engines?
 
There's no magic technology involved in Variable Cycle Engines. It's just design optimisation: do you have highly opposing requirements? If not then you just go with higher BPR, higher OPR to get lower sfc. A fixed cycle engine should have lower losses, lower weight, complexity etc. It comes down to what are you comparing against, and what do your requirements are.
 
In a long hard war, every asset is going to be pushed to it's limits to deliver the desired effects.
Maintenance time, spare parts supply, fabrication facilities. All will count.
It's no good if your wonder engines rely on one building in one site and a highly limited supplies of materials to fabricate limited numbers of parts. Eaten up at extraordinary rates by the fact you cannot pull aircraft away from operations for long periods of time.
Better to just burn more fuel.
 
Scott Kenny said:
That is very surprising for me, 3-stream engines make a huge difference in fuel economy (~38% improvement in a mixed subsonic/supersonic flight per the AETP/F135 sized engines), which means that a GCAP with traditional turbofans is going to need a lot more fuel volume than say the F-47 in order to cover the same range/loiter requirements.
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Not if the engine is optimised for subsonic cruise to begin with. Think TF30 or RB199, both with bypass ratios of around 1.
 
Ainen said:
Mirage 2000 produced decent, modern and affordable 4th generation fighter, which Dassault had to kill against the pleadings of screaming customers, to give Rafale a chance. Mirage 2000 filled every niche - fighter, interceptor, striker, reconnaissance. Mirage 2000 springed into life 3(!) aircraft, which jumped in to copy its success and fill its abscence: JAS-39E/F and both generations of Tejas.
Ah, yes, mirage 2000 gave France proper 4th gen ahead even of Soviet Union, and received additional modern multirole capabilities ahead of Russia.
Mirage was and remains relevant nuclear deterrent, because, yet again, one country.

Tornado was born too late for what it was - 1970s tech single trick pony(or, to be exact, 3.5 single trick ponies) in 1980s world. Which would've been maybe fine, had Europe actually produced more important aircraft. It did not, and thus the most important european aircraft of tornado era is called F-16.
Was tornado an export success? Yes, in reverse, - everyone who could, jumped off this ship before too late.
And uncompetitive bribary scandal for its single export success.
Tornado provided users with either belated swing-wing 70s striker, or even more belated phantom replacement. Decade or even two decades after similar aircraft went into service elsewhere.
Is Mirage a better aircraft project than Tornado? Unconditionally, it carried France through as aviation design powerhouse, powerful modern airforce and big exporter with connections, which still pay France back(former mirage 2000 customers tend to be french equipment lovers). For much lesser cost. Tornado discouraged even its proper users.

You chose specific capability. Right now, with exception of Kuwaiti and Qatari typhoons, Rafale is indeed a better air supremacy platform. It is, at very least, not stuck in the 1990s for its main fire control sensor. Who's better for how many percent is secondary; what matters is whether aircraft can do enough. Requirement for the nation is capability. Competent aircraft is enough. World beater is extravagance. Rafale does wonders at maintaining this "competent aircraft". Eurofighter, with all its ambitions, struggles to just keep up.

But again, let's just compare two programs.

Rafale produced two aircraft - for both french navy and air force, which won competitive bids against typhoon literally everywhere where even was a competition. It's export success is such, that it literally carries armee d'air on its shoulders, replacing PESA variants with the most modern AESA ones in the French service. Otherwise unaffordable to french budget. Rafale covers, as of now, every niche, with exception of SEAD. Fighter, interceptor, striker, reconnaissance. Rafale has already springed into existence 1 aircraft program, which is very specifically modelled to imitate it (TEDBA). It won France more than one new aircraft market.
Rafale in its current form maintains two nuclear capabilities - land based (sub-strategic) and carrier strategic strike.

Rafale is consistently updated and kept up to date - being effectively best "overall capability" proposal on the market, fighting well even against F-35 orderbook (which is stuck in weapon integration).
Is Rafale a full success? Well, not really: as an air superiority fighter, it was in preeminent position just for a few years. After that, F-22 happened (and later F-35, J-20, Su-57). With that in mind, it's still a solid fighting option everywhere outside of stealth domain.
Development cost for Rafale (ca.2000) - 8.6 billion Euros.

Typhoon - oh. Typhoon export success (lack of it - other than Austria) in competitive environment is well known. It's a bribe aircraft, carried as a dead weight on budget. They almost won over Turkey - but, because Europe, even without competition at all, you can see how well it goes.

Typhoon is one aircraft (nothing bad with it) for several air forces, with patchwork of underperforming equipment and weapon integration programs. Typhoon fleet, for almost everyone, is still stuck with a great, ca.1990 level, planar array radar, with obvious consequences for available modes (and their quality) and ew resistance even against dated DRFM jammers. Eurofighter consistently got capabilities late, and somehow, Europe, manages to not cover the entire spectrum yet. That's despite having access to everything off the shelf (french had to catch up bitterly - and still(!) did everything earlier. Note thatn sometimes french had to go by themselves through generations of equipment - like with damocles/talios). Some eurofighters carry storm shadows, some still don't carry TAURUSes.
DASS is un-updated slowpoke (to the point where it gets pushed away by Arexis from a competitor). Radar development is a mess (20 years of arguments to end up with 3 uncompatible radar systems, exactly a decade after RBE2?).

Yes, Typhoon, if we skip away radar and EW (lol), is an excellent fighter, and an incomplete strike aircraft for permissive environment (paveways/ljdams and brimstones). Is it a world leading fighter? F-22 was here within a couple of years of its introduction, DOA.
At this point, we add F-35s("strike fighters"), J-20, Su-57.
Is it a good striker? With Storm Shadow - certainly, though, as we know, rigged Ukrainian Su-24mr can do that too (unlike german Eurofighters, which can't even deliver tauruses). Bomber? For permissive environments, as yet again, it lacks proper tactical stand off weapons, allowing safe low altitude deployment. Yes, it has unique CAS/anti armor capability - but that's really, really niche.
As usual for patchwork program - most eurofighters lack something as basic as ASCM (only marte er, see customer list). Not nuclear either, because US said they don't want to. No reconnaissance.
Long story short, eurofighter advantages go down to composites and engines - which is, again, demonstration of european tech excellence, producing wtf results. Development cost of Typhoon (2003) - 19.5 billion Euros (i.e. 2.5 times).


Rafale: Mica ER/EM, MICA NG - in a pipeline. Meteor - available on Rafale. AASM family (100/225/500/100kg warhead-class boosted/gravity bombs with laser+in/gns, IIR+in/gns or in/gns). Exocet. SCALP. ASCMP.
Lacks: SEAD weapon (but spectra allows AASM pinpoint targeting - i.e. it was mistake of original plan). MRAAM option at the moment is lagging behind (meteor covers for that). SDB class weapon.

European:
IRIS-T(everyone), ASRAAM(UK knows better). AMRAAM(US). Meteor - available on Eurofighter. Pawevay/LJDAM(US)/JDAM(US) (227/454/907 kg grabity bombs with laser+in/gns or in/gns). Marte ER(really only in Qatar right now). Storm Shadow (not Taurus). Brimstone.
Lacks: SEAD weapon (and no roundabouts for that). Half the normal a2g weapon set(especially for non-stealth jet). Stand off for Taurus nations. SDB class weapon (was supposed to, but delays).
Really a mocrocosm comparison of a national program v a patchwork program.


The point is that it's very visible, how Europe, enjoying higher industrial position, economies of several member nations and arguably better "base" aircraft platform, underdelivers.
Will GCAP be magically better? I have doubts. There are exact same pieces of success inbedded:

1, completely different nations with different priorities (if one considers Japan to be better than Germany - i'd beg to differ).
2, signs of falling behind in concepts, despite excellent execution (again, for better or worse, chinese already fly without vericals).
3, long planned program time even before delays (typhoon being born couple of years before F-22).

Does it mean that GCAP will be bad? no. World beater? Just like Jaguar, Tornado or Typhoon. Too much misses to expect a hit.
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Very much agree with your conclusion. European (including British) world beaters have been few and far between. Many technical successes but few financial or sales successes:
Mirage 3/5/50 was Europe's F-5 equivalent (roughly - they are not operationally analogs), and an obvious hit. Westland Sea King was adopted from a Sikorsky pattern but sold widely. Other British successes might have benefited from colonial/commonwealth preferences but were competent aircraft, (Hunter, Canberra, Harrier and Hawk).

You know, part of the problem is that when it comes to combat aircraft missions, designs, pricing, production runs and sales advantages...'Europe' is not a thing. It is not a great power, with great power outlook, capabilities, solutions. It is a club of middle and lesser powers. When those lesser powers team up to solve problems, they don't arrive at American, Soviet or Chinese solutions.
It reminds me of the old observation that the camel is a horse designed by a committee. I don't know if this pertains. It just came to mind.
 
The decision to go without ACE is likely the need to get it done soonish rather than as long as it took for Typhoon. RR and the japanese seem to be confident to get sufficient efficiency and power for their need at least on F119 level of TOW. But yeah missing on the higher efficiency will hurt (the pilot options) and logistic in the long run, especially tankers in the case of the UK.

My other read is they do not expect them to fly and change altitude too often. It's either lower level strike mission or higher level CAP. They won't go beyond 65000 ft like the F22/F47 do.

In the end it's a numbers game. Will they be able to afford enough airframes for the fight is the question. The urgency and need right now and ability to hurt enemy behind the lines is what's driving decision making not the old short ranged passive defensive thinking.
 
zen said:
In a long hard war, every asset is going to be pushed to it's limits to deliver the desired effects.
Maintenance time, spare parts supply, fabrication facilities. All will count.
It's no good if your wonder engines rely on one building in one site and a highly limited supplies of materials to fabricate limited numbers of parts.
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Realistically that doesn't really matter though. Neither the UK, Japan nor Italy could ever hope about even dreaming of thinking about being able to fight "long hard wars". So might as well go with the most sound route from a mechanical point of view, even if it's not ideal from a logistics point of view.
 
Titus said:
Very much agree with your conclusion. European (including British) world beaters have been few and far between. Many technical successes but few financial or sales successes:
Mirage 3/5/50 was Europe's F-5 equivalent (roughly - they are not operationally analogs), and an obvious hit.
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Export success should never be equated to capability provided. Export success is determined by how much a country is willing to offer for X amount of money with regards to favorable maintenance deals, associated weapons deals and obviously plenty of political reasoning. The reason the French consistently perform well in export markets is because they offer favorable deals, especially to morally ambiguous countries in the near East and South/South East Asia. Overall, not just with regards to aviation, French products aren't really to be considered outstanding. We're talking about people who offer a non-stealth fighter that costs more than a stealth fighter and has an almost comically tiny radar. (I won't touch on the, so far, short and not particularly good combat record).

The "World Beater" approach is something the GCAP team is probably aware to avoid, the participating parties are aware of what they expect and want from this aircraft. And judging from the very little concrete info that's available, most of these goals are fairly realistic/conservative.
 
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Same thoughts here Scott Kenny about the GCAP/Tempest having supercruise, I would be surprised if it came without considering that the F-22 has supercruise that was an original design requirement going back to the ATF program.
 
If you think about it in some ways they define the aircraft envelope the most after the cockpit and the payload. Their number, size, weight, placement, power demands cooling requirements, EM interaction and all the software that has to be written for them to interpret, analyse and categorise the data they gather. The rest of the aircrafts brain is controlling mechanical switches and monitoring subsystem health sensors like temperature.... sensors and communications is where the bulk of the aircrafts processing power is directed.
 
WatcherZero said:
If you think about it in some ways they define the aircraft envelope the most after the cockpit and the payload. Their number, size, weight, placement, power demands cooling requirements, EM interaction and all the software that has to be written for them to interpret, analyse and categorise the data they gather. The rest of the aircrafts brain is controlling mechanical switches and monitoring subsystem health sensors like temperature.... sensors and communications is where the bulk of the aircrafts processing power is directed.
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Yes, sensors define a whole lot of the aircraft design.

But what I mean by long lead items is the stuff that takes forever to get made. In ships, things like the reduction gears and steam turbines, the reactor, etc.

In planes, I'd expect it to be things that need to be forged into shape or large stampings. The forging's final shape needs to be designed, whatever tools needed to form that final shape need to be made, and then you can start making the forgings to send to the machine shop to be finished. Large stampings also need their dies designed and tested and revised and tested.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Yes, sensors define a whole lot of the aircraft design.

But what I mean by long lead items is the stuff that takes forever to get made. In ships, things like the reduction gears and steam turbines, the reactor, etc.

In planes, I'd expect it to be things that need to be forged into shape or large stampings. The forging's final shape needs to be designed, whatever tools needed to form that final shape need to be made, and then you can start making the forgings to send to the machine shop to be finished. Large stampings also need their dies designed and tested and revised and tested.
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Perhaps they've made some real advances in 3D printing?

https://www.baesystems.com/en/story/shaping-a-sustainable-future
 
Scott Kenny said:
Yes, sensors define a whole lot of the aircraft design.

But what I mean by long lead items is the stuff that takes forever to get made. In ships, things like the reduction gears and steam turbines, the reactor, etc.

In planes, I'd expect it to be things that need to be forged into shape or large stampings. The forging's final shape needs to be designed, whatever tools needed to form that final shape need to be made, and then you can start making the forgings to send to the machine shop to be finished. Large stampings also need their dies designed and tested and revised and tested.
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Just look at how long F-35's software is taking to write, all the hardware upgrades are ready but the software is a couple of years behind the hardware.
 
I would say commentary from GCAP highlights a seemingly conscious omission discussion / mention of supercruise. I would argue that supercruise is nice, but not required for either of the trilateral partners.

What is non negotiable “to me” is long range for Japan, which also means long loiter for UK and IT (which is great for many reasons). You can accomplish this without ACE.

Power and cooling challenges will have to be addressed differently than F-47 with NGAP based engines, but USN faces a similar set of issues if it gets F/A-XX.
 

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