At least the guy put Germany on the same level as Australa, Saudi Arabia or Canada rather than implying they would be treated as an equal partner.
Maybe a partner system like F-35
For £3bn you get to integrate your own weapons and a branded mug, for £8bn you get in-country production and a tea towel?
And a little bag of complimentary mints.
It looks like it likely is an unmanned demonstrator, but AIUI, Gambit 5 is planned to be fitted for Air to Air, while Atlantic Strike is specifically a strike capability, so an unmodified Gambit 5 seems unlikely to match, especially if the RN are using the Vixen requirement for 2x 500Kg 'payloads'. OTOH wasn't the BAE Systems ACP due to fly next year?
The plan is to convert 100 of the 200 aircraft to JSI.
If the cost of converting to JSI really is the same as buying a whole brand new EX, I cannot see the JSI project completing. I just see Japan buying new EXs, whether produced in the US or in Japan.
https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-...umber-of-f-15js-to-be-upgraded/163789.article
Then whats the plan for the rest of the fleet/ fighters? Staying with the old standard or?Flight Global reported back in July that the number of F-15Js slated for upgrade has been cut to 54. Unfortunately, this figure has kept shrinking over time: the original plan called for 98, then it dropped to 68, and now it stands at only 54. It seems that just two (?) JASDF squadrons will operate the F-15JSI.
https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-...umber-of-f-15js-to-be-upgraded/163789.article
You can cheat the work a little. Put the EM actuators onto a nice servo tab that pulls the control surface in the desired direction.
The initial estimate for the F-2 did not include the cost of avionics development. Initially, joint development began with the promise that the United States would provide avionics. However, the U.S. Congress reneged on its promise and did not provide avionics to Japan.
Looks similar to when we did Fighter Size Target (predecessor to 5GAT) back in 2005) at BAE-Mojave with Scaled. We (BAE) had Scaled design the airframe for us and BAE, we did all the systems/subsystems work. The front of this aircraft concept looks very similar our BAE FST. Our FST looked like a single engine F-23 (diamond wing and v-tails).
I think that entire thread was misunderstood, i think he meant it in a metaphorical sense
would love to see some more info on that, the question is how are they going to make it carrier capable without arrestor gear.
Notice that the Scaled design ended up like the F-23 but 5GAT (which I also worked on) looked more like the F-22 due the former Lockheed Skunk Works gray-beards which were great guys to work with. Since I had worked for Northrop and on YF-23, I was referred to as the other guy who worked for Brand X, all in fun though.
A good question, the Project Vanquish brief is for non-arrested landing. Though the BAE class 2 is listed with maritime variant's we don't know if it's expected to land with or without arresters.
It’s going to be very interesting to see, I’ve heard the technique could involve some active flow controls
That pretty much means its BAE's then with their heritage and experience with Demon doesn't it?
I’d assume so, I don’t see any other way this could work, Gambit 5 can’t land unarrested
In theory yes but in practice no. Even for a flight test campaign with multiple flight test vehicles each vehicle is configured for different types of test. The primary difference is instrumentation. The first flying article would be aerodynamics and flight air-data systems verification instruments, things like pitot tubes, control surface encoders so you know what real deflections are, torque and strain gauges to check control surface loads (a lot of stuff). With all the instrumentation devoted to aero and air data systems, you’d run out of telemetry channels to do anything else. This is repeated for different disciplines, one might be instrumented for aero-loads, or for flutter testing, engine integration test, spin test. This is why you need at least half a dozen prototype aircraft before you build your first production aircraft.
I mean that each country would have their own set of flight-test aircraft. UK has one set up for stores separation, Italy has one, Japan has one.
