Seaeagle

Is it quite that much though? - IIRC the Dutch paid some 4.5 billion euro(~ $5 billion) for 37 aircraft, which means a unit price of some $137 million. Anyway, I believe the difference has to do with when they are going to be delivered - i.e. a fair chunk of the Dutch airframes will come from "LRIP"(Low Rate Initial Production) batches for which production costs are higher than(what is expected) for the larger "full production" batches later on. Delivery of the Danish aircraft is scheduled to begin from 2021 - i.e. would come from "full production" batches, for which the "fly-away" unit cost is expected to be some $85 million. But we will see... :)

Yeah good point - I didn't think of it in the larger picture :)

Yes but any decision regarding the number(fewer or more) is likely not going to be addressed until 21 aircraft have been delivered, which according to the procurement plan(2021-2027) could be some 10 years from now. Agreed - and it is also a far cry from the number(52) that Norway felt was necessary for their operational needs(which are very comparable to Danish ones). You cannot help to suspect that overly optimistic expectations about the F-35 were chosen deliberately in order to keep the required number of airframes unrealistically low(thus making the F-35 look more competitive price-wise) - then some 10 years from now when that number proves inadequate, you can always cite unforeseen changes in operational needs to justify buying more airframes.....i.e. when the choice of type has long since become irrevocable :) See above :) . I personally never had any doubt that the choice for the F-35 was a foregone conclusion - as far as I was concerned, the only interesting aspect of the selection process was how they would go about making the F-35 look like the "best buy" for a tight defense budget......I guess we know now :D Somehow I doubt Russia cares much about a few Danish fighter jets :)

Have to disagree with you there. The speaker for the Conservative party(which has insisted on more airframes all along) asked the MoD to re-assess the number of aircraft required for maintaining current operational level based on more realistic numbers(Norwegian estimates) regarding annual flight hours per F-35, as well as current working conditions for pilots and ground crews - the answer from the MoD was that the requirement then called for 43 airframes. However, a majority in Parliament(Conservatives excluded) has backed the government's proposal for the purchase of 27 F-35s - so it is official. The agreement has some elastics in terms of the actual number though - after delivery of 21 airframes, it will be assessed whether the aircraft have met expectations/were delivered on time and, based on this, whether to purchase the last 6. On the other hand, it also opens up for purchasing more(than the 27) airframes in case the operational requirement changes later on.

No the centerline station is not "wired" to the WCS, its purely for the centerline tank. The lack of detail is not with the scenarios, but with how the performance of the different candidates are evaluated in them and how they arrive at their conclusions.

I suspect they don't have a crap clue :D No it has 6 weapon's stations - the centerline station is strictly for fuel.

LOL....good one Vincent90. So the scenario illustrates a likely future Danish assault on China.

"...увеличенной площадью крыла"? :) 9.31: Размах крыла: 11.99 м площадь крыла: 43м2 ......такой же, как 9,41

That loadout would require 9 weapon's stations....the MiG-29SMT only has 6 :)

I think the "papa USA" factor is more predominant within the military itself. But then we have a tradition for letting the military itself decide what equipment they want - trusting their professional prowess in making sensible decisions regarding operational requirements, technical capabilities and cost.......which unfortunately has lead to a long list of fiascos :D . Politically the point about buying arms from a fellow NATO country is definitely a factor, but then all 3 remaining competitors fit that bill and, if you read the MoD paper, one of the main points(the only?) in favour of the EF mentioned is the potential for further cooperation with European NATO partners - in particular Germany. However, in regards to the F-35 there is an extra aspect that you forgot to mention - namely that both Denmark and Norway have invested(are partner nations) in the development of the aircraft - which itself casts doubts as to how impartial a tender involving the same aircraft can be. As I see it, the F-35 is the military's choice and in reality already sealed with the decision to become a partner nation in its development, while the tender is just a political requirement rigged to support it no matter what. ....and Dassault, for the same reason, refused to enter to begin with. Maybe the F-35 is the best choice - on the plus side its a generation ahead of the competitors and for a multi billion dollar investment meant to see us through the next 30+ years of fighter requirements, thats a strong argument. But then on the negative side is the uncertainty of buying a non-operational aircraft with a long list of unresolved issues based on that "too big to fail" mantra and lofty predictions from LM(which time and again have proved overly optimistic) with all the possible problems this can entail both concerning final costs as well as operational availability("hangar queen" situation).

F-35 deliveries for RDAF are scheduled to begin from 2021 and be completed by 2027....if all goes well. I think what he meant was that since our F-16s have been pushed to the limit(the selection process has already been delayed by several years beyond what was originally considered to be "in time"), that the choice for the F-35 may lead us to a situation, where we for a period of time have little or no fighter capability available. Whether or not choosing one of the other candidates would speed up the replacement process I don't know - but given that they are already operational, while the F-35 is still under development, there is at least reason to think that it would.

Yeah thats what I thought. Indeed.

According to Luftwaffe, the N019 radar performed well enough in terms of range(may even have bettered the APG-65 in that respect) - the problem in terms of BVR capability was with other aspects of the radar and the short range of the R-27R missile. The Su-27 has more "gadgets in its toolbox", but its N001 is practically the same radar with a larger dish - better range performance, but mostly using the same weapon(R-27R), so calling the MiG-29 a sheep compared to the Flanker is IMHO an exaggeration. The fact is that the Su-27 hasn't been pinned against modernised versions of western fighters, so we really don't know if it would have faired any better against them than the MiG-29 did. The Iraqi MiGs were of the lower spec MiG-29B export version though - yet fewer gagdets and likely also lacking in the weapon's department - did the Iraqis have R-73 missiles or just R-60s?.

Well by the time the Luftwaffe started to operate the MiG-29, their F-4s had been upgraded with APG-65 radars and AMRAAMs. As far as training is concerned - they may have pitted them against each other at times, but they also experimented using them in combination, where the F-4s acted as "mini-AWACS" for the MiGs - i.e. using the APG-65 radar to find the targets and simply radio the general positions to the MiGs. The idea being that while the N019 radar(MiG-29) was more cumbersome to operate in terms of finding the targets, once located, it could see them at the same range as the APG-65(F-4).

Good question :) - but you probably don't need to be that low.

Yes the trick is to stay very low and if possible use terrain to hide :)

While its true that doppler radars filter out slow moving contacts, some radars(at least the more modern ones) can detect helicopters - even in hover - by the echoes generated by the rotating rotor blades. But I don't know if the Mirage 2000C's radar(Thomson-CFS RDI) has this capability. There was a "friendly fire" incident in 1994, in which a USAF F-15C patrolling a no-fly-zone in Iraq accidently shot down two Black Hawk helicopters - one of them with an AMRAAM(i.e. through a radar lock). Sorry for writing in English - my German is horrible :)

Strictly speaking I think the first variant to have a HUD was MIG's own MiG-21-93 upgrade, for which the "93" would denote the year of introduction. IIRC the first Lancer variant(Romanian/Israeli upgrade) came a couple of years later(1995). Photo of MiG-21-93 cockpit attached. The Lancer might be the first MiG-21 variant with a HUD to enter service though. AFAIK India is the only operator of the MiG-21-93(Indian version called "Bison"), which IIRC entered service in ~ 1998.

Design wise they are. Just as the AMRAAM has undergone multiple modifications since its induction, the Russians obviously don't start inducting the original 30 year old R-77 version without modifications now.

Really......thats the argument? Its completely contemporary with the the AMRAAM, which means development in mid to late 80ies with expected IOC in early 90'ies - so closer to 30 years ago, which in turn happened to coincide with the country developing it going bankrupt and falling apart. Subsequently until recently Russia had no money to induct/buy stocks of it nor to build or modify aircraft to carry it.

No but I was responding to King_Hrothgar's post: My point was that we don't necessarily need any new fighter addition to the game for "buddy-to-buddy" refuelling, since the Su-33 has that ability IRL.

Yes it can carry the UPAZ-1K(Su-33 specific variant) "buddy refuelling pack" :). Edit: here is a video showing it: https://youtu.be/vqtiGHSgaeE

We already got one with that ability - the Su-33.

They are, but they were modified and thus have a number of differences(no ECM though) as compared to the original "A", which I believe is what Azrayen was referring to in regards to a G specific pit.

"lock warning" rather - in TWS mode targets are only "illuminated" periodically and therefore their RWR cannot determine whether they have been selected for engagement. When the radar switches to STT, a single target is being illuminated consistently and therefore knows it has been singled out for an attack. "launch warning" is when a missile launch has been detected - although some sources claim that this warning occurs simply when the RWR determines that the received signal strength is such that a missile launch could be imminent(i.e. not that it has actually happened, but just the probability of it), while as mentioned earlier, others claim that the RWR can detect the launching radar starting to transmit radio correction to the in-flight missile. With the recent implementation of the "SNP-2" mode for the MiG-29S, you should be able to engage directly from TWS with the R-77....and engage two targets simultaneously if proper conditions are met. Not sure, but I believe it is. See above. A SARH missile can only be launched from STT and the radar has to transition to this in order to support it at terminal stage of engagement - so if you can launch the R-77 from TWS, it isn't treated as a SARH :)