Ach... Teal Group don't know their arse from their elbow.
I seen something ridiculous coming out of them the other day... if I remember right the company involved came straight out at the Paris airshow and
practically called them a bunch of idiots.
Currently the US and UK are looking at 2,600 aircraft.
The number of fighters each country mentioned by Teal currently has is:
Israel ~380
Korea ~480
Japan ~390
Singapore ~145
Finland ~130
Spain ~ 125
Which is a total of 1,650 aircraft.
Lets assume for the sake of argument that each country is going to replace those on a 1:1 basis... a ridiculous assumption, but we'll run with it
anyway.
Combining gives a total of 4,250.
Additional airforces that have expressed an interest are (with current combat aircraft in brackets):
Australia (~90)
Canada (~100)
Denmark (~60)
Italy (~290 + ~75 Eurofighters)
Netherlands (~90)
Norway (~60)
Turkey (~480)
Or a sub total of: 1170
Again, making the ridiculous assumption of 1:1 replacements gives a final grand total of 5,420
Or still a shortfall of around 10%.
The question must be asked... were the Teal analysts on f**king drugs when they plucked that number from their a**?!?!?
But anyway, I do take your point Fred, a few of us were chewing the cud on this the other day in work, 7 manufacturers:
Boeing
Dassault
Eurofighter consortium
Lockheed
MiG
Saab
Sukhoi
The development costs of a jet are too big these days to sustain 7 manufacturers.
Personally, I can see Dassault and Saab becoming part of the Eurofighter group. The Russians are already looking at merging MiG and Su I think.
Which leaves Lockheed and Boeing.... hmmm.
[edit on 25/6/09 by kilcoo316]

