so i know its just a model

but it appears to have thrust vectoring nozzles and two conformal arrays of some kind along its flanks?

or am I reading something wrong

It isnt going to happen - no government will commit to the expense and risk of a navalisation program at this stage in the game.

The only Eurofighter partner nation that requires a navalised Eurofighter is the UK - Germany has no carriers, and Spain doesn't have the right size carriers. France won't buy them as they have the Rafale, China is out of the question and India will go with Russian and Chinese equipment.

In order for the UK government to go with a navalised Typhoon, it would mean cancelling the JSF buy, which will ultimately mean dropping one or other of the JSF variants (VSTOL or CATOBAR), both of which have a huge primary customer (USN and the US Marines, who will be buying a lot) which has a vested interest in making sure the program succeeds.

In place of the dropped JSF buy, we would be buying into a program which has ... no huge primary customer (the Royal Navy would buy 50 maximum), little export market and significant costs and risks involved.

No government is going to sign off on that - the alternative to the JSF is never going to be a Eurofighter, its going to be a Rafale or Super Hornet buy.

It wouldnt make sense. The JSF is stealth, which by the looks of it, all 21st century fighters are going to be. The typhoon is an older concept from a bygone era. It would be utterly useless against advanced fighters/air defenses of the 21st century.

Originally posted by Janky
It wouldnt make sense. The JSF is stealth, which by the looks of it, all 21st century fighters are going to be. The typhoon is an older concept from a bygone era. It would be utterly useless against advanced fighters/air defenses of the 21st century.

The stealth capabilities of the JSF was not a consideration in the British evaluation the first time around, as its costly to maintain (even though the F-22 was supposed to be a step beyond the F-117 and B-2 in maintenance of stealth, it is still hugely costly and the JSF uses the same techniques) and only useful in certain scenarios - so it is unlikely to be considered if the JSF purchase was scrapped and something else procured in its place.

Oh, and a non-stealth platform would be far from "utterly useless" in the 21st century - its a defensive capability, and the Eurofighter is built with reduced frontal cross section in mind, so its at a reduced risk already from the primary component of BVR engagements.

Initial strikes against a hostile countries air defences (SEAD operations) can be carried out by stand off weapons such as the JSAM, Storm Shadow and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile - they can open the door as well as any aircraft these days (and did in Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraq invasion), without putting any pilots at risk.

Note that the Typhoon and the Rafale have been shortlisted for the In AF fighter deal, thus improving(?) the chance of both being investigated as an option for the In Navy. The Rafale is for CATOBAR only as of now while the Typhoon is envisioned as STOBAR. However the Rafale has many years of operational maritime experience, while the naval typhoon is only a proposed option as of now.

'Stealth' will be largely useless in about 10 years.

The US tipped their hand to early with the stealth bit. They covered all of the major expense and the testing...all so other countries could develope technology to track it.

IE: IRST

Given time, IRST will be good out to the same range as X band radar (what stealth is meant to defeat). As soon as that happens stealth is gone. There is no known way to hide a planes heat signature, you can reduce it, but not eliminate it.

Why do you think the US put so much emphasis on super-cruise, ultra high AoA, and ridiculous manuevaribility into the F-22? If they thought 'stealth' would last, they wouldn't have bothered designing a plane that could more than hold it's own without stealth.

Originally posted by Daedalus3
Note that the Typhoon and the Rafale have been shortlisted for the In AF fighter deal, thus improving(?) the chance of both being investigated as an option for the In Navy. The Rafale is for CATOBAR only as of now while the Typhoon is envisioned as STOBAR. However the Rafale has many years of operational maritime experience, while the naval typhoon is only a proposed option as of now.

The Typhoon isn't going to be selected by the Indian purchase in a month of sundays.

Originally posted by peck420
Given time, IRST will be good out to the same range as X band radar (what stealth is meant to defeat). As soon as that happens stealth is gone. There is no known way to hide a planes heat signature, you can reduce it, but not eliminate it.

Uhm, you do realise that "stealth" doesn't eliminate radar return either, it reduces it? So what you suggest is the future for IRST is already the situation for stealth features.

There has never, ever, in the history of combat been an all-winning, all-powerful, undefeatable technology that has survived the march of time. Speed and altitude didnt do it, and they were the holy grail of the 1950s. Manoeuvrability didn't do it, and that was the holy grail of the 1970s and 1980s. Stealth won't do it, being the current holy grail. And infrared scan and track technologies won't do it either.

Having said that, IRST is at a disadvantage next to radar - there are no known natural sources of electromagnetic waves that give a constant, undefinable interference in the radar system, while with IRST there are millions of them in the environment that have to be handled as junk and searched through.

Its also quite possible to do a "stealth" on IR sources - you reduce them, as you suggest, and IR becomes much harder to track over greater distances anyway. So you take your hot engine exhaust and you manipulate it by spreading out its heat signature over many frequencies - there are plenty of existing, known ways of doing that at the moment.

Military technology developers are not looking for something to be the be-all end-all everlasting solution, they are looking for technologies that will give them a temporary boost over their rivals - they know their technologies are on borrowed time from the moment they are developed, and they work with that knowledge.

Its also worth noting that even with stealth technologies, the biggest thing that comes into play is tactics - even the B-2 couldn't just fly into Soviet airspace and drop its weapons undetected, it used tactics to employ its stealth capabilities to the best effect. Knowing that the B-2s stealth capabilities are not the ultimate protection, planners had to create specific routes for the aircraft which took advantage of the fact that the stealth abilities reduced the enemies radar coverage, BUT DID NOT ELIMINATE IT! They had to fly through the newly created dead zones of radar coverage where radar sites effective range was decreased.

And guess what - they had to update this planning constantly as the Soviets moved radar sites around, switched bands and upgraded equipment. Stealth was not the silver bullet, but it did improve matters.

And the same will be true of IRST and the technology after that.