Austria prepares to dump Eurofighter order

Guardian Unlimited,UK ^ | Friday October 6, 2006 | Ian Traynor and Mark Milner

[sukhoi-30mki]

Austria prepares to dump Eurofighter order

· New government to examine 'senseless' deal · British firm insists it is delivering on contract

Ian Traynor and Mark Milner Friday October 6, 2006 The Guardian

Europe's ill-starred fighter aircraft project was facing a further major blow yesterday when Austria's newly elected centre-left government threatened to scrap the purchase of 18 planes. The social democrats made cancelling the €2bn (£1.4bn) Eurofighter order a centrepiece of their campaign and signalled yesterday they would table a motion as soon as the new parliament convenes to bin the contracts. The move would be a further blow to hopes of generating a string of orders from outside the four-nation consortium behind the aircraft - Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy. Saudi Arabia has said it wants to buy 72 aircraft but efforts to sell it to South Korea and Singapore have not been successful. Another customer, Greece, is reviewing its order for 60 aircraft on budgetary grounds.

[winner3000]

Somehow every time I read Euro-anything, I expect it to be the Euro-Appeaser. Somehow the Euro-Fighter is just incongruous.

[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

I was deployed last year to their airbase in Moron

Was the deployment "Moronic?" :)

[JRios1968]

Put the accent on the second O...but yes!

[norton]

EADS is part of the consortium; France is involved.

[MARKUSPRIME]

Eurofighter is an oxymoron,kind of like jumbo shrimp and French bravery.

[bert]

The brass had no confidence in the pi;ots remembering that gear must be down and locked on landing

[MARKUSPRIME]

Give me the F-22 anyday over this rubbish. Hell our legacy fighters with aesa radar and bvr missiles would kick its ass.

[JRios1968]

"Flaps - Check."
"Throttle down - Check."
"Hmmm, I think I'm forgetting something..."
CRUNCHSCRAPETEAR!!!
"The LANDING GEAR!!!"

[PeterFinn]

The major threats to the Europeans are the muslims in their cities. The Austrians wisely realize they don't need 100 million dollar fighters to deal with their most dire threat.

[JasonC]

It's a mirage.

[Tommyjo]

USAF bagged 5 Serb Mig-29s and one combat damaged. The Dutch bagged one Serb MiG-29 during Kosovo in 1999. All downed by AMRAAMs.

[Tommyjo]

The Typhoon's initial air-ground capability within the RAF will be from 2008. The later tranches will have increased capability.

Copy and paste

http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EquipmentAndLogistics/TyphoonTakesOnGroundAttackRole.htm

[sukhoi-30mki]

Well an Indian Mig-29 locked on to 2 aging Pakistani F-16s with his AA-12s in 1999 & chased them off.The pilot even got a medal for it.IOW,we still have to see an equal vs equal conflict within 2 such aircraft.The countries operating their Eurofighters will be more upto date on their aircraft than the Serbs were ever with their Mig-29s
One would have to be naive to think that the AESA radar & IRSTS planned for the Ef-2000 weren't designed from the outset with aircraft like the F-35 in mind.The F/A-22 is in a different league,though.

[sukhoi-30mki]

EADS has many other companies in it,incl. BAE systems & CASA of Spain.The French Rafale has gone against the EF-2000 in almost every fighter contract till now.If anything they'd rejoicing at this Austrian decision.

[Southack]

Bah. Manned fighters, with sole exception of the F-22, are already outdated.

We're flying 1,000 UAV's and UCAV's per day in Iraq alone right now.

A few ancient Eurofighters aren't going to stop a swarm of 1,000 UCAV's from Iran or China or Russia or Turkey, much less multiple swarms of multiple thousands of UCAV's attacking from multiple directions.

[Southack]

"That's the big thing about stealth - not only is it hard for the enemy to find you in the first place, it's very hard for his self-guided munitions to track you."

That was actually true prior to the current generation of video-based targeting in air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles.

Hard to hide from a computer processing your multi-spectrum video image, though.

Likewise, if all of your airfields are being overflown by UCAV's that can stay over the target for 36 hours at a time, landings and take-offs become a bit problematic regardless of your airframe.

[Spktyr]

From what I understand, the video-trackers still aren't reliable enough to put into production and have a nasty habit of homing back on other "friendly" aircraft.

[norton]

Assuming anyone has the command/control/etc to process data in a real toe-to-toe shoot out (the thousands of UAV's from multiple directions noted elsewhere):
sounds like the next one will be a one time "fire and forget", start the war, refuel and rearm as often as you can, and wait to see who 'won' it the next morning.

[Grut]

From what I understand, the video-trackers still aren't reliable enough to put into production and have a nasty habit of homing back on other "friendly" aircraft.

Doesn't matter. If they don't work now they will next year, or the year after that....

[Spktyr]

I don't know - thing is, the enemy would have to visually acquire you first. Might make a good close-in missile, I suppose, but we already have those in the Sidewinder AIM-9X.