I believe that this “European Crisis” will increase the orders for the F-35s.Lockheed Martin should be very happy over this article. Basically they have no competition.
As an aviation enthusiast, this is not necessarily “good” news.
The F-35 is an overall superior product to the Eurofighter and Rafale. It is more advanced, contains more advanced avionics and weapons capability as well increased low detection properties, and will no doubt be in production and fly longer than either.
The environment has been getting to this point for the last two decades. New airframes and tech, along the current production and development schedule, has been becoming more and more cost prohibitive.
Unmanned airframes have been able to decrease some of the cost in new winged aircraft but not completely negate it.
Sweden is now prescribing a modified Gripen for its next combat airplane. Probably rebuilds of current airplanes. I don’t think it will happen. England, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, etc have not produced requirements for any next generation manned combat aircraft. They don’t know where to go after the EF and Rafale. Russia? The PAK-FA is the only new and producable airframe of any kind that they have created in the last 15 years. And it took everything they had to get it done. No mas.
The dark horse is China. They’ve rolled out and flown the J-20 which is a very respectable sample. The question around the J-20 is whether it’s an air superiority platform or a strike aircraft. The application of stealth and low observables on the airplane is odd. They are making leaps but don’t seem to understand the big picture as most Western organizations do.