Franco-German next generation fighter

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13 years 1 month

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Speaking at the IQPC International Fighter conference in Berlin the week prior to Parly's pronouncement, senior military sources from both countries as well as Spain, which is set to join the effort later this year, said that they are currently engaged in their own national studies, and that these studies will be coalesced into a single solution over the coming years.

https://www.janes.com/article/84738/france-and-germany-agree-next-gen-fighter-design-studies

One more partner nation to join.

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17 years 11 months

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With regards to Spain, most announcements said they would join in "observer" role.

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16 years 7 months

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"With regards to Spain, most announcements said they would join in "observer" role."

The Spanish already have an "Observer" status inside of the program, if they maintain that particular role or they join has a full member is not yet on the public domain. With Airbus pushing for an active Spanish involvement i suspect that Spain will indeed join the program.

ps - Just noticed post 78, thats pretty much official, the Spanish are in (and the F-35A might just have lost a possible client)

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"I personnaly much prefer Dassault and Airbus designs (which are sleek) compared to the Tempest in its current form which seems overweight and more on the strike fighter side of things like the F35."

The three designs look positively like siblings, all the three are deltas, with a massive wing, twin engined, (almost certainly) a great big internal bay between the engines, side intakes, strike fighters, having roughly the same size.
Dassault, BAE and Airbus produced three designs with an awful lot of similarities between them, cant fail to have a "deja ju" right into the eighties.

Cheers

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9 years 9 months

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Well, as we had somethings called Eurocanard, we would have probably also a sort of Eurosixth design (or even a Westsixth given that also US ones seems quite similar, focusing into the reduction or eliminations of protruding control surfaces).

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12 years 3 months

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Once again, I doubt that the RCS targets are the same. The 6th gen ambitions on the US side are solids and probably restrictive to the point of not allowing any "protruding [...] surfaces".

This is where the lack of verticals on the Franco-German design could backlash on those that made such choice à la légère*.

*lightly

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ATM all projects are at a such initial phase that what we may get from the images shown and even from the mock ups are just a very general impression, surely the search for a multiband stealth coverage needed to deal with systems like NEBO-M would influence greatly all those western new gen fighter designs,
The great expertise with true Deltas (not just looking to actual full canard-equipped ones but previous models) would surely help a lot european producers on that regard (and hamper Russia instead).

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19 years 9 months

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Agree with that. I guess the F3R will be one of the first to field such a EW system on frontline units with deliveries due to India and French air force ?

On a fighter probably yes but very close behind would be the F-15 followed by the Gripen. Excluding the EA-18G here because that is a totally different EA role. It is also believed within industry that the baseline 2 block 35 EC-130 upgraded to GaN as part of its wider modernization of the non Comms EA capability. Given that most of its upgrade package is classifed a direct confirmation is unlikely though BAE systems, its mission system supplier confirmed back in 2015 while referring to the EPAWSS that they were already "deploying this technology on other programs", and the baseline 2 CC was the only BAE program which was being deployed at the time by USAF units which could have included these upgrades.

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[B-21] is sort of the USAF’s own FCAS so to speak.

I am not sure if this is quite relevant, even, in the context of the paragraph (connected with 5th gen assets). FCAS is a maneuvering system built on platforms operating on a dynamic situation at the tactical level that will be always compromised de facto by this mission.

B-21 is an intercontinental bomber built to be the VLO platform of the 6th generation. It can't be a FCAS and the latter can't reach per definition what the Raider will be. They are totally segregated in term of service expectations and performances.

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As a SOS concept to achieve effective air-superiority the B-21 is not the right program to point out although it is designed around that concept. The more accurate representation of that effort in the US would be the collection of programs that loosly fall under the Aerospace Innovation Initiatives and how they transition between DARPA and the individual services. Things like the transition of technology demonstration of MALD-X to MALD-N which is now a Navy program, to the DARPA demonstration of Gremlins planned for next summer, to the successful completion of Phase-3 trials of DARPA's Code which is focused exactly on this. These are actual programs with actual hardware in different states of maturity, demonstrating capability meant to transition to the operator in the near to mid term. Collectively you are looking at a 5-year (FYDP) funding in the range of $15-20 Billion (not counting B-21 or the propulsion programs which have had billions invested since 2008) if you add all these things together and they loosely fall under the purview of Harry Berman and DARPA's APO.

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6G fighter, 6G bomber and 6G Unmanned are three separate things. unmanned by definition for loitering like flying wing design. 6G fighter fly at higher speeds near the edge of space.

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Interesting sentence from the Gal in charge of SCAF in France : consider Scaf as a operating system and components of the system as apps.
About the platform, one of the challenges is to make a tailless supersonic plane. Probably flow controls.

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12 years 3 months

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Currently there are two projects that aspire to be the eurocaza of the 21st century: the Franco-German program and the British Tempest, to which the Netherlands and Italy have joined. From the Ministry of Defense is convinced that both programs will eventually merge, given the huge investment that requires its development.

Despite this, and with the interest to participate in the project from its initial phase, Spain has decided to join the project of Paris and Berlin.

Interesting (seems to confirm the Italian and Dutch participation in the Tempest program and foresee a merge of the two teams) as I understand that this comes directly from the Spanish MoD!

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16 years 7 months

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Hallo, the source is the Spanish MOD proper, i´ve linked it directly to the official note.

Tom, the Dutch "contribution" for the Tempest program is a pair of hundred million Euros in R&D, its a two part "lip service" to the idea of "European Defense" and jockeying for industrial output, they do not plan to acquire whatever comes out of it, the Italian bit is more substantial, Leonardo through "Leonardo UK" is directly involved and the Italian MOD has already expressed interest, but till now they are not part of it.

Cheers

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