ess (phil hunt) wrote in message ...
On 17 Oct 2003 11:37:20 -0700, Kevin Brooks wrote:
(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
Typhoon has been designed from the beginning as a multi-role
aircraft.

Yes, but it is optimised for being a fighter. An optimised bomber
would look like an A-10 or Tornado.

"Would look like" seems to be rather shaky criteria to me. The F-15E
is most decidedly a muti-role aircraft with a decided strike
orientation--does it "look like a bomber"? Did the F-4? Or the
proabable King of Multi-Role, the F-16? And BTW, that example of
"Tornado" that allegedly epitomizes what a "bomber" should look like?
It too is multi-role--witness the ADF and ECM versions.

It is not a dogfighter. Tornado is optimised for fuel efficiency and
the ability to carry large amounts of munitions a long way.

Whoah. That "optimized for fuel efficiency" Tornado has legs just a
bit shorter than that F-15E I mentioned. And no, it was designed from
the outset as a multi-role aircraft--there was a reason it had the
nomenclature MRCA when it was originally developed.


A-10 is optimised for survivability, carrying a large bombload, and
direct cannon fire at a target.

That makes it primarily a CAS platform. Now why would you expect other
strike platforms to "look like" the A-10? Does the F-111? Or maybe the
A-7? How does a B-58 meet you "looks like" criteria, versus the old
BUFF?


F-16 is optimised for air-superiority. It has a high-performance
engine, is highly maneouvrable, and has a big radar to track other
aircraft. It can do other stuff, but that's not its primary role.

Care to guess what the "primary role" of the F-16 is, and always has
been, within the USAF (with the sole exception of the ADF variant)?
Yep, that's right, it spends (much, much) more of its time concerned
with BAI/CAS/SEAD than it ever has the air superiority role. At the
very beginning of the development program it was envisioned as
primarily being a lightweight air superiority product, but that
changed while it was still in early development and before it ever
entered into US service--it went multi-role rather early in its
gestation.

Brooks