In message , Scott Ferrin
writes
My mistake, I should have said "one-half"- my apologies.


The mistake you and many others keep making is that you keep trying to
compare apples to oranges. The F-22 is in a league of it's own. It's
a Ferrari in a world of Mustangs and Cameros.

Which is part of the problem. The requirement is to be "significantly
better than the threat": the F-22 may be a Ferrari, but the Eurofighter
is a Porsche. Both leave the competition behind, but one costs over
twice what the other does. Once you've won, "winning more" doesn't help
that much: what do you do, go back and strafe the wreckage?

Your Eurofighter isn't a stealth aircraft.

'Reduced RCS' rather than stealth. (Of course, emitting is still a
problem for the F-22 if it wants to stay unobtrusive)

Your Eurofighter doesn't compare in the sensor department.

True - it's got PIRATE, the F-22 lost its IRST as a cost saver. Be
interesting to compare countermeasure suites, too.

Your
Eurofighter comes up short in the speed department

Where, precisely?

and a plethora of
other areas.

Where does the Eurofighter lack against the current and projected
threat? (Unless you're saying you're going to export full-spec Raptors
to hostile nations...)


On the other hand, it's a lot more flexible. (Well, you *can* hang all
sorts of external ordnance on a F-22 - once it's been through clearance
trials - but there goes the stealth). It's demonstrating excellent
reliability: the ground staff at Warton have allegedly been complaining
that they usually catch up on the flight-test data while the aircraft
are downed, but the Typhoon doesn't break much and is quickly fixed when
it does.

And for a given budget, you can get roughly twice the Eurofighters for
the same force of Raptors: which is important, because both aircraft are
"much better" than the current and projected threat, but numbers end up
counting. Can't attrit an enemy raid if there's no CAP available to hit
it.

Have any F-22s been over Sweden lately? I bet an old Viggen could down
a Raptor!!!

LOL!! The Viggen lost out to the F-16 for the European sales so I
guess nobody else agrees with you.

Sweden had a very restrictive arms export policy, which was one of
several factors. They teamed with BAE to sell Gripen for just that
reason. (The Viggen's a solid aircraft, with some advantages over the
F-16A it was competing against, but some drawbacks too. And the F-16 was
and is a very good aircraft, though sometimes much maligned by the
US...)

--
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar I:2

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk