Saudis to buy Eurofighter

[Fisher_Gate]

This deal is giving jobs to people in Preston via BAE. The Lancashire Evening Post had it as their cover story, but there wasnt one hint of criticism of the fact that the Saudi regime is one of the most vile dictatorships in the world and is a leading supporter of state sponsored terrorism

So much for local jounralism....

Here's the article:
http://www.prestontoday.net/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=73&ArticleID=1293868

Welcomed by the local Labour Party of course.

 

[likesfish]

well you can't use a typhoon to oppress your own people .
its pretty crap at dropping bombs though you could just fly it over and over you dissdents house that would piss him off.
re saudi's army had a mate who picked up a brand new mp5 dropped by a saudi soldier in his rush to run away from british guns that were shooting at iraq's .
so an ivasion of suadi would take approx 5 hours including a longish lunch BAE run the saudi air force. americans fix all there tanks etc

 

[TAE]

From what I've read, it does have air-to-ground capabilities.

 

[Random]

well you can't use a typhoon to oppress your own people

A strong military does make the saudi royal family more secure. The shiite and the wahabist insurgents in SA will certainly move more towards open confilct, and bombings of areas they take and try to hold will certainly be used.

 

[The Pious Pawn]

Few jobs for some brits ! good show .

 

[mauvais]

What I was meaning is there is or have been bigger problems, like the Hawks to East Timor that were actually used for oppressive means. The Saudis are going to buy jets from somebody, and if it's not us it's the Americans. I'd prefer it if that didn't happen, although these days it doesn't make much difference on plenty of levels.

Anyway I don't see why it's not a good ground attack aircraft; it's a multirole fighter and so if you kit it out with Paveways or whatever, I can't see it being much different from the Tornado/F22/equivalents.

 

[likesfish]

if your calling in air strikes the gigs really up as far as oppressing the people.
time to grab a case of crystal and head for monaco
armoured landovers with water cannon are tools for dealing with internal dissent multirole strike aircraft are not unless its really hit the fan

 

[october_lost]

The state will use offensive weaponry of this nature to project any hostility which would otherwise be against itself, outwards. Surely India and Pakistan are good examples, of states which are using the nuclear power capabilty, as a wedge to stifle the fact that many of their citizens live in complete poverty...

 

[shagnasty]

from what i read the eurofighter as a computer that makes changes every second and the plane is almost to fly without it.if anyone can elaborate on that would be nice

 

[TeeJay]

Let's hope it doesn't run on windows software then.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

from what i read the eurofighter as a computer that makes changes every second and the plane is almost to fly without it.if anyone can elaborate on that would be nice

All (modern) planes need computers to fly them. The eurofighter is no exception.

 

[kropotkin]

My dad works on this at Warton, and was very pleased with the news. I pointed out that dictatorships seem to be big spenders... he bristled, unsuprisingly.

 

[laptop]

All (modern) planes need computers to fly them. The eurofighter is no exception.

But I seem to recall hearing that the eurofighter is different in that it can't be flown manually*. Something to do with the (intuitively obvious) relationship that greater instability implies greater manouverability - if you use a computer to keep it in a pencil-balanced-on-its-point situation, the computer can also put it in any bit of the sky you want rather quickly.

Recent Airbuses are flown by a computer - inasmuch as the controls in normal mode don't set the flaps and throttle and things, they tell the computer what the pilot wants and the computer works out how to do it. But the pilot can disengage the computer and fly by hand - if s/he can remember how...

* I don't exclude the possibility that it can be flown manually at some combinations of speed and altitude. But if those don't include landing speed and 0 metres, you're in trouble

 

[FruitandNut]

About the only fighter better than the Typhoon by any margin is the Raptor, and Uncle Sam is keeping them to himself for now. Not even the UK could get it's hands on that apparently. Something to do with the engine technology that allows it to go supersonic without reheat I believe. My elder son said that it is probably the first time that the Yanks have come out with an engine with any real advantage over it's Rolls-Royce counterparts. Having said that, the US tend to throw a lot more $$$$$$$$ into the R&D.

 

[likesfish]

i belive the F16 was the first fighter plane that was designed to be unstable.
there's no point doing it in a civillian plane they don't need to be able to make pull high g turns etc
if it suffers total electrical failure you eject
but you did the same in an f4 phantom no eletrical power means no hydraluic power your not landing it either.

 

[mauvais]

But I seem to recall hearing that the eurofighter is different in that it can't be flown manually*. Something to do with the (intuitively obvious) relationship that greater instability implies greater manouverability - if you use a computer to keep it in a pencil-balanced-on-its-point situation, the computer can also put it in any bit of the sky you want rather quickly.

Recent Airbuses are flown by a computer - inasmuch as the controls in normal mode don't set the flaps and throttle and things, they tell the computer what the pilot wants and the computer works out how to do it. But the pilot can disengage the computer and fly by hand - if s/he can remember how...

* I don't exclude the possibility that it can be flown manually at some combinations of speed and altitude. But if those don't include landing speed and 0 metres, you're in trouble

Yeah - that's all true. It has a fundamentally and intentionally unstable design for increased agility; the computer does so much work on keeping it level that a human pilot couldn't do the same job manually. There's loads of redundancy - quadruple. There are problems with it but it's all fuss over nothing; these sort of things are hardly insurmountable.

As for comparisons, I think only the F-22 is so unstable but there must be plenty of other aircraft where the bulk of the work is done by computers; I can't imagine weird stuff like the B-2 or the Shuttle for instance, would be much fun to fly manually.

The same doesn't apply to airliners but I guess fly-by-wire has eliminated manual control on a physical level; again there's so much redundancy that it's safer overall.

 

[dylanredefined]

You wont know about the B2 very hush hush i guess youd be right .The shuttle supposedly could be flown manually but by times things had got that bad you really need the right stuff to walk away imho.
Good deal for uk plc pity the saudi governments so crap .

 

[FruitandNut]

from what i read the eurofighter as a computer that makes changes every second and the plane is almost to fly without it.if anyone can elaborate on that would be nice

I would imagine it has a 'commitee' of computers that among other things continually monitor eachother, if the consensus is that one of their number is not up to the job it is closed down while the others get on with things. This system works in some of the latest commercial aircraft.

 

[TAE]

FruitandNut - yeah, many many safety critical systems work by 'commitee'. The same software solution is written by different teams using different approaches and the resulting software packages are then run in parallel, with a kind of voting system.

 

[laptop]

Anyway... I've contributed my bit of technookatugeekery...

Shall we open books on (a) the size of the bung and (b) when it's revealed?

Going by the Tornado contract - with which I believe the courts have still not finished - I'll start with £700M and 2017.

 

[foggypane]

Good idea for the book. How about adding a sweepstake on which ministers, former ministers and senior civil servants are involved?

 

[G. Fieendish]

It seems they're buying them indirectly from the RAF, in that the Saudis will be allocated aircraft from the RAF order, production wise & the RAF will get some of their Typhoons later, but will be more capable...
A similar thing could be happening with regards to the Joint Strike Fighter in that the U.K & Australia "Swap Places" orderwise.....
(It seems that this is becoming a common practice, as the Hungarian & South African Gripen orders are being processed in a similar manner, only from Swedish air force stocks...).