And the rafale is better. It sells better, too, exports better, has better dogfighting capabilities, etc…
Kind of, Kind of and no. The Eurofighter has the better trust to weight ratio and is more maneuver. Not dogfighting is really relevant anymore anyway.
Also most orders have nothing to do with it’s carrier capabilities.
And once again, not only does Europe need to have aircraft carriers
You can argue for that, but that will be far in the future (if it happens at all). So we can worry about that on the next jet. For now the amount of carriers we do have doesn’t justify the development of a carrier capable plane.
India has aircraft carriers and bought rafales
They have two small ones and we have another couple in Australia (but I suspect they’ll be going for the F-35 on them as well), so it’s actually a tiny market that already has competition. There is plenty of export opportunities for land-based planes.
Kind of, Kind of and no. The Eurofighter has the better trust to weight ratio and is more maneuver. Not dogfighting is really relevant anymore anyway.
Also most orders have nothing to do with it’s carrier capabilities.
You can argue for that, but that will be far in the future (if it happens at all). So we can worry about that on the next jet. For now the amount of carriers we do have doesn’t justify the development of a carrier capable plane.
They have two small ones and we have another couple in Australia (but I suspect they’ll be going for the F-35 on them as well), so it’s actually a tiny market that already has competition. There is plenty of export opportunities for land-based planes.