I'll gladly elaborate, but first lets do a review:
You said the 5th generation has never seen combat-- that was false.
You said that anything the 5th generation could do, the 4th generation could do too-- this totally subverted your own original argument of the need for Gen 4.5 aircraft at all
you made a glib comment about the UK's next gen fighter being unccessary since the F-35 is awesome-- yet the purpose of the next Gen fighter is to replace the Typhoon, not the F-35
You claimed the F-35 was Superior to the Rafale -- this was TRUE. but
You then said the F-35 cost more-- this was demonstrably false.
I feel its important to bring up these points as you seem to post with some kind schizophrenic style and can't even keep track of your own claims. so lets begin again now on this small subject shall we?
wil59 wrote: Now the F-18 surpasses the Rafale! Um, can you elaborate?. There is one thing you can do, look at the testimonies of the F18 pilots who have done exercises with the Rafale on American carriers, you will see that they do not have the same opinions as you! While trying to minimize things, pride obliges!
I really don't care about pilot testimonies. I think at best they're guidelines. and should always be taken with a grain of salt. You seem to put a lot of stock into them so thats great. unprofessional but great. we also have pilots who consider the Rafale Underpowered, but lets not talk about that.
And I will remind you that even if the F-18 super-hornet was better on some things and worse on others, the prototype Rafale released in 1991, the prototype super-hornet made are first flight in 1995, so 2 planes from the same decade, so I have no problem with that.
I have no idea why this is relevant at all.
Despite this, I sincerely believe that the Rafale is superior to the f-18, more versatile (omnirole for Dassault determination) and sharper in dog-fight, with its aesa and Meteor combined this must give it an AA air superiority. And I could associate nuclear capacity as well.
if you check the stats of the legacy hornet vs the Rafale vs the Super Hornet, the Rafale and Legacy hornet match up extremely closely. so in terms of a lot of physical performance the Super Hornet has far more capacity this directly translates to more versatility with ordnance, range, and mission types. The Super Hornet also has the dedicated Growler EW version. The Super Hornet has many classified systems and other aspects that the Rafale lacks. (you can see the Canada competition for an example of this) I'll gladly conceede the Meteor is a great missile, but the Rafale is still closer to the old legacy ybug the USN has shed itself of. in the meantime the Super Hornet has an air to air kill with the boring old AMRAAM. and this is before getting into the Super Hornets impressive high AOA and control-ability
The Super Hornet/Growler has had far far more example produced and notable export success. The simple fact is that the super hornet does more, in great numbers and is the backbone of the USN. It fills a much larger perfromance "box" than the Rafale, even if the Rafale outclasses it in very narrow aspects in very specific examples. The Super Hornet simple does more, with more versatility. So when everyone is comparing what the Super Hornet can do better than the legacy hornet in terms of fuel and capacity etc, we also know with the Rafale and Legacy hornet so close in weight, loadout capacity, bringback capacity (one of the big objectives of the Super Hornet) and a host of other metrics its thus superior to the Rafale. in fact if the USN was offered Rafale as the Legacy Hornet replacement rather than the Super Hornet, Rafale would be quickly rejected. Its simple can't do the things the Super Hornet improved on. Again compare the stats of the 3 airplanes. You'll quickly see the occasional kilo for kilo similiarity between Hornet and Rafale, and the the SH outclassing them both
oh and as for the nuke LOL, its very funny to hear you say you don't need something like the F-35 since there aren't S-400s everywhere and then jump to nuclear weapons. Do you see what I mean about schizophrenia? Nobody needs to worry about S-400s, but Nukes are critical. Well Wil59, are we more likely to be encountering advanced SAMs or launching Nukes? I'd love to know.