The effectiveness of an air superiority fighter relies on the successful combination of a range of design elements including thrust-to-weight ratio, wing loading, avionics and weapons integration.

We have all been around long enough to recognize there is not a single sensor able to turn the night into day, nor a unique aerodynamic design feature capable of ensuring by itself air dominance if implemented. Air Force F-22 Raptors and the German Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons during last year’s Red Flag – Alaska, when Americans said the F-22 performance was “overwhelming” while German said the costly stealth fighter was “salad” for the Eurofighter’s pilots lunch.Īt that time we said that the F-22 tends to lose too much energy when using TV and unless the Raptor can manage to immediately get in the proper position to score a kill, the energy it loses makes it quite vulnerable. To be honest, the points he raises were already discussed in the article about the outcome of the dogfights between the U.S. The Typhoon just doesn’t do that.”Įven if it is a matter of fact that the European top class fighter jet lacks thrust vectoring (TV) our source believes that this is not a big deal. “What the aircraft can do, it’s incredible.

“Raptor has vector thrust: Typhoon doesn’t,” he said. (Image credit: USAF)Īs reported in an interesting Defensenews article, the agility of the American 5th generation fighter plane is among the things that impressed British pilots the most.Īccording to the piece, the commander of the RAF XI Sqn Wing Commander Rich Wells, said: Air Force F-22s are currently operating together in the U.S.: the joint mission started with a training exercise called Western Zephyr and will continue next week at the Red Flag 13-3 at Nellis Air Force Base. Now, the same Typhoon pilot has again chosen this blog (and I’m honored for this) to explain why thrust vectoring, considered one of the most important F-22 features, is not essential when you are involved in an air-to-air engagement WVR (Within Visual Range). But the cooker is pretty much beyond repair.Is Thrust Vectoring really important in air-to-air combat? It depends…Ī couple of weeks ago, an experienced Eurofighter Typhoon industry test pilot wrote to The Aviationist to respond to a Lockheed F-35 test pilot who, talking to Flight’s Dave Majumdar had claimed that all three variants of the Joint Strike Fighter will have better kinematic performance than any fourth-generation fighter plane with combat payload, including the Eurofighter Typhoon. The central heating wasn’t working and the cooker was vibrating and roaring when it fired up.The repair to the heating bit was straightforward enough, even though it’s the second time in less than two months they’ve had to fix something mechanical or electrical. We’ve had the repairmen out so many times I’ve pretty much got them in speed dial, I’m on first name terms with their receptionist/office manager and I know how many sugars the engineer likes in his coffee. We could nearly have bought a new one for the money it cost us the first time it had a catastrophic failure. It is probably significant that Aga has since discontinued the model. In the last couple of years we have had it rebuilt virtually from the bottom up.

And after all, we’d been brought up to think an Aga was the heart of a home. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, an all-in-one solution. It’s a Rayburn Alpha, a brand owned by Aga, and it was designed to act as a boiler and water heater as well as being a range cooker. We had this big beast installed when we did up the kitchen at our house in Suffolk. But it’s turned into the real thing and it doesn’t have a happy ending. It looks quite handsome, doesn’t it, this cooker? When I originally wrote the tag line for this blog, A Suffolk Aga Saga, it was meant as a gentle joke.

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