"Ultimately, the Harrier will be replaced by the Future Joint Combat Aircraft (aka the Joint Strike Fighter), due to enter service in 2012."

Who are you trying to kid?! The Typhoon was and still is well behind deployment with the RAF suddenly discovering that they're going to have to hold on to the Tornado F3 and GR4 for a few years yet ....... but have crew to fly them. Oops!

There's more chance of me winning Ironman UK than there ever is of the JSF making it to the line on time.

Still a damn good buy from eBay. I wonder what the spares market is like for them?

Tim, I believe the JSF replacement refers to the VTOL version of the F22 Raptor, not the Eurofighter Typhoon.

RE: Yeah, right .....

You have got the JSF mixed up with the Typhoon. The Eurofighter project is well behind and dated now where as the JSF project which is the Americans current replacement. The JSF has several iterations including a VTOL capable aircraft basic stealth capabilities along with Supersonic flight. The Typhoon is a multi role fighter bomber but predominantly a ground attack aircraft. My information might be a little old but the Typhoon is definitely not the Joint Strike Fighter which the UK is purchasing several aircraft and an obscene amount of money. Check out http://www.jsf.mil/ for details on the Joint Strike Fighter program.

Okay, I must be bored, but just to make this nice and clear for everyone (cause all seem a little confused).

Typhoon is the renamed Eurofighter (It was decided that for export markets the name Eurofighter wasn't brilliant. Not sure why they thought it was a good name for internal markets either...)

It is essentially an air-superiority fighter, as befits when it was first specced, and is very good at it, but since A/S isn't such a big thing now, what with the main targets du jour being distinctly ground based, they have 'bolted on' some Ground Attack capability, to make it a bit more relevant.

The JSF is a catch all replacement aircraft for, on our side of the pond, the Harrier, and on the Yank side, the F-18 as a carrier borne aircraft, the AV-8B (harrier variant) for the marines and also whatever it is the Airforce use for G/A.

None of them have anything to do with the F22 Raptor, which is a very expensive air-sup fighter of American origin and unlikely to sell anywhere else given that the a) the Americans don't want to sell it to anyone else and b) each one costs about as much as the entire air-force of most over nations.

Hope thats made everything clear for everyone.

It seems people have misunderstood Tims point. The Typhoon, like a great many large military projects is hugely over budget and very, very late. When the project first began the Typhoon was due to enter service in the early 1990's. Due to the end of the cold war, the complexity of a multi-national project, changing specifications and general overuns that are far too common in these large projects, it is only now beginning to enter service.

The JSF program is 5 years from its delivery date and therefore it is very likely that it will see many delays yet. I would be surprised if we see the JSF in service by 2015 and delays leading to a service entry date of 2018 or later is possible.

I believe he was saying that after if we can't get our scheduled deliveries of a plane that is actually being manufactured on time, what hope is there that another new plane will be in service within 5 years.

Part of the reason for the delays to the RAF came about after our Government (having first decided Typhoons wouldn't have to face down enemy fighters, and therefore didn't need those expensive cannon upgrades) inexplicably sold our allocation from the various manufacturing runs of Typhoons overseas.

The bummer about this is that with each subsequent manufacturing run, additional features from a very decent original spec were being implemented as the technology became available and affordable to do so.

F22 vs Typhoon - stupid really, and in terms of fluffy dice, Kev and Debs sun visors, and various other vitally important specs, they appear to be very similar. The Americans stuck on some fancy bits and pieces, but all the really good stuff is available as options on both planes. However in the most important test of all, the European model is far superior.

Typhoon is of course a far superior name. In a real fight, a real Typhoon would beat the pants off a real Raptor. And quite frankly, nothing else matters.

As for the weird decision by the RAF deciding we didn't need more than a few missiles, who can say what they were really thinking. Certainly not that our boys in blueish gray would blow up the enemy from a kagillion miles away with missiles, leaving no one alive to get close enough to dogfight? The point of having bullets is they last longer than a couple of missiles. So ok, if you've only got 2 because some twat decided to fill you up with bombs instead, you're probably dead anyway - but if somehow you do manage to get close enough to kick off handbags, having bullets is way better than trying to spear the other guy with the pointy bit at the front of your plane.

What I really don't understand is why they're bothering with another plane, especially considering it sucks.

JSF is just a bad game altogether. Eurofighter 2000, F-22 ADF and Total Airwar were far superior games, and thus justified being reproduced in real life. JSF sucks the big one, and therefore has no business being made at all.

JSF is STOVL as VTOL will use too much fuel...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iverWHAihaQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv0Ws6BLmO0&mode=related&search=

I seemed to remember having read somewhere that the JSF was found to be too heavy and overweight (not surprising really since its American; think McDonalds and Supersize me) to fly off a carrier so it went back to the drawing board.

So what's with VTOl, STOVL and other alphabet soup ?