Chapter 822: French aviation weapons are expensive

Chapter 822 Characteristics of French aviation weapons - expensive

September.

The Farnborough Air Show is really in the countdown to the opening ceremony.

Various aerospace companies have come to Farnborough to participate in this air show.

The Chinese aircraft participating in the exhibition have already arrived in Farnborough, with more than a dozen aircraft.

However, at this time, Yang Ming and Huang Yi came to the French exhibition area.

Dassault exhibition area, Dassault also spent a lot of effort to invest in this Farnborough Air Show.

Dassault is the second largest aircraft manufacturing company in France and one of the world's major military aircraft manufacturers. It has the ability to independently develop military and civilian aircraft.

"French aircraft are expensive!" Huang Yi couldn't help saying.

"French things are not cheap." Yang Ming smiled.

France's aviation weapons and equipment are all developed by itself. If the number of equipment is too small, the price will be very expensive. Therefore, French aircraft have always been known for being expensive, more expensive than American aircraft.

This time, Huang Yi and Yang Ming saw fighters such as F1 and F2000.

In the past, the French had promoted the Mirage 2000 fighter to China. At that time, after the test flight, the Chinese pilots believed that the Mirage 2000 fighter had excellent performance, and the J-7 fighter and J-8 fighter had no chance in front of it.

The Mirage 2000 fighter is indeed a fighter with good performance, but the French fighter is very expensive.

The price asked by the French is enough for China to purchase American aircraft.

So far, China has not introduced French fighters.

Now China has successfully developed its own J-10 fighter and J-11 fighter, two third-generation fighters, and it is naturally impossible to introduce Mirage 2000 fighters.

As for the Mirage F1 and Mirage F3 fighters, China is even more unwilling to look at them now.

The Mirage F1 fighter is one of the few conventional layout design fighters of Dassault. The performance of the Mirage F1 fighter is very suitable for ground support missions at low altitude and low speed. It was developed by Dassault in the 1960s and 1970s to replace the Mirage III.

In the 1960s, the French Air Force asked Dassault to develop a new generation of aircraft. At that time, Dassault had three plans, namely the conventional Mirage F1, the two-seat F2 and F3, and even a Mirage G, which is a variable-sweep wing fighter. It was to prevent the Mirage G from being cancelled that Dassault developed the Mirage F1.

Later in 1965, the Mirage G variable-sweep wing fighter equipped with a Pratt \u0026 Whitney/Snecma TF306 turbofan engine began to be developed.

But in the end, the Mirage G was still cancelled. In that era when variable-sweep wings were popular, the French's first variable-sweep wing fighter was not mass-produced in the end, but some test flight subjects were completed.

Later, the French Air Force decided to purchase the Mirage F1 fighter to replace the Mirage III fighter. This conventional layout fighter is also a single-engine, single-seat light fighter with a length of 15.2 meters, a wingspan of 8.4 meters, a height of 4.5 meters, a wing area of ​​25 square meters, an empty weight of 7.4 tons, a maximum take-off weight of 16.2 tons, a maximum flight speed of 2.2 Mach (high altitude), a service ceiling of 20,000 meters, a range of 3,300km, a climb rate of 213m/s, and a wing load of 456kg/m2.

Mirage F1 fighters have participated in the Middle East battlefield, the Iran-Iraq War, and the Gulf War.

Although the Mirage F1 fighter has good performance, it is still a second-generation aircraft after all, similar to the J-7 and J-8 fighters.

But you have to know that the latest improved versions of the J-7 and J-8 are already second-generation and a half fighters.

Huang Yi and Yang Ming were not surprised by the Mirage F1 fighter, and their eyes were on the Mirage 2000 fighter.

The Mirage 2000 fighter is a single-engine light fighter. This aircraft is a third-generation fighter developed by the French Dassault Company in the 1980s after the Mirage III and Mirage F1 fighters. It is a multi-purpose fighter and has been in service in the French Air Force since 1984.

The Mirage 2000 fighter has advanced technology and is one of the few fighters in the world that is completely not "inherited" from Soviet and American technology.

The Mirage 2000 re-uses the tailless delta wing aerodynamic layout of the Mirage III to give full play to the advantages of the delta wing's low supersonic drag, light structural weight, good rigidity, low flutter at high angles of attack, low wing load, large internal space, and large oil storage. However, under the conditions of technological development, some limitations of the tailless layout have been solved. The main measures are the use of advanced technologies such as fly-by-wire control, relaxation of static stability, and composite materials to make up for the limitations of this layout. There are small side strips near the leading edge of the wing next to the air inlet, and the side strips have obvious dihedral angles.

Compared with Mirage III, Mirage 2000 has a 10% lower wing load, a 15% larger wing area, a 20% lower approach speed, and a climb rate that is twice that of Mirage III. Due to the extensive use of carbon fiber and boron fiber composite materials, the weight of structural components is reduced by 15-20%. New technologies such as fly-by-wire control, relaxed static stability, and composite materials are used to improve aerodynamic characteristics and flight performance, and new engines are used to increase endurance.

Of course, the French are now hyping a concept - medium-sized fighters.

In the past, fighters were mainly divided into heavy fighters and light fighters.

However, in recent years, because the take-off weight of fighter jets varies greatly, the term medium fighter jets has been mentioned more and more. Although there were medium fighter jets in the past, they were not mainstream.

According to the current concept of medium fighter jets, the so-called medium fighter jets refer to fighter jets with a take-off weight between light fighter jets and heavy fighter jets.

The outstanding features of light fighter jets are low cost, easy maintenance, and mass production, but the performance is often not ideal.

The outstanding features of heavy fighter jets are excellent performance or even "all-round", but the cost is high, the maintenance work is complicated, and it is not easy to be equipped on a large scale.

The medium fighter jet is between light fighter jets and heavy fighter jets. Under ideal conditions, the cost of medium fighter jets should be much lower than that of heavy fighter jets, but the restrictions on take-off weight and body capacity are much less than those of light fighter jets. It should be "performance close to heavy fighter jets and cost close to light fighter jets".

Then according to the current classification, the third-generation fighter jets in the world are either medium fighter jets or heavy fighter jets.

For example, the F14 ‘Panda’ fighter, F15 fighter, F18 carrier-based aircraft, Su-27 fighter, MiG-31 fighter, and J-11 fighter belong to heavy fighters.

And the other third-generation fighters currently available, such as the F16 fighter, J-10 fighter, MiG-29 fighter, and Mirage 2000 fighter, are all medium fighters.

Look, it’s just nonsense.

For example, the F16 fighter used to be classified as a third-generation light fighter, but now some professional military magazines have begun to classify the F16 fighter as a third-generation medium fighter.

But no matter what, the Mirage 2000 belongs to the third-generation fighter, and it also has its advantages.

But when you think of the price of the Mirage 2000 fighter, which is now as high as 50 to 60 million US dollars per unit, you can't help but smile bitterly.