European 5th Generation Fighters

[fylr71]

For the most part European air forces have yet to even begin a project for a 5th generation fighter. They have just concluded programs for 4.5 generation fighters (Rafale, Gripen, Typhoon) there is not even something on the drawing board. The exception to this are the countries that are equipping there air forces with the F-35. Right now that is just Britain, Italy, Holland, Turkey, and likely Norway, and Denmark the other European contributers to the program have the F-35B in mind to use for their navies. As good as the current generation of fighters (Rafale, Gripen, Typhoon) are, they lack the defining measure of a fifth generation fighter: Stealth. China (J-XX), India (MCA), and Russsia (PakFa) all have plans for fifth generation fighters to go into service in the next 10-15 years. Granted they will probably be inferior to western 5th generation fighters they will almost certainly be superior to 4.5 generation fighters from Europe.

Aircraft Odds vs.
Su-35
Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor 10.1:1
Eurofighter Typhoon 4.5:1
Sukhoi Su-35 'Flanker' 1.0:1
Dassault Rafale C 1.0:1
McDonnell Douglas F-15C Eagle 0.8:1
Boeing F/A-18+ 0.4:1
McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C 0.3:1
General Dynamics F-16C 0.3:1

If these are the odds against a 4.5 generation fighter like SU-35 something like PakFa will certainly be superior to that. My question is why haven't the Europeans notably France, Germany, and Spain, failed to plan a fifth generation fighter?

 

[rjmaz1]

China, Russia and India will not be producing a 5th generation fighter, at most they will be similar to a eurofighter, which is still exceptional. I highly doubt we'll see an F-22 class fighter from anyone in the next 20 years.

The F-22 airframe is as good as it gets, you cannot improve on perfection unless there is a breakthrough in propulsion technology. Sensors can always improve and the F-22 will always remain ahead of the enemy.

Just like putting a F-15A up against an singapore F-15, the current E version would easily acheive a 10:1 kill ratio using a similar airframe. Mid life upgrades means that a F-22 in 20 years time would most likely acheive a 10:1 kill ratio against the current F-22 we have flying now. E.g twice as much radar range, longer range missile and improved ECM.

This same process will happen with the Eurofighter, more powerful radar, engines and ECM will see it remain as one of the best interceptors

The next european fighter will be unmanned. The Eurofighter will be the last manned fighter just like the F-22 will be.

 

[Archer]

China, Russia and India will not be producing a 5th generation fighter, at most they will be similar to a eurofighter, which is still exceptional. I highly doubt we'll see an F-22 class fighter from anyone in the next 20 years.

The next european fighter will be unmanned. The Eurofighter will be the last manned fighter just like the F-22 will be.

India is currently interested in making a JSF class fighter with Russia. Russia is interested in making a F-22 class PAK-FA. And it could be on offer to India as well. Whilst these aircraft may be inferior to the F-22/JSF, they could well be superior to the EF/ Rafale- which are basically 4.5 gen and dont have all aspect stealth, but merely RCS reduction measures.

The UK is interested in a future 5th gen program via its FOAS..EADS has presented papers on a EF successor, albeit with strike as its primary mission.

 

[ajay_ijn]

India is currently interested in making a JSF class fighter with Russia. Russia is interested in making a F-22 class PAK-FA. And it could be on offer to India as well. Whilst these aircraft may be inferior to the F-22/JSF, they could well be superior to the EF/ Rafale- which are basically 4.5 gen and dont have all aspect stealth, but merely RCS reduction measures.

The UK is interested in a future 5th gen program via its FOAS..EADS has presented papers on a EF successor, albeit with strike as its primary mission.

other than India, Nobody is interested to tie up with Russia for the Next Generation Fighter program, even china rejected joining their program.
Nor Mig or Sukhoi have the money to invest in this project.
India cannot fund that much amount of money on thier own.

Russians used the money they got from selling Su-27/30 in developing TVC and experimental fighters like Su-47 etc.
Not many countries are interested in buying Russian Fighters in Large Numbers including India.
Fifth Generation fighter development needs Atleast 20-30 Billion Dollars.
who is gonna give them that much money.

One thing is Sure, Russians in no way can develop a Fighter like F-22.

The bottom line is, The more Stealthy the Fighter is , The more Research and funding is needed.

who is gonna give them money??

If India got doubts that Collapse of Russian Aviation Industry is inveitable, Then She will immediately switch to European Market.

 

[TrangleC]

This whole "stealth = 5th generation, no stealth is 4.5th generation" talk is pretty senseless in my eyes.

There is no 4.5th generation. There was a 4th generation and now there are new models and so they naturally are the 5th generation.
Just because they have no stealth characteristics, doesn't mean they are more primitive than the F-22 or the F-35.
The electronics and avionics of those machines are just as sophisticated as the ones in the F-22 and F-35.

Not implementing common (by now *) stealth technologies is rather a choice than a incapability. Or do you think the engineers who designed the Typhoon, the Rafale or the Gripen are just too stupid to develop something like the F-22? Better think again, in that case.
They did design and deliver a system the customers required and would pay for.

With more money and customers who would pay 150 millions per aircraft, they could and would have designed something like the F-22, of course. And if the customers would have been willing to pay 250 millions per aircraft, they would have build something even way better than the F-22.
Would you call this thing a 5.5th generation fighter then?

The Typhoon, the Rafale and the Gripen are comissioned at the same time as the F-22 and so they are the same generation. Just because they are not alike, due to different budgets and requirements of the customers, doesn't make them a different generation.
Not all 4th or 3rd generation aircraft were alike, for that matter.

* EADS is developing it's first stealth aircraft and is pretty much done with that at the moment. The MAKO (http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/mako/) will fly in 2009, i did read. It is just a rather small, light weight fighter and trainer and therefor has no internal weapons bay, but still it shows that stealth aircraft are no magical wonder-technology anymore. Pretty much everybody with the money can build such a thing nowadays.
Or look at how common stealth technology has become in naval equipment. Even small (Denmark) and/or not very famous for their high tech industry (Turkey) countries are building stealth ships now.

 

[ajay_ijn]

so Generation depends on Capability/performance of the Fighter??
Or Development/deployment time line of the Fighter??

but whatever ppl say, F-22 is still unique and will take long long time for any Fighter to match its capability.

No other Fighter is as stealth as F-22 , so we accept that F-22s capability is generation ahead.
If you consider development time lines.
Then J-10, JF-17, LCA are also developed in the same time as Typhoon or F-22.
Does that mean all belong same same generation?

 

[TrangleC]

Of course they do. Look up the meaning of the word "generation" in a dictionary.

The newest VW Lupo and the newest Ferrari belong to the same generation too, although they are hardly compareable.

Just because the F-22 has stealth characteristics and the other models that were designed and comissioned at the same time don't, doesn't mean that it belongs to another generation.

That is just one feature the customers of the Gripen, Rafale or Typhoon just didn't ask for, because they knew it would make it too expensive.
What should that have to do with the generation a design belongs to?

There might be 6th generation aircraft in 10 or 20 years without stealth characteristics if there is somebody who wants to buy them. Maybe anti-stealth technology will be advanced enough to render stealth aircraft useless and all 6th generation models will be non-stealth. Who knows?
So just whether an aircraft has stealth or not is just no credible criteria to determine which generation it belongs to.

There has been a 4th generation and all the designers of the new aircraft models used experiences from that older generation + new research + new possibilities coming from other scientific fields like electronics, mechanics and material science to improve their new designs.

So all those new design naturally are the 5th generation. They just differ because not all the customers can afford to pay as much as a F-22 costs and simply because they have different requirements and aim at different markets. The Rafale is just what the french military wanted, the Typhoon is what it's customers wanted and so is the Gripen.

For example the Gripen is a relatively cheap, very low maintenance and simply uncomplicated system that can start and land and be repaired or re-armed on every road - something the F-22 can't do.
It was build for the export market from the beginning and it has a lot of advantages that would be specially useful for third world customers. It is the Volkswagen Beatle among the newest jets. That doesn't mean that it's designers did create it just because they wouldn't have been able to design a Caddilac like the F-22.

The Typhoon is build for a maximum of flexibility and to carry a big variety and amount of different weapon systems. When the gouvernments that will build it now issued their order, they asked for a multi roll fighter with enough agility to match the MIG-29 and the SU-27 and still enough ground-attack abilities to replace the old Tornado-bombers. And that is what they got.

The french first went along with the Typhoon project, but then decided to go their own way and they got a also very flexible aircraft with carrier-start capability because they needed that to replace the old Mirages and the even older naval aircraft fleet.

All of this designs are just what the customer wanted and they are not "inferior" to the F-22 because the french, swedish, british and german engineers are less capable than the ones working for Lockheed Martin.

Throw 2 billions at a random team of engineers and they will design you a pretty decent aircraft. Especially if they know that the customer will be able to afford to pay more than 150 millions per piece.

It is all just a question of money and the demands and requirements of the customer.

That is why you can't say the F-22 is a generation ahead of the other designs just because it has stealth characteristics and the others don't.
That is just one feature noone asked the european designers to implement.

That would be like saying all mobile phones with a digital camera in them are one generation ahead of all mobile phones without a camera.
Not everybody wants to take pictures with his telephone and that is why still cell phones without cameras are build and will be build as long as people use cell phones.

 

[TrangleC]

but whatever ppl say, F-22 is still unique and will take long long time for any Fighter to match its capability.

There isn't much known about the MIG 1.44 yet, but not only it's designers, but also other people say it already is matching the F-22.
It is just too expensive to be bought by the russian airforce now.

Like i said, stealth technology isn't a mysterious super secret technology anymore that only a few engineers in a CIA guarded secret lab on Area 51 know about.
All you need for that is a little knowledge about electro-magnetical energy, which every single physics professor on every small university of this planet has + a little knowledge about chemistry and about radar technology as such (to know that you should avoid 90° angles, for example) and voila, you got your stealth technology.

Take me for example. I'm just a simple, average engineering student from the south of Germany and even i would know where to get some pretty fine stealth coating stuff from.
A friend of mine works in a small company that produces water heating systems and solar energy panels. They wanted to develop a new solar energy system to heat up water without electric energy. You certainly know such systems that you put on the roof of your home and the sunlight heats up water that flows through tubes. To improve that system they wanted to invent a new material for that tubes and so the engineers of that little company asked students from the university for help and together they mixed a new kind of plastic that was specially designed to absorb a maximum of energy from the sunlight, to pass it on to the water.
Radar rays and sunlight are pretty much the same - electro-magnetic energy - only different in it's frequency. So a material that absorbs a lot of sunlight, also absorbs a lot of other EM energy. We made jokes about coating our cars with this stuff to avoid being caught by the radar traps of the police when driving too fast and the professors confirmed that that actually would work.

What i want to say with that long speech is that stealth technology is "out there" and can be made by everybody nowadays. Even without intending to use it for military purpose. There are many non-military reasons to create materials that absorb EM energy.
If a small south-german company and a few students with a little guidance by 2 professors can do that, the designers of a new military aircraft certainly can find a source for something like that too, without contacts to the secret military labs that build the first stealth aircrafts more than 20 years ago.

If the Russians or the Chinese would be really freaked out by the F-22, they certainly would be able to design a fitting answer to it in relatively short time. (If the MIG-1.44 isn't already that answer.)

 

[ajay_ijn]

Thanks for the explanation.

The Stealth Hype actuallys show how much headache the russian SAMs and their Radars gave to Enemy Airforces.

May be Future Radars would be built to detect any kind of Plane.
And again US needs to develop planes to counter it.
It would be a never ending game of Cat and Mouse.

->In ww2 Allied used Counter measures to fool German Radars, germans immediately countered it.
->Then Planes used techniques like Flying too low to avoid radar, But new radars even made that useless.
->Then Planes used Chaffs, Jammers, Decoys to fool Radar, Even They were countered using ECCM techniques.
->Now Recently The whole Aicraft Design is changed to fool Radar, Including using radar Absorbent material.

If we see all this , Stealthy as Claimed US looks to be just Another technique to fool Radar which will be countered soon by some Counter-Counter measure.



But I have a doubt
US is developing all these planes with so much of money.
Tommorow what if Russians or some other Develop a Cost Effective Technique to defeat all these Stealh Planes????
This is field of electronics, Anything is possible

 

[fylr71]

All of this designs are just what the customer wanted and they are not "inferior" to the F-22 because the french, swedish, british and german engineers are less capable than the ones working for Lockheed Martin.


That's exactly my point. Why do the "customers" not desire stealth?
If the EU had to launch an operation against an enemy with a decent SAM network and that was out of the range of cruise missiles, without American help, they would almost certainly lose pilots. What really increases the price of an aircraft are super-advanced avionics For example Japan's non stealthy F-2 goes for around 100 million dollars.

 

[DarthAmerica]

This whole "stealth = 5th generation, no stealth is 4.5th generation" talk is pretty senseless in my eyes.

There is no 4.5th generation. There was a 4th generation and now there are new models and so they naturally are the 5th generation.
Just because they have no stealth characteristics, doesn't mean they are more primitive than the F-22 or the F-35.
The electronics and avionics of those machines are just as sophisticated as the ones in the F-22 and F-35.

Not implementing common (by now *) stealth technologies is rather a choice than a incapability. Or do you think the engineers who designed the Typhoon, the Rafale or the Gripen are just too stupid to develop something like the F-22? Better think again, in that case.
They did design and deliver a system the customers required and would pay for.

With more money and customers who would pay 150 millions per aircraft, they could and would have designed something like the F-22, of course. And if the customers would have been willing to pay 250 millions per aircraft, they would have build something even way better than the F-22.
Would you call this thing a 5.5th generation fighter then?

Excellent and factually accurate post. Very good. Europes 5th Generation fighter will be the F-35 for most. Eurofighter, Rafale and Gripen are 4th gen and designed to Cold War Specs as are the current US and Russian designs. With the cold war being over and a much more global security situation. Europes next EU built air combat platforms will probably be radically different than current fighters. Restricted basing, anti access threats and economics suggest a heavy emphasis on UAV/UCAV and Cruise missiles and manned platforms with characteristics that are still to be determined as Europe is still establishing its role. Until that time I think Europe is going to stick with phased upgrades to the F-35, Typhoon and Rafale for at least the next 20 years with the gradual introduction of UAVs and UCAVs for specialized roles such as long range ISR, Hunter Killer CAS and SEAD.

 

[TrangleC]

All of this designs are just what the customer wanted and they are not "inferior" to the F-22 because the french, swedish, british and german engineers are less capable than the ones working for Lockheed Martin.


That's exactly my point. Why do the "customers" not desire stealth?
If the EU had to launch an operation against an enemy with a decent SAM network and that was out of the range of cruise missiles, without American help, they would almost certainly lose pilots. What really increases the price of an aircraft are super-advanced avionics For example Japan's non stealthy F-2 goes for around 100 million dollars.

I think in the case of the Typhoon because when they started to design it, stealth technology still was something extremely expensive and secret.
The Gripen is designed for the export market and has to be as cheap as possible with still advanced avionics and a strong emphasis on the easy and low maintenance aspect.
And for the Rafale... since they started to design it later than the Typhoon, stealth technology was at least a bit less secret and expensive and thus the Rafale is a bit more stealthy than the Typhoon.

I wager that it will be possible to simply coat the Typhoon with a stealth material in future improvement steps, just like there is talk about a thrust vectoring system.

But with all the rapid steps the anti-stealth technology is doing at the moment, it is not clear whether classical stealth technology will still be of any use in 10 years.

http://www.janes.com/aerospace/military/news/jdw/jdw060713_1_n.shtml

 

[TrangleC]

Excellent and factually accurate post. Very good. Europes 5th Generation fighter will be the F-35 for most. Eurofighter, Rafale and Gripen are 4th gen and designed to Cold War Specs as are the current US and Russian designs. With the cold war being over and a much more global security situation. Europes next EU built air combat platforms will probably be radically different than current fighters. Restricted basing, anti access threats and economics suggest a heavy emphasis on UAV/UCAV and Cruise missiles and manned platforms with characteristics that are still to be determined as Europe is still establishing its role. Until that time I think Europe is going to stick with phased upgrades to the F-35, Typhoon and Rafale for at least the next 20 years with the gradual introduction of UAVs and UCAVs for specialized roles such as long range ISR, Hunter Killer CAS and SEAD.

Sorry, but i think you misunderstood me here.
I wanted to say that all the new aircraft that came out during the last years and will come out soon are the 5th generation, including Rafale, Typhoon and Gripen.
Like i said, stealth technology doesn't make an aircraft one or a half generation ahead of the others and since the electronics and avionics in all of those aircraft is up to date, they are all 5th generation aircraft.
That is basically my main point during all the postings i made here.

Why should the Typhoon, Rafale or Gripen belong to a generation that was build 20 years ago? Sure, at least in the case of the Typhoon, it's designing started 20 years ago, but so did the F-22.

Actually no other of the new jets than the F-22 is that much of a Cold War design.
That is the reason why the US Airforce will only buy a small fraction of the numbers they originally planned, although they even got more money than they got back then, when they asked for 2000 of them.
It just doesn't really fit into the airforce's doctrine anymore, being a mostly defensive design that was meant to defend US and NATO airspace against large numbers of sovjet fighters and bombers. It's ground attack abilities are quite limited compared to older systems like the F-15 or newer ones like the Typhoon. That doesn't really fit into a airforce that follows the doctrine of "attack is the best defence" and that is why they are only buying a few, although having more money than ever.

Now even the US senate is about to lift the export ban on the F-22 because the US Airforce order will not cover the expenses of Lockheed Martin and (quote: ) "Future sales to the US government are no longer guaranteed."
http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/news/jdw/jdw060626_1_n.shtml

 

[DarthAmerica]

Like i said, stealth technology doesn't make an aircraft one or a half generation ahead of the others and since the electronics and avionics in all of those aircraft is up to date, they are all 5th generation aircraft.
That is basically my main point during all the postings i made here.

I think the misunderstanding is mutual. Where I agree with you is that decimal point generations dont exist. Where we disagree, I think, is that specific technologies determine what generation an aircraft is in. For example, a Harrier with an AESA and new cockpit isnt a 5th gen. It is not that big a deal and we can agree to disagree on the later part.

 

[ajay_ijn]

I found this Source
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0182.shtml

I want to know what parameters indicate the generation of an aircraft, both military and civilian. For example, the F-14 is considered a fourth generation fighter. Can you sort aircraft by their generations?
- M. Nikbin

I believe the motivation for your question is terms like "fifth generation" that have been used in recent years to distinguish fighters from one another. This scheme is not official by any means, and I do not believe it has ever been used to classify other types of aircraft. In tracing the origins of this terminology, I've actually found that it was quite limited in its application. The usage appears to have first appeared in Russia during the mid-1990s when officials were planning a competitor to the American Joint Strike Fighter. New aircraft proposals that might fulfill this need were simply described as "the fifth generation fighter." Though the terminology seems to have caught on in the public media and is often used to classify various generations of fighter aircraft, it is really only limited to the next Russian fighter, whatever that might end up being. In fact, if you search the term "generation fighter", most of the hits refer to the Russian fifth generation fighter.

Later he described about all the Aircrafts belonging to a particular generation
and finally concluded with

Keep in mind that these categories are merely one opinion and are not intended to be official in any way. Also note that it is not always easy to classify a particular aircraft. The long-lived F-4 and MiG-21, for example, could fall under second, third, or fourth generation depending on which variant or upgrade is considered. Nevertheless, we feel that the above list provides a good overview of the evolution of jet-powered fighters that should be useful to those interested in combat aircraft.
- answer by Joe Yoon, Aerospace engineer 27 June 2004

SO it Clearly says its not official and it was all started by Russians.
I did a bit of googling and found out that most of sources point out to Russian Fifth Generation Fighter rathar F-22 or F-35.
But as "Next Generation" generally refers to quantum leap in technology and capability, Everybody including Lockheed began to use it as a part of Marketing Strategy.
Remember the Sukhoi marketing blitz with Su-27 and their versions.
Some say they More Variants than Airframes produced.

As it is not official
Different people may assume in different ways.

But this is what lockheed says
Source

“5TH Generation Fighters represent a quantum leap in air-to-air and air-to-ground capabilities that provide an order of magnitude increase in operational effectiveness over legacy fighters,” said Weiss who spoke with reporters at the Farnborough International Air Show here today. “These capabilities ensure air dominance for the U.S. military and allied joint forces from day one and for decades to come.”

“5TH Generation Fighters are unique and revolutionary aircraft designed from the beginning to integrate a wealth of technologies for the first time into a single platform,” said Weiss. “Advanced stealth, fighter agility, integrated information and sensor fusion and a new level of reliability, maintainability and deployability - all are uniquely found in the only Fifth Generation Fighters in production or development today. These two aircraft are the only fighters that can survive and defeat threats of tomorrow.”

Weiss said numerous analyses of tactical aircraft operations from a variety of government sources have all reached the same conclusions: 5TH Generation Fighters are significantly more effective than legacy fighters in all air dominance mission requirements and are the best value for the money.

 

[TrangleC]

Thanks at ajay_ijn for clearing the whole "5th generation"-thing up.

That way it makes more sense.
While the Lockheed-statement is pretty clearly advertising and marketing.
Since all the new jets are pretty equal when it comes to (quote: ) "fighter agility, integrated information and sensor fusion and a new level of reliability, maintainability and deployability" (in the last 3 categories the Gripen might even be the best of all, still being the cheapest), that leaves only the stealth characteristics and that clearly is not enough to say the Typhoon, Rafale or Gripen are one generation behind the F-22 and F-35.

@ DarthAmerica:
I see.
I too don't think that a single technology (including the stealth technology) determines which generation a aircraft belongs to.
All this new jets were designed and build at the same time, with the same level of high end electronics, materials and avionics available to the engineers to chose from. The choices they made (stealt or no stealth for example) were made according to the requirements and the budget of the customer.
I really don't see how that should make two generations out of them.

But like ajay_ijn pointed out, the whole "generation"-talk is rather pointless anyways.

The original question fylr71 brought up doesn't hit the point.
Because he assumes that the Typhoon, the Rafale and the Gripen (which he calls 4.5 generation) are what they are due to the incapability of it's designers to design something like the F-22 or F-35 and that they might develop this capability later.
That is simply not true.
They just designed and build what their customers asked for and were willing to pay for. That is what engineers do.
From the engineer/designer point of view just throwing together the best and most expensive components you can find on the market and selling the expensive result to a customer who virtually doesn't care for the prize, is the easiest thing to do. Designing a machine that exactly fits the strict requirements of a customer and that creates the best possible performance for a limited prize, is way harder to do.
So the fact that the F-22 has stealth characteristics and is bigger and has a bigger internal fuel capacity and has bigger engines than the european counterparts of the same generation, isn't a result of the european engineers being less capable or incapable to design something like the F-22.

That is why it makes just no sense to say that the F-22 is "better" or "one generation ahead" than the other jets and the europeans have to hurry with developing their own F-22-like aircraft.

It is all just a question of money and demand. You don't invest a lot of money and time into designing a overkill-super aircraft, if you know nobody will buy that thing later.

Even the F-22 is not the absolute maximum of what is possible nowadays. If somebody would be willing to pay twice as much for a fighter jet than the F-22 costs, then somebody would design and sell one that is even way better than the F-22, of course. And that could be the engineers of Lockheed Martin, Boing or Northrob, but it could just as well be european, russian, indian or chinese engineers.

And on the other hand, if in 20 years the USA wouldn't be able to afford something like the F-22 anymore, the american "6th generation" aircraft might look more like the Gripen or the Rafale again, than like the F-22. I mean a design that has to meet the requirements of the airforce, but with a tight budget.

 

[fylr71]

Why should the Typhoon, Rafale or Gripen belong to a generation that was build 20 years ago? Sure, at least in the case of the Typhoon, it's designing started 20 years ago, but so did the F-22.

You make a good point. But when it comes to fighter generations they are generally classified by the level of sophistication. It makes life a lot easier for everyone when a fourth generation fighter is referred to most people will know what type of sophistication is being talked about. Each generation has new something significant that the previous one did not. For the 4th generation the big leap foward was the integration of powerful computers into the fighter. The major leap foward for the fifth generation is stealth.

 

[rjmaz1]

To add more to the mix

If the Europe develop a new Eurofighter that was identical to the F-22 in 20 years time will that make the new Eurofighter aircraft a 6th generation fighter even though its performance is identical to the F-22 which is 5th generation?

From the dictionary.

Generation - A group of individuals born and living about the same time.

That means that all the current aircraft are 5th generation.

However another meaning in the dictionary shows otherwise.

Generation - A group of generally contemporaneous individuals regarded as having common cultural or social characteristics and attitudes: “They're the television generation”

The F-22 has different characteristics and not everything is common with the other aircraft, its more evolved so it cannot be classed as the same generation.

Generation - An attempt to classify the degree of sophistication of
programming languages.:

That would mean the F-22 is more sophisticated so it should not be classed as the same generation.

If you call the Eurofighter, Rafale, Gripen and F-22 5th generation then the JSF should be sixth generation as its development begun after all of the aircraft just mentioned had already begun production.

However the JSF is not 6th generation from a performance point of view, its performance is less than or equal to that of the F-22 which is 5th generation. So its clear that the generation often refers to the advancement of technology not when the aircraft started flying.

Just like the current F-15E is a 4th generation fighter where the original F-15A is a 3rd generation. At what point did it eagle move a generation ahead? with the C model, or when it got advanced radar?

If you go by the year of production like you say does that mean the an upgraded F-15C that is 20 years old is a genaration older than an F-15C that just came fresh off the production line? Both aircraft are 99% identical but 20 years would make it a generation ahead.

I believe the the majority of people in the defence industry take the world generation as the level of sophistication of the aircraft not the time it was made. TrangleC, you can argue as much as you like but you are wrong.

Thus the phrase "its a generation ahead of its time"

 

[DarthAmerica]

I believe the the majority of people in the defence industry take the world generation as the level of sophistication of the aircraft not the time it was made. TrangleC, you can argue as much as you like but you are wrong.

Thus the phrase "its a generation ahead of its time"

The proper american phrase is "ahead of its time". In the industry the most common interpretation of a generation is successor. For example, company a makes platform A. Then at sometime in the future makes a follow on, platform B. A is that companies 1st gen and B is the 2nd gen. Just like your children are your next generation and your grandchildren are the generation after that. Thus its possible, assuming we had the knowledge and funding, for us to all get together and start our own aircraft company and make our 1st generation fighter that exceeds the capabilities of all the current 5th generation fighters. Thats the word "generation" origins with regard to combat jets. Having said that, people have all kinds of personal interpretations. Thats fine too but as you can see from this thread. The other interpretations run into serious logic challenges. Think about it.

 

[ajay_ijn]

The proper american phrase is "ahead of its time". In the industry the most common interpretation of a generation is successor. For example, company a makes platform A. Then at sometime in the future makes a follow on, platform B. A is that companies 1st gen and B is the 2nd gen. Just like your children are your next generation and your grandchildren are the generation after that. Thus its possible, assuming we had the knowledge and funding, for us to all get together and start our own aircraft company and make our 1st generation fighter that exceeds the capabilities of all the current 5th generation fighters. Thats the word "generation" origins with regard to combat jets. Having said that, people have all kinds of personal interpretations. Thats fine too but as you can see from this thread. The other interpretations run into serious logic challenges. Think about it.

You could be right.
But nothing is official, nothing has been said about these generations by Any Airforce.
Next generation just means that "Fighter has improved much upon the present day Fighter in performance terms".
That is only for one Airforce.
Like For USAF, F-22 is generation ahead of F-15s and it will satisfy the needs of USAF better than F-15s did.

USAF might have never said that F-22 is generation ahead of European Fighters because they know that requirements for Europe is different.

For RAF, Typhoon will be generation ahead of their tornados and Jaguars.

For Rus AF, Their 5th Generation Fighter is ahead of present Mig-29s and Su-27s.

But when it comes to international level.
Nobody can accurately claim that a Fighter belongs to certain generation.
Different people have different opinions
hence this argument started.