Super Etendard Ideas

[FAR148]

land-based Super-Es, possibly with different noses and avionics fits, in service with France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Portugal or any other NATO member. Maybe the RAF could have taken an Avon or Spey-engined version with a UK nav/attack system as a Hunter replacement instead of the Jaguar?

I like this idea.

Test and evaluation

That could be fun


Keep them coming!
Steven L 

[Jesse220]

Why not make it a swing wing fighter?

[Captain Canada]

Finnish. Grey and white and all dirtied up from beating up the sea....

[ChernayaAkula]

<...> or civilian aggressor, like the BAE Skyhawks in Germany?

Oooh! I like your thinking! 

[Geoff]

Anyone with Mirages and a coastline.

[Captain Canada]

Like Geoff said 

[pyro-manic]

Anyone with Mirages and a coastline.

It's not nice, discriminating like that. I know some lovely Swiss people!

[zenrat]

Anyone with Mirages and a coastline.

RAAF then.

[Jesse220]

Do a USAF Etendard

[Weaver]

Anyone with Mirages and a coastline.

Actually, if you've got Mirages and want an Exocet capability, it makes much more logistic sense to buy Mirages with the Exocet/Agave combination: it was available on the Mirage III/5/50 and the F.1. That way, you're only servicing and supporting one airframe type with a variety of avionics fits. The only thing a Super E brings to the party that a Mirage F.1EQ doesn't is carrier capability, and the market for that is very limited.

It would be more likely for Dassault to sell Super Etendards to a customer with a coastline, but WITHOUT Mirages, for whom converting their existing aircraft to carry Exocet would be more trouble that buying a fleet of Super Es. A good candidate might be a former Soviet client that's gone western: the Tu-16 Badgers and their AS-5 Kelts have gone back to Russia with the "mercenary" crews that flew them, so now they need an off-the-shelf anti-ship capability. Another possibility might be a country with American hardware who've been denied Harpoon by the US for political reasons, or with planes like the F-5 or A-4 where adding Exocet capabilty would be complicated and expensive for a small number of airframes.

[Cobra]

The Super Etendard would be More of Use to the US Navy than the USAF, I Could hear some Air Force General ask,"What? use a French Navy Plane for Our Air Force? What were they Smokin when they Came Up with That Idea? Ask The Navy if They're Interested in that Plane." Don't mean to be a Doofus about it. Dan BTW, I Think a Super Etendard in US Navy Markings would be a Cool Profile to see.

[zenrat]

Suely, give the ways of defence procurement, the USAF is exactly where they would be likely to end up?

Might look good with a marines paint job?

[Weaver]

What if the USN had gone with the 1970s idea of small "Sea Control Ships" (i.e. small ASW carriers) but decided that STOVL was unworkable and made them a Clemenceau-sized CATOBAR design instead? If they had, then it might have ended up as a joint project with the bigger NATO nations and that might have lead to France getting the contract for the strike aircraft, so you end up with Super Es in US, UK, French, Spanish, Italian (possibly Dutch?) markings.

[DarrenP]

what if royal navy had kept albion, bulwark and centaur and converted them back to conventional carriers? could Super etendard haver operated of them?

[PR19_Kit]

what if royal navy had kept albion, bulwark and centaur and converted them back to conventional carriers? could Super etendard haver operated of them?

Maybe. The Centaur class ships were only a little smaller than the Clemenceau class, and the Aeronavale operated their SUEs off them satisfactorily.