Following almost 30 years of dominating the battlefield, the era of the F15 Strike Eagle as the aircraft of choice will soon be at an end. Replacing it’s crown will be 3 aircraft from various nations from across the globe – the American F22 Raptor, the French Rafale and Europe’s Eurofighter Tycoon.

Whilst many see the emergence of 3 new faster and more manoeuvrable jets as an effort to advance and level the playing field they would only be half right. These jets will certainly even the sides up – ending America’s domination of the skies through the F15. The fact is, each of the nations has implemented a “weak point” in each of their designs so thus to avoid the problems of an unbalanced unit when their aircraft becomes modelled in computer games.

The American F22 – widely considered the most likely to take it’s predecessor’s crown – may have the advantaged of a lighter mass, higher top speed, greater payload and stealth capabilities but it’s designers have ensured that all of these fantastic features have been balanced by the freak occurrence of randomly dropping out of the sky for no reason.

Whilst many people consider this to be slightly unfair, the designers ensure it will not be and the general coolness of the F22’s striking design will be more than enough to make up for it.

The Eurofighter – likely to become perhaps the most manoeuvrable of the designs through its computer stabilized flight technology – is beset by a “will never actually enter production” flaw. This means that all those who choose to build it in their favour Real Time Strategy game will get their production delayed whenever they get it 80% completed.

Developers have stated whilst the inability to get the plane could prove irritating to any military objective they had intended to use it for, “at least they won’t have to look at it because let’s face it, it is one ugly-ass plane.”

Meanwhile, perhaps the most creative of flaws has been saved for the French Rafale. Whilst not as fast as the F22 or as manoeuvrable as the Eurofighter the Rafale is the only one of the designs to be fitted with a reverse gear. The Rafale has no technical of budgetary flaws.

However, by fitting the planes with French Pilots the developers have ensured the reverse gear will get plenty of use and the planes will never cross the border into enemy territory.