Netherlands – another chance for Gripen?

Article in defense-aerospace based on Dutch Court of Audit F-16 replacement report contains the following:

– The investment budget reserved by the Ministry of Defence is not adequate to replace the current number of F-16 aircraft (68), never mind to procure the planned number of JSFs (85).

– Setbacks in the development and testing of the JSF have delayed the availability of the JSF by three years. Operating the F-16 with guaranteed technical quality for this period will cost €334 million, according to the minister. A delay of five years would cost at least an additional €180 million.

– The Ministry of Defence will have to apply half its total capital expenditure budget for seven years to order 68 JSF aircraft and for nine years to order 85 aircraft. Given this budgetary impact, it seems inevitable that fundamental decisions will have to be taken on other weapons systems, which might also affect the navy and the army.

– In June, the Ministry of Defence estimated the cost of 85 JSFs at €8 billion. It had reserved no more than €4.5 billion to replace the F-16s. Of this sum, €4.05 billion is still available.

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I see an opportunity for SAAB here

1 Gripen airframe unit cost would be much lower than F-35 (perhaps 50%?). This would limit the pressure to cut army and navy procurement in order to finance air force procurement.

2 Because Sweden has spare Gripens, these could be operated instead of paying 300-500 million euros to extend the use of F-16’s

3 Ongoing costs of operating Gripen would be much lower than F-35

4 Common sense tells one that 4 billion euros only allows for a limited number of any F-16 replacement to be brought into service. If F-35 is chosen, an addtional 300-500 million euros would be needed to maintain use of F-16 until F-35 were introduced.

5 The House of Representatives wishes to take all necessary steps to withdraw from the JSF programme. What are the prospects of the house sanctioning a doubling of the F-16 replacement programme budget to cover F-35 cost?

If Switzerland can get a package for 22 Gripen NG at a cost of $3.1 billion (about 2.4 billion euros at current rates), I don’t see why Netherlands could not get at least twice that number of airframes for 4 billion euros. Add 5-10 airframes if additional F-16 costs can be avoided and that number reaches about 50.

It will be interesting to see how the Netherlands gets out of this corner.