Which is why the USN has the worlds most powerful carrier fleet and a huge arsenal of cruise missiles.

If you use only carrier a/, it will be a lot harder to overwhelm air defences.
You cannot take out underground nuclear sites with cruise missiles, and the Iranians will be able to match your sortie rate, given that they fight in their own airspace.

A lot has changed in Norway during the last year. The industrial package offered by SAAB to Norway, is seccond to none, and the real reason why Eurofighter pulled its bid.

The f35 is still a real candidate, as Norway values its relations to USA greatly. SAAB offers the best deal by far, and has left the Eurofighter to the spot of an “allso ran”

The most recent development in the saga, is that the Gripen is the loudest of the candidates, and the fighterbase in Bodø must be upgraded to the cost of a bilion euros, to handle noiserequirement issues.

The f35 is being designed to be as agile as the f16, do you really see the f16 outperforming the Eurofighter ?

Its really to bad we have to go over and over on the price of the F-35. Clearly, it is not going to be anywhere near the $133 Million of the Raptor. Especially, considering the vast numbers projected…………Also, with the exception of the Raptor. No current generation fighter will even come close to its capabilities in Stealth, Performance, or Situational Awareness. :diablo:

Performance ? Are we talking about the piglet here ?

So you have no commercial intrests in the Barent Sea f.e.? Neither the USA nor the UK may have any intrest to persue that for free. The P-3C-Su-27 incident and recent training-flights from the long-range-aviation do show, that some credibility in deterrence about that has to be kept. For the less exposed Europeans the F-35 is not in need really. But I give in for the deterrence purpose a small number of F-35 (~20) is enough, when the daily work is done by Gripen (~60).

US and Royal Navy will have every interest, as they will be the prime targets for the North Fleet.

If you look at the Norvegian fleet and the NSM, you will see that its built for littoral operation.

The only exception beeing the Nansen, being built to slot into the Aegis systen.

Fact is: For the price of the F35 we can get the same number of Gripen N + a new sub fleet, aswell as uppgrading our land based assets to deal with the PAK-FA.

The primary role of a gen 5 asset during the first 3 days of a hot war is to eliminate the enemy’s C4I. JSFs will not be tasked with “mano a mano” warfare with Gripens. JSF’s job is to use stealth to slip unnoticed past the DCA, maybe using an AMRAAM shot to mission kill the DCA, and then loft GBU-39s into the enemy’s C4I assets, killing them. The first victims of such an assault would include the GCI radars.

A properly planned aerial assault will always be a one-sided affair with the attacker marshalling forces and concentrating them on a small sector of enemy defenses, overwhelming them. IOW, JSFs will not use “lone wolf” 1 v many tactics of WW1. You don’t fight one bean, you have to fight the whole burrito.

With 4 times the number of Gripens, you have to fight 4 whole burritos. Remember what Comerade Stalin said: “Quantity has a certain quality all on its own”

Who honestly believes the JSF will offer return on todays projected prices ?

Try to get my point guys !

When you buy a new fighter, you are looking for something that will be valid for 20 years or more.

As soon as USAF decided on the F-35, all developments on the F-16 were dead. So, even if the plane is good today, it will not get any better.

The block 60 is allso beside the point, as it cost to much, and hardly on offer to Morocco

Figures? Take a second hand C model and give it RANGR and it would probably come out alot cheaper than you think. Bare in mind that RANGR is basically the Shornets radar resized for whatever platform you choose so most of the development work is already done. Sure they wont get new build block-60s cheap but it should not be too expensive to do very well upgraded used C/D’s.

While still being underdog to the SU-30…..