With two Hamilton’s in service already I feel two more makes good seance for training and crew cross over and with a 10 million dollar price tag and a operating cost of 1.32 million dollars a year there cheap to run the OHP’s may be a better ship but the Hamilton’s can be fitted with searam and Harpoon if needed

Frankly? To me the Hamiltons (irrespective if they are 2, 4, 6 or “50”) are absolutely useless in military terms if the objective of the Philippine Defence Ministry is to somehow “deter” tha Chinese Naval encroachment of disputed South China Sea areas… The Philippine Navy would have to begin with some 10 FREMM-equivalent ships just to START making China Notice them, othewise it is just money thrown away… inevitably ending with the aknowledgement of Chinese ownership of the disputed shoals and reefs…
Also I would never trust the US to guarantee my nation´s territory at sea, at the very key moment they might find themselves too busy elsewhere, then you are screwed.

Regards,

Hammer

Brazilian Navy drops Thales IMast from next gen corvette program. http://www.alide.com.br/joomla/component/content/article/75-extra/4614-thales-i-mast-esta-fora-da-nova-corveta-brasileira This is a big blow to Thales Nederlands…

We have known for years that the 36 plane order for Brazil was naturally suposed to be just the tip of the iceberg. The current number of fighters M2000, F-5EMs and AMX stands at a notional 120 aircraft so any next gen type would be needed to top at lest the current number. BUT since after the new National Defense Strategy the escort ship numbers of the Brazilian Navy is set to expand from 11 today to some 30 in 20 years time it makes absolitely no sense that FAB fighter force would stay frozen at 120 units in the same time period. Thus I heard the “big number” 200 from an Air Force General as this the intended new size of the future fighter fleet. The suggested number of +100 fighters takes the total oprder to 136, beyond the earlier 120 fighter limit but leaving space for the later adoption of a 5th gen fighter toi complement with “quality” the “quantity” that the 136 Gripens would naturally bring to the table. Look at the proposed yearly breakdown of 36 Gripen production for and in Brazil in the bottom of this infographic published these days here in one of our biggest newspapers. [ATTACH=CONFIG]223995[/ATTACH]
This image suggests that further orders would have to be laced in order to allow the new aircraft to dovetail into this initial order maintaining the SURPRISINGLY high production tempo of 11 aircraft per year… Also the new plant to be constructed in São Bernardo do Campo is exclusively for aerostructures intended not only for Brazil but for Sweden and for Switzerland alike. Central and rear fuselage modules will be built there along with other items for the whole Gripen fleet. After the Gripen order ends this plant would naturaly be used to produce aerostructures for other international programs civilian and military alike (just like Saab does at its main plant in Sweden). So the new industrial investment both helps the obtaining of new Gripen orders in Brazil as well as allows for generation of hard currency income for a number of decades on.

Who knows, if all goes well, the publicly mentioned future 5th gen Brazilian fighter desired by the Brazilian Defense Minister could very well become an extension of the current Brazilian-Swedish deal maybe with the participation of other nations to dilute cost and risks.

Comments?

Hammer

Some of these numbers cite what is included : fuel, mean annual logistics cost per hour, etc.

The issue is : Saab is saying in Brazilian Air Force site (!!!) that Gripen NG costs less than US$4,000/hour to fly. IMHO, this is just marketing without any reality. As comparison, in my country, Brazil, a F-5EM/FM costs US$12,872/hour, Mirage 2000C/B US$18,872/hour, AMX US$11,753/hour (official 2011 data from Brazilian Air Force). So how Gripen NG, which is a little above Mirage 2000C/B in power performance, can cost < US$4,000/hour ? So Saab takes the CPHR or Rafale and Super Hornet, with many items included, and compare with its magical value.

I understand and respect your concern for “the true facts” being presented in their most transparent way possible. BUT! There is always a “BUT”! You know through today’s Brazilian general press stories that Dilma ONLY anounced her Gripen choice to the Minister of Defense and to the Commander of the FAB 24hr before it was publicly disclosed. So from that fact you certainly knew that whatever has put online in the FAB’s “official web site” is nothing more than a crude mash up of data already available on the Internet. Maybe this detail alone may have us being slightly more tolerant with the “official facts” available so shortly after the formal announcement date. Let’s give the nice folks at the FAB press support unit a while for them to grab their breaths before we start throwing rocks at them, don’t you agree? 😉

Also the reason it is so complicated for us to determine the true cost for military aircraft flying hours is because this info is generally A SECRET! 😉 An enemy can construe a lot about an airforce’s availability by comparing the true cost per flying hour against the normally much more easier to find yearly operational budget… Each and every decent Airforce calculates it’s cost per flying hour for every aircraft type. But as was said here before each AF has its own methodology due to historical reasons and also for sensitive data reasons. It could be that they even use a specific methodology for internal control purposes and another totally different one to supply requested info to Congressmen and Senators…

I honestly believe that the FAB really is totally indifferent to whatever numbers the Saab people publish or give to the press. They have received every detailed number of the REAL performance data from Saab, years ago, during the many RFIs and RFPs phase of the contest… By saying so I really don’t mean to frustrate you all that real data presented to the FAB is just not available for your (“taxpayer”) eyes, no goverment is THAT transparent, and I sincerely believe it shouldn’t be…

Finally the current cost per flying hour is of little consequence if the Brazilian Air Force is over time allowed to buy the full 108 or 120 F-X2 aircraft (it changes according to the source) it plans to in 25-30 years time. So I think you should just face the fact that the decision has been taken and that people who signed the relevant non-disclosure agreements, duly numbercrunched the contents of the three RFPs, analized it all and came through with the idea that Gripen NG was the single best choice for the FAB fighter fleet. End of Story! 🙂 Selecting fighters is such a subjective process that inevitably the numbers will point towards the desire of the guy writing the specifications. 😉 All this with zero malice (corruption) inferred!!

Regards,

Hammer

My good friend rcolistete has studied in France and thus has been a consistent Rafale supporter from the very start of the F-X2 bid. So it is only natural that he feels deeply that the Brazilian government has made a bad choice opting for the Gripen NG. 😉

Cheers, rcolistete! 🙂

Regards,

Hammer

Richard Aboulafia wrote about the reason behind the Gripen deal in Brazil on Forbes and this was my response to him.

Richard, writing from Brazil I think that you seem to miss some subtleties that work together to fully explain the Gripen purchase decision. It is true that Brazil has no real “enemy at the gate” like many other nations buying fighters, but since the publishing of 2008’s National Defense Strategy it has become clear that amongst most relevant politicians in Brasilia that “Defense” as a whole has clearly shifted from the “politicaly unjustified expenses” column to the much more palatable “High tech industry-high value exports” one. The three contenders for example each represented a specific possible strategy for the BAF future: The Super Hornet represents the “F-5 road ahead” in which we buy from a stablished supplier and believe that means commonality will ease future suplies of parts and even further aircraft if a major world crisis arises in the future (We just saw this happen in WWII!) The Rafale stands for the oposite approach, the “Mirage IIIs zero US content”. At least in theory we’d have absolute freedom to use the planes with no risk of with US political interference. Finally the Gripen becomes the “AMX strategy” where BAF operational capability takes a definite back seat to national aerospace/defense industrial leveraging opportunity. Embraer has always been the obvious local player in any aeronautical development deal. If on F-X they opted to preemptively join with Dassault to force the BAF to buy their preferred Mirage 2000Br entry on F-X2 they were explicitly banned from such stunts by the Air Force Command. They followed this rule to the line until roughly a year ago when they decided to jump on the Boeing bandwagon. That was the generating fact behind the latest perceived surge of Brazilian government interest in the Super Hornet on all informal F-X2 “government unnamed-source opinion polls”. On the internal political front Dilma’s PT Party although a “mild left-wing” party in Brazil, in US terms it’s ideals are SO extreme to the left that by comparison it would turn every radical left-leaning Democrat into “extremist Right-wing politician”… PT supporters would CERTAINLY feel betrayed by Dilma if she just went the way of Boeing, potentially risking a significant split inside the party itself. And that would not be good thing taking in account 2014 is a presidential election year. I believe that the French president Sarkozy thought that his close personal relationship with Lula, Dilma’s predecessor and PT icon, would guarantee Dassault the sale but, they had decided to try to discourage Brazil from it’s Transfer of Technology desires by making it just too expensive to be acceptable. Unfortunately for them the Swedes in the end matched their ToT proposal at a much better price tag. On the ToT aspect the fact that such issues are in the hand of Congress instead of the White House or Boeing in the end made purchasing the Super Hornet a very shaky bet. Finally the current 36 aircraft order is just the first order as Brazil’s complete fighter force is rapidly going into a period of block obsolescence. Today’s papers mention between 108 and 120 aircraft to be purchased in the end and there is even talk of a desired 200-plane fleet in 30 year’s time. Although being very conflicting with past acquisition history, this end result is perfectly reasonable if looked through a local industrial development/export perspective. If it will be done this way in the end is another issue altogether, but if current political understanding remains constant it could happen. Best Regards,

When the MB made the choice to buy the A-4Kus from Kuweit it’s sole Aircraft Carrier then was the much smaller and lighter 20000 ton BNS Minas Gerais (A11). It was one of the original Collossus Classe carriers from the mid forties vintage, while the 33000 ton São Paulo (Clemenceau Class) on the other hand was comissioned in the French Navy the early 60s. The A-7s could not operate on Minas Gerais, so the Brazilian Navy could only chose the A-4. Brazilians had many oportunities to get to know the Etendart operated by neighboring Argentina, the general impression was that although being a much more modern plane the low production numbers made parts logistics a real nightmare for this model. A flap, for instance, removed from one aircraft just might not FIT into another plane’s wing altogether. This was found to be true for many components of the Etendart, unfortunately. Once the A-4Kus were received overhauled and throughly tested it was found out that although on paper it could operate from the Minas Gerais the operational security margins in moist low wind speed scenarios were simply unnaceptable. Hence the quick decision to purchase the Foch (São Paulo) once the French Navy decided to get rid of it. Having the 23 A-4s in country there was now absolutely no financial and/or political space to purchase anoteher lot of naval fighters (A-7s) from US stocks.. Do things make sense now?
🙂

Hammer

SAAB set up a small design centre in the UK to complete their preliminary Sea Gripen design. It was reported to have completed the design earlier this year. If Brazil wanted Sea Gripen, too, would 4-5 years from go ahead not be sufficient time to for SAAB to get it into production?

In this year’s LAAD show the Saab booth showed an impressive 1/72 scale mockup of the forward end of the Brazilian Aircraft carrier São Paulo with a number of Sea Gripens on its deck….

Regards,

Hammer