Hi MP, my friends,

I’m sorry if my posts may have sounded “biased” to you, I want to asure you that I have absolutely nothing at all against Sweden or the Swedes, I apologise if I might have given you that idea.

Sorry Arthur, I really tried to play as nice as I could. Really!

I disagree! I find Hammer´s posts very insulting, biased and disrespectful. I cannot find anything informative or useful about his posts. The idea is only to mock and provoke. When this keeps happening all over again and again I can´t help believing there´s an agenda. He´s just not a guy asking critical questions, that´s for sure.

I garantee you I am exactly a “guy expressing my ideas” and “asking critical questions” and nothing more. But as anyone writing on these forums I am entitled to having my own opinion, right, as you are entitled to your own points of view. I believ that I have repetedly given my points of view and justified my ideas shining light on my chain of thought used to get me there. If we disagree, then I’m sorry, such is life, and we’ll have to ‘agree to disagree’, right?

My last post, as the “LOL” ought to have induced, was really a, probably, failed attempt at humour, I apologise if that didn’t come across to you or any other annoyed fellow readers.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Gripen is a fabulous plane, full of the latest tecnology, Ialso believe that Saab is a great manufacturer, but I can’t agree that this plane has any REAL chance in the future fighter market.

Why? For a number of reasons:

1- Because the Russians have apparently managed to break into the “western fighter buying” contries club. They have outstanding fighters and are offering them at bargain basement prices, and undeniably that is very enticing for many Latin American, African and Asian air forces… Just add up the number of Flanker derivatives soldo to India China and others and you’ll see the “size of the damage done” by the Russians.

2- The current US governmente doesn’t seem too keen on selling a great number of advanced fighters around the world these days. The F-22 is unexportable, the F-35 is too late and too expensive for most nations beyond the “NATO and selected few friends” consortium nations.

3- It is not just the Swedes that are having a hard time selling there wares on the world market. The Rafale has so far been unable to secure a single export order… The Eurofighter, on the other hand, is doing ok because of the large orders of the original four countries that pooled up their resourses to build it. Beyond Saudi Arabia, and their “special business commercial arrangements” with the British, where are the going to sell it? I don’t know. Greece is gone as a client, Austria is cutting its orders…

If the Swedes sold the WHOLE Gripen program to the Indians, or to the Chinese it would sure sell way beyond the 6, 12, 16 units that it has managed to atract up untill now. The mothballing of almost half of the Sedish Air Force fleet, of course, is no help at all, generating major doubt and uncertainty for any prospective buyer.

As I said, the right plane, the wrong country.

About the Saab-340 equipped with the Erieye system the rason I asked about it is because the Brazilian air force considered the EMB-120 Brasilia regional liner as the platform for this radar before the ERJ-145 was chosen instead, and thed decided against it because of all the prformance shortcomings of the smaller, slower plane. The number of opperators carried on board also was a major limitation solved by using the regional jet instead.

Loiter flight fuel consumption is really a reasonable advantage to the turboprop plane… But the greater speed of the jet, on the other hand, allows for a faster airbase to patrol area time, as well as greater chance to save the crew in case ennemy fightes cross the defensive fighter net and manage to fly towards the Most Valuable Unit that is the AWACS plane.

Brazil’s R-99A ERJ/Erieye combo is a cost efficient and militarily relevant force multiplier, dspite of this sales have been few and rare. Politics are more and more the defining factor in military aviation procurement and countries that have no real political and economical muscle – such as Brazil and Sweden I should add – are going to have a long road upward ahead of them…

Nothing personal, just my 50 cents.

Regards,

Hammer

P.S. I resure you, I’m no Rafale fan. As I see it, this plane still needs many sizable international orders before I can subscribe to purchasing it for the Brazilian armed forces, until then…

The Russians pulled it through with the Su-27/33, teh MiG-29 and the Su-25 all these were develloped simultaneously! BAE got it right with the Hawk>Goshawk… I dont see why the Eurofighter would be any harder… But it would sure be another BIG nail into the Rafale’s export possibility coffin…

Regards,

Hammer

If all the Iranian and Saudi arms purchase reports are true, then there will be an arms race that will be convenient to everybody.

The USA and Russia make big bucks on the sale of military equipment.
The fear of war in the Middle-East will keep the price of oil high.
The Saudis and Iranians make more money and spend even more on defense procurements ……

Nice cycle in which all the parties involved are winners…

Good point UAZ! But seriously, I’m dead curious to see if the pro-Israeli lobby within the US Congress will let this deal go through.. Remember the long gone days when “my enemy’s enemy was my friend”?

There is no way now that Iran’s Enemy (Saudi Arabia) might ever be percieved realistically as Israel’s ally in the region…

I strongly believe that Iran negotiators should be very concerned with delivery dates…Russia has three active Flanker factories: KnAAPO (Komsomolsk), IAPO (Irkutsk) and NAPO (Novosibirsk), if they really want fast deliveries they might be tempted to put parallel orders to all of them… Su-30MK2s from KnAAPO, SU-30MKMs from IAPO and who knows, maybe Su-34s from NAPO (as apparently they seem to be satisfied Su-24 users to this day!)…

If you split the 250 aircraft order between these three factories the delivery dates may shorten severely… And there is always the prospective local manufacture of at least some of these fighters… who knows, maybe some 40-odd units? These being obviously delivered last… Such a scenario would please all three manufacturers as well as the local Iranian industry and the Russian Air Force (through the intense funding of all its key current Flanker programs specially the still slow Su-34…

What do you think?

Is this scenario reasonable?

Regards,

Hammer

As preposterous as it sounds, actually there might be a spark behind all this smoke esp. keeping in mind that the US seems to have leaked a plan to offer the Saudis a $ 20 billion weapons deal. Thats what I call an arms race.
250 superflankers + S300s + Kilos
😮 That’ll make things hot for those entertaining ideas of invasion.

Regards,
USS.

US$20Billion?! The US wants the Saudis tor give them back all those nice profit margins they get from the current over-US$70 a barrel oil
prices.. LOL!

But buizness is buizness ! i doubt over the standart MKM, i think is a MK2 or deriviate with 100% russian devices.

I agree with you, there is no way the Iranians would trust their new fighter force to a VERY probable European arms embargo. It certainly will be a 100% Russian equipment sale if it ever really does materialise.

I still think the Iranians are arriving late at this purchase

Regards,

Hammer

I agree with Athur, Iran DOES certainly need a new generation fighter force to put in the place of the many F-14s, F-4s, F-5, MiG-29s, J-7s and Su-25s and 24s it currently operates .

When compared to the numbers of all these aircraft 25 new fighters is not such a great number at all. Also this figure certainly includes local manufacture to a certain degree. Taking in consideration that local manufacture takes a long time and all those carriers battlegroups steaming in the Persian Gulf are there now I believe we might be talking of a 125 outeight purchase from Russia plus another 125 aircraft built under licence in Iran. Iran’s Air Force already has the doctrinal stucture to be able to accomodate the Radar Intercept Operator carrer so accepting early deliveries of MKK model aircraft ought to be simpler and more straightforward to them when compared to the Venezuelan purchase, for instance.

The big question is would Putin be interested or willing to screw-up the US foreign policy this much in that region? Seems likely these days.

Why would he admit beforehand that they are seriously considering this sale? The longer the deny it the greater chance they’ll have of passing it through the US and European political and economic pressure. About the issue brought up about multi-role versus single role may I remind yo that a modern supersonic anti-ship missile capable aircraft would do a lot to complicate the US operations inside the Gulf as well as outse the Hormuz Straight area … The farther away the carriers have to stay the harder the it would be for the US to really assert their power over that countrys airspace, right. Air to ground armament is now adays even more vital since the US has esasy access to Itaqi and Afghan air bases on both sides of the Iranian borders. For those reasons I’m certain that multi-role is the way to go!

Does it make sense?

Regards

Hammer

That’s actually the small part of it. The biggest blast comes from something else.

Why does the US issue bonds in the first place? That’s because it’s on a continous deficit. The problem is that when the US goes into a war, financially it can no longer afford it. Someone has to pay for that war. From 2001 and on, from the war in Afghanistan and Iraq on, someone has been offsetting these deficits by buying a large amount of bonds, in effect, has become the indirect financier of these wars. That someone is China.

The fact is the US cannot go into war with China without someone going to to finance it, and that someone cannot be China itself. Even if China does not unload the bonds it owns, the fact that the biggest buyer of bonds isn’t buying is more than enough to cause a crash by itself. Once bonds become “worthless” it will trigger a chain reaction on other bond holders, even with other countries, causing the bonds to unload.

The problem is in the current peacetime situation, this feeds on itself. The buyer has to keep buying the bonds in order to protect the value of the bonds it previously owns. On the other hand, the US will have to pay several billions in interest alone each year; China can go into a major arms shopping spree just on this interest.

Good point, guys, the economic/debt bond issue can’t be forgotten or ignored in this scenario! I believe that the recent constant devaluation of the US dollar will invite major bond purchasers to move over to other currencies such as the Euro, putting further pressure on the US currency devaluation trend… Another possible problem is that the emergence of China and India as large and relevant commodities purchasers might encourage commodity producing countries to move over to the Euro as a more stable denomination in which to price their goods. Imagine the uncomfortable effect on the US economy of constantly raising commodities prices due to the devaluation of their currency. Also the US major industrial corporations seem to be already factoring/feeding into their prices the US dolar devalution something that may highten inflationary fears in that country.

One economic columnist in a major paper here cited some analysts’ idea that currently the major Chinese export today is “deflation”, not indistrial/manufactured goos, as we all might imagine… She also pointed out and that any real price hike of their yuan or any import restriction on Chinese goods may easily create substantial inflationary pressures in any major Western economy. Maybe that’s why the US governmenty can’t really effectively pressure the Chinese Central Bank into significantly raising the value of their currency against the US$.

Also, lets not forget that general costs in China are obviously lower than their similar costs in the US or Europe, for that reason the Chinese military can be (and is being!) upgraded and expanded at higher rate and at a much smaller unit cost than that the US has to bear itself. Imagine, just for the sake of argument, that a 100% identical Chinese-built Nimitz class carrier clone would normally be much cheaper to buy, construct and to man in China than in the US, and that certainly is the strongest invitation for the Chinese to join the carrier-using nation ranks.

The more Western ship operators choose to construct their merchant freighters in China, the better they will get at building high quality, high tech ships for their own navy. Its an inevitable trend. The Western world and the US in particular is the greatest responsible for the quantum leeps taking place in the Chinese Navy today. Thanks, “Globalization”! Thanks, Mr. Bush! 😉

Comments?

Hammer