Add the entire list of nations that buy russian fighters or combination of russian and french fighters. Add to that the closet us-phobes or those who would “prefer” fighter without strings when a reliable option exists. And that does not take away the buyers who don’t mind american.
The ones most hurt by the competition from such fighter would be russian and french. Here you would have one western technology sporting fighter with long-life components that is closest to russian/chinese pricing. And the pricing is the main thing besides the lack of strings that beholds these potential buyers to their current choices.
For some savings on the engine cost, SAAB reduced much more in the potential list of customers or potential unit numbers(greater the planes with us engine- greater the dependence).
With variants fielding CFT and AESA we would have had a new ruler of the skies atleast numbers wise.
What are those countries who bought Russian/Chinese aircrafts that sudendly would have gone for a Gripen with an EJ200 engine? :confused:
Venezuela? India? “Something” in North Africa?! Yemen?!! Zimbabwe?!!! Iran?!!!!!
Part of those countries have specific reasons for buying Russian, others have a specific requirement that the Gripen doesnt cover (MKI, MKM, “29K”) and finally the rest are on the “weapons export” ban list of the Swedish Government.
And were are those Countries who have bought French gear that would have bought this Euro Gripen instead?!
In the time frame that an EJ200 Gripen offer would have been feasable, there were just two French fighter sales, the Dash-9 for the EAU and the Dash-5 mk2 for Greece. In both, this “Euro Gripen” would had the same chances that a snow storm would have to fall in Ouagadogou. 🙂
Cheers
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