The level of sheer stupidity and political coniving of the Austrian Defense Ministry is stagering.

how about looking at what is actually engaging in combat right now; Alpha Jets in Nigeria; OV-10s and SF 260s and S211s in the Phillipines, L39s in Syria…most of these are ancient and will be phased out due to airframe lives being used up, so some operators will either want more of the same, which won’t happen, or will queue up to hand Cessna money for this Scorpion

“Wont happen”?!

http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2017/07/28/1722198/paf-get-6-more-aircraft
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2017/08/03/us-approves-a-29-super-tucano-sale-to-nigeria/

Embraer has been delivering armed versions of the Tucano and Super Tucano since the late eighties to an awfull lot of operators, those aircrafts have been used in anger in South America, Africa, Midle East and Asia. The light attack/COIN mission has become an almost Embraer monopoly, and unlees the USAF buys the Scorpion i am not seeing Cessna threatning Super Tucano sales.

Also, countries like France are running out of usable Alpha Jets and will need a NG trainer.

Yep, and they wont choose anything looking remotely like the Scorpion. The US contestant for the advanced trainer market will be whatever comes out of “TX”.

IMO had the Tornado program been deferred by just 6 or 7 years,

They couldnt, not without a massive amount of hindsight. By 1979 NATO was facing a massive four thousand force of Soviet flying coucous across Eastern Europe, if they had defered the MRCA program (AKA “must replace Camberra again”) the Luftwaffe and the AMI would have entered the 90´s with their strike sqn´s fielding vast quantities of F-104G´s (at least the ones who survived “CFIT”). And to be honest, looking at what the Tornado fleet ended doing in the last four decades, having 9g´s and a long range radar capability would not have any impact.

Cheers

English-version Wikipedia says that Sweden operates only 72 Gripen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedis…Force#Aircraft (and also mixes up E and D!).

AFAIK the correct numbers are 86 Gripen C and 12 Gripen D for a total of 98 Gripen C/D; in addition there are approx. 30 Gripen A/B in storage (?)

Six squadrons of Gripens in the Flygvapnet, now multiply by twelve aircrafts a sqn, seventy two airframes. I supose thats how the chap who wrote the piece got that (wrong) number.

Cheers

If North Korea does finally cross the line or USA/South Korea feel forced into starting hostilities

With North Korea armed with Nuclear weapons and Seoul right south of the border it would take something of seismic proportions to force the South Koreans to start hostilities.

what air assets would be likely to be deployed against the enemy and how might they be used?

Everything that can carry an ammunition or a recon capability?

Cheers

I don’t think PGM got cheaper. It’s more of case of Aircraft got more expensive and JDAM made 24 hour all weather PGM delivery viable. Up until JDAM many airforces simply said radar guided ground bombing with dumb bombs was good enough.

A Paveway in 1991, in the Gulf War, was more expensive than a JASSM ER today.
The JDAM was indeed the weapon that brought “low cost” into PGM´s. Released for the USAF in 1997 at a cost of 25.000$00 a unit, it was cheaper than the CPFH of almost all US tatical jets, in 2017 it costs 23.000$00 a unit and its cost by comparison with the CPFH of those same jets has took a tumble, its vastly cheaper to have one single aircraft carrying PGM´s than trying to do the same thing with iron bombs (numbers taken from the 2017 and 1997 USAF budget).