Guys… its the modern military aviation forum.

Can we pls get back to debating MWCNTs, thrust vectoring, praekt 117 and sick kinemtic performance?

Yadayada…

This evaluation is of the original Gripen, the one that has been delivered, not the Gripen NG which has not yet flown.

The Gripen NG will improve the Gripen in a number of areas, but it will remain an extremely small airframe with some necessary compromises. I think the Swiss picked the right aircraft in the Gripen NG. I would have picked the same given what they are trying to do, but lets not pretend that the Gripen, even in its NG form, is a direct competitor for the Rafale, Eurofighter, Super Hornet, or certainly an F-35. The question for the Gripen isn’t one of being the best, it is one of being good enough while being cheaper. (which makes a lot of sense for many forces)

And again proving my point. The Gripen that won the competition was the Gripen E, not Gripen C. Gripen C did not meet the criterias, Gripen E did.

Sure, whatever… oddly enough the world’s air forces don’t seem to much agree with you do they?

Do I have to remind you of the trick competitions the JSF is involved in?

Norway is one prime example (EADS left because it wasnt even a real competitive tender, but SAAB stayed because after all, Norway is a neighboor). http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=305
Canada is the second country where there wont be a real tender (so SAAB didnt even bother responding to the questionare) http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/politics/archives/2013/05/20130531-120613.html

Many of the bids where the F35 win are either very questionable in nature, not actual tenders or tenders based on utterly deflated cost projections (just look at ROK, the F15SE wins, then the tender is restarted with new demands that only can be met by the worlds only 5th gen fighter on the market).

In all fairness, if the F35 actually would cost less than Gripen (as was the case in Norway) then I would support it for Norway as well, without question. The problem is that it isnt, but still LM offers it at those non binding cost projections. Ie, lies and political pressure. Most airforces wouldn’t need anything more than F16s, or Mirages for that matter.

These are just a few examples. But pls, go ahead and say that it is what the airforces want. All you do is proving that you are biased beyond saving and thus deserving a spot on my ignore list.

The one problem I see is maintenance.

Different ac, different missile types, different datalinks etc.

But if the Iraqis can make all fighters operate with… say link 16 for WAN and integrate the same missiles on all fighters then it would be very potent. Just imagine a composite fleet with 48 Su35S, 48 J10B/Gripen E + 48 F16IQ using Meteor + IRIS-T and possibly the Kh55 series or KEPD 350 for stand off A2G.

The baseline missile could possibly be the “low cost AMRAAM alternative” SD-10 or R77.

The big problem is system integration. But if they do their job well then we would probably see a very impressive airforce.

Agree entirely with regard to X-band, but is there such thing as effective VHF jamming ?

In this clip you will see the effects of VHF jamming on PPI films.

Regarding putting the radars in a fighter… it is a bit complicated to use wavelengths of 1-10m. The reason is because of the antenna size. “for efficient radiation of electromagnetic energy the radiating antenna should be of the order of one-tenth or more the wavelength of signal radiated”

(see p 11 here http://www.slideshare.net/nramzan19/moderndigitalandanalogcommunicationssystemslathi3r ded in MODERN DIGITAL AND ANALOGUE COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS)

This would mean antenna lengths (because you need several radiating antennas in the array) of about 0,1-1m. This is too big for most fighters. And it also limits the resolution if you want an AESA system with T/R modules.

In the L-band you at least can have effective radar antennas between 1,5-3cm.

please don’t misrepresent what I said, I said nothing about the purchase price the r&d or the support equipment. , 3 out of 3 wrong. An apology from you is in order.

So what “extra stuff” where you mumbling about? Its a rather broad expression…

I can’t see anyone on the forums not knowing that dividing the total cost among the airframes will give an inflated figure because of all the extra stuff included.

TCO was obviously too high for this, the next total cost among airframes I could think of was what I wrote in my last post.

If you dont want to be misrepresented, be specific instead of using vague language. You should apologise to the forum for being unclear.

Hardly. TCO is much more. The Norwegian TCO figure put in by Admiral A. Roksund was $769 million lifetime cost for each of the 52 F-35s (50 years of service, 9,000 airframe hours makes 180 flight hours in a year).

The Norwegian TCO is ~$85,450 / flight hour

So Jacksters number of purchase price + R&D + support equipment is rather a deflated number compared to the real costs?

Range will go up with altitude

Yeah, i figured out that much. But it would be interesting to actually some formula similar to the radar equation.

Could it be that laser intensity at target varies with the square of the difference in air density and that range would depend on the square of the range difference?

AiM-7M is obsolete vs a fighter, Iraq shouldnt accept them or the planes if they havnt already an alternative weapon solution,
the problem is that the a/c has to keep flying in collision course to guide the missile, while any adversary exchange missile
can be left to do its own guidance while the opposite a/c do the sensible thing of turning away, hard.
Iraq must reserve the option to equip these fighters with an alternative missile, or ditch the deal.

I would love to see them adopt Meteor instead 😉 Probably not the easiest fix but at least it will keep Iraqi programmers occupied.