the things to be reused were stuff like the catapult seat, good thing that silly idea was ruled out.
as far as changes in delivery date, arent that referring to the delivery to Swiss AF that didnt pass the public poll ?
thus moot.
I’d like to know how the projected empty weight increase came to be ?

Could the delay in the rollout of 39-8 be due to the Brazilian engineers joining the production team late this year? That way the Brazilians get the “final touch” on the first Gripen E, pre production fighter and the marketing promise gets fulfilled.

And since they are on track with the program (deliveries in 2018 instead of 2017) they can afford this delay in testing.

Point is, Rafale has a longer range than F-35 (including the poor 8% more range given by external full tanks of F-35). “Furtivity” has its side effects, like very poor aerodynamics.

Didn’t you know that the F35 is the first aircraft with internal fuel?

Jokes aside, if simple things like the fact that drop tanks can be jettisoned doesnt get across it is a good sign that the discussion isn’t going anywhere. We all know that the F35 does everything better than all other jets in every possible comparison except for the metric ones. Lets just leave it at that. 😉

Keep on believing your t/w values will rock the world.

Gripen c second on this impressive list.

https://defenseissues.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/comparing-modern-western-fighters/

Subsonic acceleration has sort of a linear relationship with the thrust/weight ratio.

Afaik Gripen C (which is a lot slower than the two seat Demo) is a lot nimbler and faster in the dog fight than the F16s it faces off with. Even if the weight ends up being 8’000 kg it still has a better t/w ratio than Gripen C.

Mauro, pls think about what you are writing before you start typing.

I’ve become much more positive after read this post and others.

As far I could remember the Gripen E has been equipped with modified version of the engine from F/A 18 E/F Hornet, so if this is the Gripen E its so cheap because the engine, as it should be applied to the F / The 18E / F Hornet, then the F/A 18 E/F should be almost so cheaper as the Gripen E, because twice cheaper engines would not change a lot the cost.

So the explanation could be that modifications has made by Sweden in the US engines has become these much more advanced than the original US engines, despite the US has been leading the engines world market, the US engines has not been at the high level of Sweden, as well as Sweden perhaps should not allow the F/A 18 E/F could be equipped with these remarkable engines.

If you would have read a little bit on the history you would see that the RM12 is a rebuilt F-404 with new everything pretty much. To begin with, when the F-404 was chosen as the template engine it had an analogue control system (ECU or Engine Control Unit), Volvo then built a digital control system with GE and then it became DEC or Digital Engine Control. This system was digital with an analogue backup (and to further increase reliability they changed fuel pump and added redundancy to the ignition among other things). After furtfer upgrades Volvo made the system fully digital but still with a mechanical or analogue backup.

So to sum it up, Volvo made the F404 digitally controlled, they replaced almost every part in it with more durable alternatives, they rebuilt the afterburner comletely, improved every aspect on it from power output to bird strike tolerance and so on. In small scale this is quite expensive, so with Boeings hep many changes showed up in F414 and at a much lower cost.

Perhaps the better explanation about the Gripen E would be so cheaper that could came from its new composite materials in this airframe, despite that the Gripen E although has been using 60% of its legacy parts from Gripen C/D.

Again despite the US has been leading the advances in the materials composed technology field, certainly the US has not able to get this remarkable technology from Gripen E, maybe the Sweden not allow the US to get the same technology because that could applied to the F/A 18 E/F .

Gripen E has a completely new fuselage compared to the C. First of all the size is different, the composite materials are different, the MTOW is higher –> needs new internal structure etc. What is the same though are the ejection seats and perhaps the canopy and some wiring. Thats it.

If you look at the actual flyaway cost you will see that Gripen isnt that much cheaper than the rest despite weighing roughly 30% less than most competitors (~7 tonnes vs 9,5 – 14,5 tonnes).
This means that instead of wasting money on a huge airframe they can spend it on making stuff redundant, adding more modern sensors (like PAWS-2, GaN-based EWS etc) and still not become overly expensive. The same logic applies to tanks like the T-90, it is smaller and thus requies less materials to produce so the manufacturer can beat the competitors price and still add stuff like autoloaders and hardkill systems like Arena or Drozd.

So, Gripens main advantage is its weight and size. It compensates for this by adding more of the good stuff (like a larger and very modern radar), excellent EWS and so on. JUst think about it, the Super Hornet uses about 14’000kgs of materials, Gripen uses 7’000 kg while the Super Hornet has a lower flyaway price (in some competitions).

Who do you think is putting extra everything in their system?

The AESA radar from Gripen E should be so advanced as cheap , indeed this AESA radar should be cheaper than others AESA radars around the World, especially when compared with the AESA radar from the F/A 18 E / F, even though the US has been leading the AESA technology field just the beginning of this. So the US could not use this such advanced and light radar in the F/A 18 E/F , despite this AESA radar from Gripen E are from the UK.

But the best should be that the Gripen E could accomplish the F / A 18 E / F Hornet in almost parameters as: payload weapons, range, weapons capabilities and others.

But the Gripen E will do all this with almost half the weight and only a single engine from F/A 18 E/F. With at least with two strongest advantage in reason of this small size of the Gripen E , once that will provide a less radar signature than the F/A 18E/F, as well much better maneuverability than F/A 18 E/F.

There is a reason why the JSF was supposed to be a lightweight fighter. They tend to become affordable.

The SH is twice as heavy but costs less in fly away, which do you think gets equipped with the best avionics?

That is all remarkable technological advances that has been supposedly reduced the cost of the Gripen E has been only applied at the same, whereas the other competitors such as the F / A 18E / F did not have access for those wonderful technologies.

They have access to it and the Super Hornet is remarkably cheap for its size. Just look at it, the Super Hornet has a price roughly equal to the russian jets.

The problem though is the size. That is the root of most SH problems. In that size and weight range (and the resulting maintenance needs) it is competing with F15E, F35 etc. Compared to the Eurofighter and Rafale it is expected to carry more, further (similarily to how others should compare to Gripen). But it doesnt. Ie, it is too large/heavy for the performance it offers.

The third generation of the Gripen has been reached a high level in advances that excels at all that has been obtained by third generation of the F/A 18.

Just look at the costs and you will see why. Every pound of Gripen is more expensive than a pound of the SH. And in this case it isnt because SAAB are inefficient but because they put more of the good stuff in the design.

It were a pity that the two previous generations of the Gripen had not achieved the same, after all the Gripen A/B/C/D were only a small fraction of the production of F/A 18 A/B/C/D at the world market.

It wasnt until Gripen C that the Gripen was NATO-compliant. For instance Gripen A used a proprietary datalink (instead of Link 16) for its WAN, it used the metric system everywhere and was more or less designed around Swedish tactics. Gripen C was the first Gripen version that could actually be used by another country and it has won tenders in South Africa, Thailand, the Czech republic, Hungary and Slovakia, Gripen E has won tenders in Brazil and Switzerland. (Slovakia has submitted a letter of intent and Switzerland is… well its Switzerland 🙂 )

During this time, how many countries have bought the Super Hornet or normal Hornet?

This could appears impossible, but depending of those conditions on this imaginary maintenance contract
at the end of 30 years you could have paid much more than US$ 150 million per each Gripen E.

In the case of Sweden this country has been estimating the full cost of each Gripen E around US$ 225 million for such useful life of 30 years.

The Czech will be paying 177m$ for 30 years (14 airplanes á 12 years support incl upgrades = 994m$). The current drop in SEK/USD however changes this to about 155m$ per 30 years of service. But that is including upgrades worth several million $.

With the contract to upgrade and support FMV with the total cost of leasing transactions for 12 years is 22.1 billion CZK (994 million dollars). This figure is slightly higher than the stated 21.4 billion CZK by the Czech government in May.

Gripen E is even cheaper due to the much cheaper engine and better composites (among many other things). So your “much more than 150m$” is just garbage.

Rogozin is also in an official position, does that make his words at all valuable? Noooooope.

Pierre Sprey also had an official position…

Who is Zelin?

A Russian propagandist, about as credible and accurate as Pierre Sprey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Zelin