I think the strategy was to offer the Saab 2000 to customers that needed to step up in capacity from small 340’s.

One of the problems that already has been pointed out is that for a couple of years ago fuel price was much lower than today. Thus making the lower operating costs of a turboprop vs. jet not that important. I would also guess that Embraer (which I think got subsidies from Brazilian state at that time?) sold E-135/145 for about the same price as Saab sold their 2000s. That killed the economical advantage of the turboprop quite effectively.

And as tenthije said, people wanted to fly jet since jet felt like the modern way to fly whereas turboprop reminded of a thing from the past.

Today it’s totally different. ATR et al are still on the market and can see a better forecast than Embraer due to fuel prices. What you got to bear in mind though is that ATR has most likely shown red numbers for the past 7-8 years. So even if they can make some money on todays market they still have a lot of money to earn before the debts are paid.

regards,
Cliff

Thus MUCH easier to cancel in the near future… Nothing to worry about, no need to resell the planes later on, get rid of spares inventory, etc.! The got the offsets then they retur their leased planes and buy US-built fighters. And if I understand it correctly they’ll eventualy get updated F-16s and/or F-18E/F. F-35s certainly won’t be exported this widespread by then…

I Lockheed had its ways they’d sell F-35s to China, Iran and North Korea… The US government sure feels otherwise. The Bush military doctrine comes to mind now, the US should have ea military force superio to any other in the world, friend or foe indistinctively… 😉 Stealth today is a US exclusive technical advantage, what benefit is there to share it around, even with your best pals in the world? If a more expensive plane is the cost for this global supremacy maybe Mr. Bush thinks its a cheap price to pay…

See where I’m going? 🙂

Comments?

Regards,

Hammer

To be honest it’s getting somewhat tiredsome to read all this Gripen bashing of yours. I don’t have the time or the energy to reply to each and every comment you make but I’ll give you a reply on this one.

Hungary has bought their Gripens but they will not become Hungarian property until the leasingagreement ends. You seem to think that they could end their leasing agreement after 10 years and simply just not fulfill their part of the contract that they’ve signed without legal actions? Well think again, because noone is doing business that way.

But what is even more annoying is that you seem to think that they would want to return their fighters in 10 years and go get F-16s or F-18s. Now why would they want to do that if they’ve already ranked the Gripen as better than F-16 (or F-18)? Same goes for Czech Republic, they have choosen Gripen instead of F-16 two times!

I don’t think you fully understand what impression these Gripens have made in Hungary and Czech Republic. They are very satisfied to say the least. Flex has written a couple of lines about this and he could surely elaborate on it.

I couldn’t care less about your comments on the funding. I’m more interested in your claim that the government paid for the construction of a prototype. How ’bout backing that up or at least admitting that it’s bullsh!t? Specifically which “prototype” did the US government pay for?

For nitpicking; I’ve done my homework now. And you know what – there was no prototype so you are perfectly right on that one. My bad.

However, this does not change the fact that still remains; both Airbus and Boeing are throwing stones in a glass house if they speak about unright funding. May it be launch aid, indirect subsidies or by bribing people responsible for tenders. We both know that – care to let go of it now and move on?

I think this whole scenario is a bit naive when it comes to northern Europe. You can’t seriously expect that WP would leave their northern borders more or less without defence. Eventhough Sweden and Finland were neutral that doesn’t mean they would act plain stupid. If WP makes a push through central Europe, they would be next in line. So maybe they would hop in on Nato side, maybe they would wait – but the major issue for a Soviet strategian here would be that you don’t know for sure!

Therefore, Soviet would need to deploy nearly the same amount of fighters in that area as well to secure their borders. Since SweAF was the worlds 4th largest airforce just 10-15 years earlier that would be a considerable amount of fighters…

regards,
Cliff

The US spends a meager 3.5% of its GDP for defense and half of those defense dollars are used to pay for bases that are not needed. What do European nations spend on their defense in terms of GDP?

Don’t play stupid. 3.5% of swedish GDP is nowhere near 3.5% of US GDP in real cash, hence smaller european countries can’t buy thousands of fighters as US can. We both now that.

To properly protect your nation, an Air Force has to pose a credible threat to the enemy. “Credible threat” means having the ability to take the war to your enemy’s bases and make his losses unacceptably high. You have to be able to perform surveillance of the enemy’s bases, target them, penetrate his defenses and destroy those targets. This requires sophisticated recce, command and control with datalinks, defense suppression, sophisticated targeting and precision attack. In other words, the enemy has to believe you can waltz in an kick his @ss any time you want.

If your opponent is Albania I might understand your nice theories. But if we get back to reality, the main threat to european countries have always been Russia. Suggesting that Sweden for example should waltz into Russian airspace and drop some bombs over Moscow is just plain stupid. Russia could field about 2000 fighters on their western borders which as a rule of thumb requires the swedes to have 3×2000 fighters (if the fighters are on par) according to classical war theory.

A 100% defensive Air Force is a losing Air Force. A wily enemy will always marshal his attacking force so it can overwhelm the defenders and reach its targets. Historically, air assaults are successful at breaking through 99% of the time. Only a small percentage of your Air Force will be available to stand alert due being in various stages of maintenance/regeneration and they may have a very large area to cover. That tiny alert force will be “steam rollered” by attackers. Expect to take damage due to enemy bombs. The enemy will repeat day after day. The results are not pretty.

Battle of Britain – does that ring a bell?

You clearly show that you know absolutely zero about how armed forces in smaller countries are used and how their doctrine works. A small country such as Sweden with 9 million people can never win a war against Russia if Russia is willing to pay whatever price it takes. It all runs down to numbers of fighters, tanks, soldiers etc.

Instead, countries such as Sweden have a doctrine that will make the price of attacking Sweden so high that it will not be worth the price.

Cliff

There are Air Forces intended to fight wars and Air Forces intended to fly airshow routines on sunny Saturdays. You have stumbled upon one of the later.

How narrowminded of you djcross.

Unlike USA, most european countries have a lot of other things to use their tax money on (such as public healthcare, free education at universities etc). Therefore, they need to figure out exactly what they want out of their armed forces in order to stay within budget. In those tasks expeditionary warfare such as Iraqi and Afghanistan operations have been left out for quite some time. Today it might shift a bit, but an airforce main priority is still to prevent possible enemy from gaining air superiority over your territory in case of war.

If you have a couple of thousand F-16s you can surely dedicate some for air to ground missions. But if you have 14 of them – will you be dropping LGBs while having a couple of hundred Su-27s flying around in your air space?

Cliff

Cannot believe that airlines and aircraft manufacturers give in to this sort of bs in the year of 2006. I regard this as an insult to all aerospace engineers, pilots and mechanics having developed/are working with the aircraft.

regards,
Cliff