The only South American countries in the market for a fighter jet over the coming decade are Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, none of which have the budget for something like the Gripen E. They’ll go either for a cheap type like the FA-50 or JF-17, or second-hand fighters (most likely retiring F-16s).

Wrong.

Smith said a second country in Latin America was in dialogue with them to acquire the Gripen but he declined to name the air force in question.

One possibility is Colombia; it has a requirement and a budget to acquire a combat jet.

http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/show-daily/singapore-air-show/2016/02/18/saabs-next-gen-gripen-fighter-jets-ready-may/80573874/

“2nd pilot in the rear?”…. this would be Gripen D or Gripen Demo. The D is heavier and carries less fuel compared to C.

This would be the Gripen F not D… probably the F will not have the gun, however it would still be heavier and probably carry less fuel. Perhaps the F will be slightly longer than the E, just like the D is slightly longer than the C?

Proven by the Swiss themselves in a simple and undisputable way:

an F-18 simulated an airliner that had to be intercepted (cruising at altitude at subsonic speed), the interceptor had to scramble, climb and intercept it before ut leaves swiss airspace. Rafale and Typhoon did it with no problems, the Gripen scrambled, climbed and ran for all it was worth, and was bingo fuel before completing the intercept, having to interrupt the interception and go back to land. And before you come and say something along the lines of “the swiss did it wrong” or “they can’t fly”, in the rear seat was a saab pilot to monitor what was going on.. and couldn’t say anything wrong about what was done. The aircraft simply couldn’t do it

That’s why the should go for Gripen E not Gripen C. Gripen E should have enough fuel to do this.

(or they could scramble earlier, which was the point I was making above)

The Swiss requirements vis a vis QRA always seemed rather dubious to me. I mean, how does Sweden police its airspace given that it has only Gripen C/Ds available?

One could have argued that the Swiss hold themselves to a higher standard, if not for the rather embarrassing fact that QRA in Switzerland is only available during business hours on weekdays (until recently, not even during lunchtime). Plans to provide 24×7 QRA came about much later, and will still only fructify by 2020.

Good point about the office hours…

I wonder if Switzerland has such high requirements compared to e.g. Sweden because of shorter warning times?

In Norway there is normally plenty of warning time; we have strong radars in Northern Norway that spots un-identified a/c in international air space coming from Russia without a flight plan long before they start approaching Norway. I believe it is quite seldom the Norwegian fighters need to go supersonic when doing QRA (although it does happen from time to time).

However as I said previously I have read that the Swiss use their afterburners a lot! (I think it was Bill Sweetman who wrote this in one of his articles). Of course this does not mean they go supersonic all the time but at least it seems to indicate the need for rapid acceleration which will drink a lot of fuel, and if you have small tanks it can become an issue.

Perhaps they could install stronger radars that look further into the neighbouring countries, to increase warning times?

Also, for the record, the F-35 isn’t just better than the Eurocanard at Day 1 strikes, its equivalent or better at nearly every role, save perhaps for (non-fighter) interception. Including OCA, DCA, escort, SEAD, DEAD, strike and post-ROVER upgrade.. CAS too. The advantage of a VLO airframe cuts across mission profiles. Plus, going for the F-35 will lend to far better interoperability with other NATO air forces fielding the F-35 (US, UK, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Turkey.. and eventually Denmark, Canada, Poland & Spain too).

I agree F-35 and Belgium, however being “better” is not always important. If the evaluators are professional they come up with a list of technical requirements and check each a/c against that list of requirements; not against each other!

If an a/c passes all technical requirements then typically other issues comes into play, including economics, ToT, offsets, and politics.

Who knows; perhaps Rafale, Typhoon and F-35 all three pass the requirements in Belgium. If they do, then F-35 will most likely still be winner. And if they set requirements higher then perhaps only F-35 will pass. Or if they set requirements lower perhaps Gripen E will pass together with Typhoon, Rafale and F-35. In any case the best bet is the F-35 will win in Belgium since this will be the main plane for the US, and also for most other NATO countries as mentioned above.