The hawk is a 60’s aircraft design with lots of small stuff tacked on like the SMURFS and what not to correct its aerodynamic deficiencies. I can’t see any significant aerodynamic improvement to be achieved by pouring more money into the airframe or even adding a more powerful engine.

It is of bae’s interest to have the customer spend as much as possible into their product, however useful that expenditure is. As a smart customer, india shouldn’t be dragged into dead-end spending such as research for an armed hawk variant when india has its own tejas low cost fighter.

If dassault succeeds in pulling this off, Imo it would go down the history books as one of the biggest ripoffs in the history of fighter jet sales. I wonder why are the indians wanted this rafale deal so much. Rich fat kickbacks?

Imo if you are in the market now for a combat hawk, for example india, you would be better off just buying the tejas.

The hawk 200 even back in the 1990’s costs about usd25-30 million a piece. Right now there are lots of other choices in that price bracket, tejas, jf-17, m-349, yak-130, fa-50 to name a few.

You’re mixing up production and development costs with acquisition cost.

Then tell me why even saab is pushing new c/d aircrafts as a cheaper solution to the e/f?

Except for the base price the rest is off cause speculative and estimations and depends of whats in the deal. It also very much depends on how many you want.

45m$ to buy ….naked. (source gripen ceo told SVD 25-30% of the Brazil price is the price for the aircraft)

With basic surrounding systems and some simulators etc 55-65m$. Source : Just check all the offers given to many country’s in the past that where normal offers like the dutch one.)( Dutch airforce went from 85 gripens to 37 f-35’s.)

Full tech transfer, education, big country specific changes, support and tech transfer support support for building your own variant and the seagripen and future saab fighters

Brazil deal / 126m$

Operational cost will be around gripen c’s cost maybe a tad higher since the aircraft has a little bit bigger engine and a few more systems to maintain. At the same time they have improved the ease of maintanance on gripen e even further.

So….nothing to wonder about really, guaranteed under 10000$ an hour with fuel.

If the e/f is really cheaper then the c/d, why in the world saab is still marketing the c/d as a “cheaper solution” to the advanced e/f variant, for example to Slovakia? Isn’t that graphic you shown is a contradiction to saabs sales behaviour?

I have not seen any open official numbers that shows an e/f offer to any country that is cheaper than c/d model buy. That in itself (the e/f supposedly cheaper than c/d) is one of many saab marketing gimmicks that really just don’t make sense.

This, for the record, is exactly the market that Saab will find hard to compete in, as it moves up the value chain, from a modest light weight fighter to an advanced medium weight fighter.

There’ll already be a good light fighter in full production long before any of the above can start deliveries to India. Hankering after a medium fighter (just because of its weight) doesn’t make sense, unless its genuinely cheaper to acquire than the Su-30, which isn’t the case for any of them (including the Gripen E).

Which leaves the question of capability. Yes there are some missions that the IAF’s current fleet would struggle to perform within a tolerable level of risk (even after upgrades). Eg – SEAD/DEAD against new gen threats, OCA in the presence of hostile AWACS, deep strike/recce and so on. There is an aircraft explicitly designed for such high-threat environments but it isn’t the Gripen E. Or the Super Hornet.

As the gripen moves up the value chain, its former advantage as a lightweight fighter becomes its greatest liability. Suddenly it costs as much as the latest f-16, f/a-18 but with lower kinematic and weapons carrying capability (regardless of the supposed advancement in avionics, which is more evolutionary rather than revolutionary when compared to say the latest f-16v).

When even the superbly capable su-30mki is cheaper than the gripen e, you should ask why do you even bother with the gripen e?