Errrr.. we are at the very beginning, again. As stated before, you are extremely USAF oriented. All the time we are discussing this bird you got only one mission in mind – long range deep strike. That is why you disregard transonic acceleration when clean, that is why you focus on stealth, sensor fusion, integrated avionics…

Again, my standpoint is completely different: an European air force covering a relatively small country, with primary missions of interception, air policing and air superiority. A-G work of secondary importance.

What does it mean? long range is mostly useless, aircraft are launching lightly loaded (two Fox-3, two Winders, one bag). Transonic acceleration and agility with light load are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Stealth and sensor fusion are not mandatory, A-G work can be covered by stand-off missiles. As you can see, all first-day-of-war-striker qualities of future F-35 are of almost zero importance here. The plus points the bird gets for advanced sensors are immediately lost due to poor kinematics, hence the +10% score.

It is unimportant whether F-35 will be more or less advanced than Typhoon or Rafale.. For the purpose listed this bird is the worst choice of all.
Comprende?

I totally agree with this post.

What benefit would say Bulgaria have if it brought 8-9 F-35s instead of 8-9 F-16/JAS-39?

Or Czech Republic leasing 14 F-35 instead of 14 JAS-39?

Zero.

The F-35 is an awesome bit of kit but it’s purpose is high tech peer v peer offensive warfare. It’s not a great choice for puttering around intercepting lost airliners which is what a big chunk of European airforces do.

Gripen A, in a typical intercept mission <200nm away, would accelerate from mach 0,5 to mach 1,15 in 30 seconds and would have a top speed @ around 1,8-2 mach. Thats typical intercept missions from real life here in Europe.

In the Libya war a typical mission was to go from Sigonella and do recce (or strike missions if you flew Raffie) 300-600nm+ away excl time on station. Having the ability to use EFTs makes these missions work. If they would get into trouble over hostile territory they drop the EFTs and the performance you then have to compare with is a 4,5th gen fighter with only ~6 missiles.

These examples are from real intercept missions (typical) as well as from real war. And it shows why the option to have EFTs stil play a role.

Btw, speaking of stealth… In Allied Force we had <36 F117. If we assume 2 F117 per sqdn and a sortie rate of 2 per day and ac over 78 days we get 2808 sorties. During allied force about 10’000 strike sorties where conducted meaning that the F16, Tornado, A10, FA18s etc conducted over 7’000 strike sorties + some 25’000 other sorties.

In this operation 3,4% of all F117s produced where lost (one got damaged so it went out of service on apr 30 and one shoot down on day 3), or 5,1% of all F117s deployed while conducting less than 30% of the strike missions. If only one F117 loss is accepted then it still is a high rate of loss.

Meanwhile the A10s flying the riskiest missions only had 2 damaged ac, but no hull losses, and only 1 F16 was lost. The interesting part here is that the A10s typically fly very low where all kinds of shlt can hit them and the fighters flew at +10’000 ft. So we see old jets being fairly survivable at medium altitude and higher as well as old designs being survivable at low altitudes.

Problem is people here are looking at some sort of fantasy IADS based on latest state of the art systems.

In reality most IADS in the 21st century are still equipped with mainly obsolete junk and new equipment such as much vaunted S300 series is rare or non-present.

In 2013 you’re still more likely to be fighting against S-75 or S-125 than S300! And in fact the most likely AA one is to encounter on modern battlefields are older Strela type MANPADS and 14.5mm. 20mm and 40mm AAA which are often manually trained.

The same will apply in 2020, except even lower numbers of systems in service due to retirement or failed state syndrome affecting some real potential enemies (e.g. Syria).

The irony is that it’s generally Western Allied countries that have reasonable amounts of advanced SAMs as well as reasonably modern C4IR assets needed to use them.

Here’s a list of current S300 users. Bare in mind not all of them have 100% advanced systems and older stuff prevails

Realistically how many of them do you expect NATO would go to war against?

– Algeria
– Armenia (CSTO)
– Azerbaijan
– Belarus (CSTO)
– Bulgaria (NATO)
– China
– Greece (NATO)
– Kazakhstan (CSTO)
– Slovakia (NATO)
– Russia (CSTO)
– Ukraine
– Venezuela
– Vietnam

The other things is people are ignoring other solutions to taking out IADS – the Israelis certainly don’t need stealth or AGM-88 strikes to neutralise Syrian IADS.

They do it electronically.

The other thing is one can load up submarines and surface ships with cruise missiles as well.

That offers a real multirole capability as subs can perform patrolling/ASuW whilst a warship generally performs the whole spectrum of capabilities – AD, NGFS, ASuW, ASW etc.

The truth is strategic bombers are insanely expensive to build and operate. This is why they’re limited to a grand total of 3 countries using them and 1 of those is still churning out a 1950s design.

Cruise missiles are far more cost effective.

This was not the case with F-16 in late 70s when everything was ordered much early and at a faster rate.

That’s very true. Batch ordering aircraft in sizes of 2-14 aircraft didn’t happen. Australia brought 75 F/A-18s in one hit.

F-35s meanwhile will be brought in small squadron size parcels at a time.

Basically this is a “Get out of jail free card” – it makes it easier to not buy aircraft if you can’t afford them, rather than cancel a larger order and invoke cancellation fees as well as political debates (oppositions don’t cry much about things never ordered as opposed to things ordered then cancelled).

The planned visit was to the United States, not Sweden.

Not sure I follow.

My point was US spying on Brazil has probably sabotaged F/A-18s chances even if it might be the best fit for Brazil.

Totally agree Hospalot.

And the situation wouldn’t be any different if they were buying Rafales, Typhoons, JAS-39s, Flankers, J-XXs, PAK FAs or more F-16s.

I do question how useful a fleet consisting of a single squadron of F-35 (or Rafale or Lightning or F-15SE) really is. At that level, you are an air policing force.

Even 2 squadrons isn’t much – the Dutch will have 37 aircraft which will enable a deployable force of 4 jets for longer term operations according to previous link. It tells you how much effort goes into sustaining a deployment of even 4 jets.