Spitfire9Wouldn’t it make more sense in the long run to keep those additional airframes and just rotate them between reserve and active duty ?
I don’t see any new procurements in the coming years and by rotating them Portugal could keep the F-16 longer in service without expansive service life extensions…
That would make more sense to me in the medium/long term (say 5-10+ years). However Portugal is receiving financial support from agencies that will not lend unless the government pursues policies of which they approve. Their interest is in reducing government debt. I doubt that those agencies pay any attention to maintaining military capability at the best cost in the medium/long term.
Spitfire9From the link in Military Aviation News:
“A Swiss government statement said an agreement in principle had been reached between its weapons procurement agency armasuisse and Sweden’s FXMagency on the acquisition of the Saab Gripen warplanes.
Final details of specifications, delivery dates, prices, equipment and infrastructure had been settled pending a final green light from Bern, it said.”
So 2 more hurdles to get over: (1) approval by parliament (2) approval in a referendum (if there is a referendum)
“Defence Minister Ueli Maurer said that the Gripen “was the cheapest” option… and its purchase price — 3.126 billion francs —was guaranteed not to change.”
Sounds a lot more than the ~2.2 billion francs budget figure published widely since 2008/9. Will this be approved?
“The Swiss parliamentary security commission said Aug. 21 that the “choice of jet made by the Federal Council carries the most risks: technically, commercially, financially and in respect of the delivery date,” Swiss news agency ATS reported.”
I do not understand how the parliamentary security commission could conclude that of the 3 aircraft considered, Gripen carries the highest commercial and financial risks.
“The Gripens, which would replace the Swiss Air Force’s aging U.S.-built F-5 Tigers, are of a more advanced model still under development and will not be available before 2018, according to Bern.”
I understand that the first Gripen E/F is under construction. Why would it take 6 more years to start deliveries? This is not a brand new design. It’s a modification of an existing design with a prototype that has already been flying for some time.
Spitfire9From the above link:
Tejas had undergone successful performance trials, including weapons trials ahead of its operational clearance and is now planned to be finally cleared for service after this exercise.
If the LCA’s performance is found to be on par with IAF’s requirements on every parameter, the first Tejas squadron will be deployed in Bangalore, he said. (Air Marshal Anjan Kumar Gogoi, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, South-Western Air command)
I thought Tejas performance did not meet all IAF requirements. Have performance parameters been lowered where required to allow Tejas to meet them?
Spitfire9It roughly states that the budget constraints were known back in 2007, before the competition started , leaving a reduced number of Gripen as the only possible option. Seems someone failed to communicate big time …!
I read a budget figure of ~2.2 billion Swiss Francs over 4 years ago. I’m sure if I could read that, Dassault, Eurofighter and SAAB would have been aware of the likely budget. If Dassault and Eurofighter gambled on the government increasing the budget and selecting either Rafale or Typhoon, it looks like they lost their bets to me.
Spitfire9In view of the marks and treshold leaked that had been applied to assess the replacement planes , it sounds more like the Swiss AF was selecting a plane to replace both F5 and F18 fleets .
They must feel let done or worse tricked. Wondering if they are not contemplating in the number of the worse scoring plane , claimed to be the only one affordable in replacement of F5, as indeed the replacement of both F5 and F18 fleets .
Makes sense to replace F-18 with additional Gripens if Gripen E/F turns out to have a good in-service record (always assuming it enters service – the acquisition of an F-5 replacement could be subject to a referendum.)
Spitfire9Like I said….
http://www.air-cosmos.com/defense/berne-s-accroche-au-gripen.html
It really isn’t rocket science:
– you have old equipment you need to replace
– you have a budget for replacement of the old with new
– you choose new equipment that fits your budget
As it says in the last line of the Air & Cosmos article: “The promise of a lower unit cost was what persuaded Berne to choose the small single-engined Swedish jet.”
Spitfire9Argentina shows off jet model and calls on UK to dialogue on Falklands’ sovereignty
From reading the article, Pampa II the sounds like a BIG, BIG advance over the Pampa I:
” …it carries a maximum weapons and ammo payload of 1.600 kilos, which is an advance over 1.60 kilos from Pampa I.” 🙂
Re: dialogue over the sovereignty of the South Atlantic islands (known to some as the Malvinas, to others as the Falklands), since it is clear that an overwhelming majority of the inhabitants do not want to be subject to Argentinian sovereignty there is no possibility of UK transferring sovereignty to Argentina. The UK finds itself in the same position regarding ceding sovereignty of Gibraltar to Spain.
Spitfire9$4.40? I think you’re missing some digits there. Probably six. $4.40 would barely have bought a round of beers in my college bar. 😀
Where’s your college? $4.40 just about buys a round of 1 beer / a bit less than 1 beer (if it’s possible to buy a bit less than 1 beer) where I live.
Spitfire9http://www.lematin.ch/suisse/Le-Gripen-devrait-recevoir-le-coup-de-grce-/story/16071000
the report should be available August the 21st according to the article.
The newspaper report judges that the selection process leading to choosing Gripen should be rejected. Perhaps that will happen. Mauer is reported as saying that it will be Gripen or nothing. Perhaps he is right. If the public need to sanction the expenditure but won’t sanction it if an extremely capable aircraft were selected (that would be a nice, shiny, expensive twin with lots of very advanced features) what would be the point of continuing this saga?
Spitfire9BAE to upgrade South Korea’s fleet of KF-16 fighter jets
Spitfire9Why is the cost of an initial LRIP batch F-35 paid by the US DoD in 2012 relevant? By the time large scale dliveries of F-35 to European nations are underway, the quoted unit cost will be a lot lower. Have a look the cost history of programs like C-17 for example.
The F-35 is a few years behind schedule. If I understand correctly some European countries need to replace ageing F-16 fleets and planned to replace them with low-priced F-35’s when it reached volume production in the middle of this decade. To replace F-16’s as intended they would have to buy LRIP aircraft, wouldn’t they?
Norway may be able to afford that. Who else could without screwing their defence budget and defence plans? F-35 may be far more capable than the aircraft it is intended to replace but buying it will, I think, ironically reduce the defence capability of European nations buying it.
Spitfire9Although late, LCA will see production and wide-spread deployment, and form the basis of a robust, successful and self-sustaining domestic fast-jet program.
To cancel LCA this late in the game would be utter foolishness, IMHO, and will simply not happen. Period.
The cost of continuing the LCA program is low. If
a) its performance matches or betters MiG-21
b) it is less likely to cost pilots’ lives through crashes
c) it is cheaper to operate than MiG-21
then I think it would not be clever to abandon the program.
To me there is another important aspect to continuing with the program. If more lessons need to be learnt in terms of design, testing and production of indigenous fast jets before a “working” fast jet can be produced, Tejas offers the opportunity for learning such lessons. If India abandons Tejas before it is made to work, what chance is there of successfully developing anything more sophisticated? I don’t see the point of India aiming to develop AMCA if India has not learnt how to make a success of a far less challenging project.
Spitfire9Quoting from the link I posted on the earlier page :-
The cross sectional area variation of LCA along the length of fuselage is shown in Fig 12. Between station X = 5000mm & 6000mm there is a sudden increase in area. By smoothing this sudden rise, the wave drag can be minimized.
I am sure that area ruling is not simple. Nevertheless I find it strange that this problem was not identified early in the design process. If a sudden increase in area “breaks the rules”, why was it designed that way? Having been designed the way it was, would high drag not have been confirmed at the stage of testing models in the wind tunnel?
Spitfire9Sorry to inform you but that process started almost a decade back, the sub contractors that used to make smaller components are being upgraded to absorb technologies from DRDO labs and defence offsets (eg Tata Aerospace divisions), and the companies that were previously working on subsystem levels are now competing against govt defence PSU’s for contracts (Eg L&T), but the risk factors are heavily stacked against a new entrant in the core defence technology (the kind India is still struggling with, like opto-electronics, gas turbine technology, advanced material research) and no private player is going to enter these fields anytime soon, until their profits from other defence contracts are strong enough to take the impact from a major failed R&D endeavor, to keep the entire defence products division up-float in the eyes of investors.
Thanks for informing me. No need to apologise! My bad for not knowing.
Spitfire9Going by quadbike’s posting history, his response would be on the lines of:-
1. fire everyone even remotely associated with the program
2. sell everything (especially to the conglomerates whose defence divisions have been brought with considerate hand holding of the people he would tell you to fire)
3. buy gripen off the shelf
4. ask the private players with zero experience in any major defence project to come up with a uber super aircraft in 10 years because in quadbike’s head, everything is possible in R&D, experts can be bought and technologies can be produced overnight by careful titration of the currency notes with even more currency notes.
Government-controlled companies do not tend to perform as well IMO. Perhaps it’s time for the government of India to change its policy and to start building the commercial sector up so that in the future there is some competition in aircraft design/production.
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