Question for the engineers. Out of curiosity, is a +9G/-3G aircraft in fact capable of handling as much negative G as positive G without structural damage?

In theory no. Optimizing the internal structure for the expected load configuration can save weight and internal space. But in practice, many structural components won’t gain a substantial benefit doing so. There are also structural margins that ensure your aircraft don’t break in pieces as soon as you reach the threshold all along it service life. Metal Fatigue for example will lessen the max sustainable G of a structure and this have to be factored-in.

The range of operating G is hence more a limit settled to ensure your aircraft and the pilot remain functional. Then the ultimate load that the aircraft can sustain depends of many more parameters.

So the Minus 3G is there for the pilot and the on-board systems. Not for the structure.

I’m, afraid this is illogical.

Firstly, the “at least” – why at least? Doesn’t make sense. You’re saying that if one (of many) sources of costs increases by 30%, then all costs increase by 30% or more. No! In reality, that means that some expenses increase by up to 30%.

By expense I meant, everything that Saab has to outsource outside of Sweden.

Secondly, you’ve linked the pound to the USD. That’d guarantee bankruptcy if you were a foreign currency trader. They’re not linked. The SEK could have fallen against the USD because it’s following the euro (its main trade partners currency), for example – & these days the pound moves more in line with the euro than the dollar.

I have nothing to argue against. I am not a Financial analyst so I take your argument for granted. I had just in mind that given the huge dominant position of the City, UK would have played with currency variations to make some easy profits.

And then we have the fundamental error you’ve made, which is to ignore the fact that the contract is in SEK, & regardless of what happens to the exchange rate & SAAB’s non-SEK costs, is fixed.

Didn’t mean that. Might have been lost in translation. Once contract are signed, prices are fixed unless the parties have signed a dedicated agreements.
But before any signature, Saab cost and Gripen price will fluctuates, just like any product on the market.
Given that a significant part of the Grip is outsourced abroad, the cost will be imparted by the extra expenses for Saab. And if you factor energy prices and inflation (you don’t build a fleet of fighters in one single week), overall cost will be even higher than the variation in currencies at the time of signature. Saab have to factor this point in their prices. This why I was mentioning margins that are here to make sure your contract is profitable (See bellow).

How SAAB deals with currency fluctuations has been discussed. It does exactly what every other company in the business does: it hedges its contracts. There’s a big financial firm or consortium somewhere which will absorb any losses, & can afford to do so because it has the other side of other currency hedge contracts, so they’ll balance out on average, & it’ll make a profit on the deals from the fees it charges. Boeing does it, Airbus does it – everyone does it. It’s standard industry practice. The fees for the currency hedges are taken into account when setting the contract price.

.

Link is for another article
this one is correct: http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/162912/no-alternative-to-f_35-if-belgium-keeps-nuke-mission.html

The Boeing F-18E Super Hornet is not nuclear-capable, Hans Kristensen, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) told Belga on Thursday. The Swedish government for its part prohibits any Gripen sales that could involve a nuclear role. As for the Airbus Group’s Eurofighter, it was conceived as an interceptor and is only acquiring attack capabilities very slowly. No European user (Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and Austria) has however considered giving it a nuclear capability.

F18E:
The F18E are able to carry nuclear ordonances IMOHO

Link In NL (Wiki How hard is it to find).

Typhoon:
Why bother to comment…

the nuclear issue is a red herring, and that the decision rests on whether the Belgian government wants to align its air force with the Netherlands (F-35) or with France, in which case it would go with Rafale.
In both cases, aircraft performance and price are likely to have very little influence on the final decision.)

(Editor’s note)

Surce:
http://fas.org/
Wiki

Are you sure those items are 100% Russian ? If not, it could explain why they are not mounted on all models.

Where do you get that ridiculous figure from ? Its pure speculation. Saab says the price is 37,5m$ and you say its not. You and others split an industry deal figure with the number 36 and think thats the price. Ridiculous.
Do you also get the factory with the car you are buying ? Or if you buy 10cans of beer in the store plus alot of other stuff like food for 50 days and a computer. Then you split the price on the bag you got from the shop on the 10cans beer? expensive beer in that store ! holy shi* !
In this case with the gripens many of you do.

What an aggressive tone. I am always amazed of the ppl on the web.

Ok here is your own post:

Gripen NG for Brazil is 37,5m$/plane the rest is other stuff.

Discussing the price are ridiculous when you have no clue what’s in it.

Seems for me that I only quoted you and made an interpretation(yes a wild guess). But for that, I added a “Probably” at the beginning of my sentence.

No need to be impetuous.

Once again, those points doesn’t show-up only after, reportedly, 95% of the negotiation is done.

Rafale use composites for structural elements, using special honeycomb sandwich and new types of high modulus fibers, not only for control surfaces and wings , but also for fuselage parts front, central and rear with some complex shapes. They did no go for automation for the sake of it, but to acheive systematic quality not economically achievable manually.

It’s not like the composite parts were designed last year. A lot have been ongoing in the Composite world.

Just as an Example, Northrop and Boeing team regularly with Scaled Composite for prototyping complex parts with an Hand-made process.

One of the leader in Eu for complex composite parts prototyping, an important subcontractor for Airbus some years ago (notably in de-risking), was an SME, a small branch of a major group in the US. Less than a hundred of employee… And nothing inside indicating a fully automated process. Highly refined process, good engineering, motivated operator and clever management suffices.

Another example: the biggest composite parts of the Rafale are the wing skins (see bellow). An impressive piece of design at the time with an automated process and tight tolerances to be matted as a single piece on the wing metallic structure… But that is quite commune today. Even Mil could certainly manufacture it nowadays.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]236818[/ATTACH]

Watch the following video:

It’s an old airframe (serial) and we can assume that some (more than) subtle changes might have been made since. But it’s not Glycon’s technology.

So, I am sorry to say but the composite argument, put like this, unsubstantiated, is quite doubtful.

37M$ is proably what the Swedish gov pays to Saab for the airframe supposing that other items are directly negotiated with their respective manufacturer (Volvo, Selex…). IMOHO It remains to be seen if the Grip NG/E cost less than 100M$.

And again, what makes Gripen an interesting product are the operating cost.