JakobSAbsolutely love it!
JakobSYes, but that plan (to ‘upgrade’ Cs to Es by building new aircraft with a few parts from scrapped Cs) was adopted years after the start of the project. It wasn’t always the plan, as you first suggested.
To be honest Saab concluded pretty fast that upgrading planes from C with bigger engine would require pretty much a new aircraft, so while they did still promoted that an upgrade was possible it has always meant scrap the plane and take what little parts you can. If I remember this was back in 2006 when they were still talking to Eurojet.
JakobSGripen NG was always sold as a new-build aircraft for new customers (the extra fuel capacity first appeared on a proposal to Denmark IIRC), but the original design was an upgrade of the basic Gripen, & most of the airframe should have been common to C & E. Existing users were supposed to be able to upgrade their aircraft, but they could choose which parts of the upgraded design they wanted to apply to their existing aircraft. It wasn’t necessary to buy the whole package.
Over several years, that’s transmuted, & there now seems to be much less connection between Gripen E & upgrades for C. A lot of E avionics still seem to be available for C, but not the radar. Instead, you can have a major upgrade of the radar already fitted.
The text quoted by Ozair is, I think, a good illustration of one stage in the process & some of the pressures which drove it.
The Gripen NG program have had many disguises over the last decade. I was speaking mainly from Sweden’s point of view where the Gripen E was nailed down finally together with Switzerland. From then on and up until recently the plan have been to scrap all current C/D versions and reuse what components they can such as the catapult chair for an example.
JakobSTest plane number two have been rolled out and will be in the air within weeks. Test plane 3 in final assembly.
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JakobSAlso Argentina, if they give up on the Falklands formally, definitely and convincingly. Its irrendentism is somewhat associated with Peronism, so it could conceivably happen if the current liberal right government succeeds.
The UK is one of the countries Sweden have best relationship with, a Gripen sale to Argentina will not happen. Just look at when Argentina and Brazil announced that Argentina wanted 24 Gripens, the people over at Saab had never heard of such a thing.
Argentina letting the Falklands conflict go will never happen.
JakobSThe Gripen NG as originally planned was something one could create by upgrading a C.
No it was never intended as an upgrade. The government was going to scrap the C/D planes and use a minimum of their parts for the new planes, the whole plan was disguised as a rebuild.
I’m actually a bit surprised that the politicians themselves realized how stupid that was and all new Gripen’s will be new builds.
JakobSSince Sweden is not going to be ordering any two seater F-versions the Brazilians have to fund the development for it. For this reason Saab have agreed that Embraer will manufacture all the future F-verison for export. Well, maybe not if we in Sweden decides we want two seaters, but for other export customers they will do it.
Also Saab really want Brazil to join them in the future for developing the next generation swedish fighter, so I think parallel production is possible even for future european orders of the plane to keep the good relation.
JakobSSorry for going OT but is Canada really considering replacing the Aurora MPA? I thought they just did an upgrade to allow them to fly until 2030?
http://o.canada.com/news/national/replacement-for-aurora-surveillance-aircraft-deemed-unaffordable
Interesting, I like to think Saab Swordfish with the Bombardier Global plane have a much bigger chance of winning something like this rather than a fighter comp.
JakobSThe problem of course is that the Rafale and Eurofighter are just as expensive as the F-35 and while the Gripen NG may be incrementally cheaper, it is very poorly suited to operating in Canada.
To which fighter is best I leave to others to discuss, the point is simply that just because the air force has a favorite it dosen’t mean that the government should automatically get them that.
It’s like getting your 18 year old his first car, he can probably line up a lot of great arguments to why he should get a BMW M3, but that dosen’t mean that he’s right.
JakobSUSA (F22, F15, F16, F18); wants F-35
UK (Eurofighter, Tornado, Harrier); wants F-35
Italy (Eurofighter, Tornado, Harrier)l wants F-35
Australia (F18, Super Hornet); wants F-35
Netherlands (F16); wants F-35
Norway (F16); wants F-35
Israel (F15, F16); wants F-35
Turkey (F16); wants F-35
South Korea (F-16, F15); wants F-35RCAF wants F-35.
Guy 1 (Volvo) want’s a Ferrari
Guy 2 (Audi) want’s a Ferrari
Guy 3 (BMW) want’s a Ferrari
Guy 4 (Audi) want’s a Ferrari
Guy 5 (Mercedes) want’s a Ferrari
Guy 6 (Skoda) want’s a Ferrari
Guy 7 (Chrysler) want’s a Ferrari
Dosen’t mean they have the need for one or that they will get one.
JakobSIt’s a good thing that there is going to be a real process now regarding the investment in fighter jets for Canada. How the whole F-35 deal have been handled by the Harper administration is just embarrassing!
JakobSThe issues with the Brazilan state have been resolved and they picked up the testing in Oktober again. Things are apparently going great and they are about to introduce the second test plane as well as assembling the third test plane.
Testing of Embraer’s KC-390 tanker-transport is poised to accelerate to new levels with the introduction of a second aircraft and the start of a broad series of mission evaluations designed to finalize the aircraft’s aerodynamic lines.
Despite a 265-day hiatus in flight tests (related to Brazil’s budget issues) following its first flight in February 2015, the prototype has been flying at a high tempo since returning to the air last Oct. 26. “We are getting good reliability in the flight-test campaign. In January we flew more than 50 hr. in one month,” says Alexandre De Pol Fernandes, KC-390 senior program manager. “We have more than 130 flight hours amassed over the first four months. In terms of the aircraft’s high availability we are logging an unprecedented flight rate for a prototype,” he adds.
Since completing an initial airworthiness evaluation on the first sortie last year, Embraer launched immediately into envelope expansion when flights resumed. “We have achieved Mach 0.8, which is a very important milestone for us, and it is cleared to 36,000 ft. We are also evaluating all the aircraft systems, and have done inflight engine start and auxiliary power unit starts. We have also completed flap/slat configuration tests,” says Fernandes.
The latter tests are critical to the KC-390’s slow speed performance for both short-field capability and air-drop missions, adds Fernando Fialho, KC-390 program strategy manager. “This is very different from most other aircraft. We have a continuous double-flap segment with a fixed vane and can put flaps in discrete one-by-one degree positions.”
The flaps can be positioned from 0-40 deg., “which enables a wide variety of military operations such as gravity air drop, in which you need to put the aircraft in a nose-up attitude,” says Fialho. “We need to fly at fixed speed and altitude but at various weights. If you are heavier you need more flap. The ability to have such a large flap deflection also improves takeoff performance,” he adds.
The second KC-390 prototype has been rolled out and is being prepared for its first flight, which is “scheduled to happen over [this] month, maybe around the end of March or beginning of April,” says Jackson Schneider, president of Embraer Defense & Security. “The second aircraft is almost ready for flight and the timing depends on ground vibration tests,” adds Fernandes. The aircraft will be used for load validation tests and, other than minor differences in test equipment, is configured identically to the prototype.
“The main point for flight testing this year is to freeze the aerodynamics. To get there we have a lot of tests and some coordinated missions during the certification process, the first of which is in March,” says Fernandes. The test matrix, which will involve extensive participation from the Brazilian air force and army, includes air drops, paratroop deployment evaluation, parachute stability for the cargo-handling and air delivery systems and air refueling. The latter will be focused on stability of the trailing hose from the Cobham-supplied 912E wing air-refueling pod.
Production at Embraer’s facility in Gaviao Peixoto is picking up the pace; completion. This aircraft, dubbed 801, will be used for static tests with the next in line, 802, due to handle fatigue tests. “The static [aircraft] is in final assembly and will be ready early [in March],” says Fernandes who adds that suppliers have begun work on long lead items for the first production aircraft. Embraer is also assembling a full cockpit section for use in bird-strike certification tests.
“We are making best efforts to keep on plan to be ready to enter initial service [in] September 2017, and receive final certification in the third quarter of 2018,” says Fernandes. Deliveries of the first of 28 KC-390s to the Brazilian air force are set to begin in the first half of 2018. Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the Czech Republic and Portugal have signed declarations of intent for 32 additional aircraft, all of which remain active.
Efforts are also underway to market the aircraft for Canada’s Fixed-Wing Search-And-Rescue (FWSAR) program. Despite emerging as a late entrant with the KC-390, Embraer believes the multi-utility transport compares favorably with the C-295offered by Airbus and the C-27C proposed by Finmeccanica. To bolster its bid, Embraer has assembled a few Canadian partners that it declines to name at this time. “We have some companies teaming with us, and we picked the best,” says Schneider.
The company believes the high transit speeds of the jet-powered KC-390 will give the aircraft an edge in the contest, enabling it to reach target areas for SAR missions in half the time of turboprops, depending on the distance. The role of SAR was “considered from scratch” in the baseline design, as it was one of the Brazilian air force requirements,” adds Schneider. Despite the overall slide in the KC-390 program because of Brazil’s fiscal distress, he says: “We will totally meet the conditions to deliver the aircraft.” The mission is currently performed by six de Havilland Canada CC-115s and 13 Lockheed Martin CC-130s.
JakobSWeeeellll . . . to keep C flying after buying 60 E would mean increasing the size of the air force.
No, keeping the C/D to fly after 2025 would mean maintaining the size of the air force and stop this ridiculous waste of planes that we have seen for the last two decades.
Also I’m not sure Thailand’s will be allowed to buy more planes since the military took power, there is a lot of discussion on that subject here.
JakobSThose are a real nice set of upgrades!
I really hope our politicians come to their senses and keeps the C/D version flying for many more years, it would be such a disgrace if they were allowed to throw all of them away by 2025…
JakobSThen tell me why even saab is pushing new c/d aircrafts as a cheaper solution to the e/f?
Because there are still lot’s of Gripen A/B’s in storage that will be rebuilt to C/D standard if desired. When Saab says new C/D’s they actually mean take most component’s from old A/B planes and put them in a new airframe. Also those charts are quite confusing because they are more related to development costs for Saab rather tan the fly away prices for the customer.
Who says that F-35 is killing Norwegian army?
Norwegian press have actually covered this very substantially during the fall, and there have also been statements from people with great insights into the armed forces.
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