ToT opportunities relating to F414 are almost certainly very limited; this has little bearing on the merit of the selection for the simple reason that nobody else would’ve been offering significant engine ToT either. We don’t hear of M88 ToT associated with MMRCA, do we?

This notion that there is some conspiracy at work on the part of SAAB to conceal the true extent of ToT, production and development opportunities available to Brazil is absurd, not least of all because it requires Brazil to be as dumb as a bag of rocks.

Sweden must have a partner moving forward, and Saab must have a “second home” in order to stay in the fighter jet business. Sweden is too small to host future fighter jets develeopment.

Thus from day 1 Brazil is concidered not a customer but a partner. I think both Sweden/Saab and Brazil considers this very much a “win-win”. The alternative for Sweden would have been to accept to leave the fighter business in the not too distant future; now they can keep significant portions of the business in Sweden.

This is my take on things too. Dassault, Boeing and SAAB all wanted the contract, but SAAB wanted it the most, because they needed it the most.

I agree with you. Saab does not own the intellectual property rights to 100% of Gripen and has no ability to give away the IP owned by another. USG and GE own the IP rights to the basic F414 from which the “G” is derived and Selex likely owns the IP rights to ES-05.

Boy is Brazil going to be shocked to discover that Saab doesn’t own F414. That will teach them not to sign off on proposals written on the back of a paper napkin — at least not without checking Wikipedia first.

:rolleyes:

a joint fighter force based in another country

lol, I suppose that’s one way to avoid having your entire Air Force obliterated by a storm of Russian TBMs on Day 1.

Speaking of old and venerable aircrafts: isn’t it overdue to grant retirement to the Il38’s family?

Il-38 is currently being upgraded with ‘Novella’ system extending the ‘Sea Dragon’ upgrade for Indian Il-38s, so not going anywhere soon. MS-21 will probably be the airliner platform of choice by the time a replacement is due.

Based on my extensive personal experience of being strafed by MiG-29s, I conclude that this footage is indeed real.

Super Hornet was — or should’ve — always been doomed from the fact that it is simply too much aircraft, that its strengths are not particularly relevant in the Swiss context, and that its weaknesses are.

NATO and the US badly want Ukraine within their sphere of influence.

Yet are pretty powerless to stop the Russian’s taking Crimea (outside a few meaningless sanctions).

NATO’s recent display of impotence is of its own making. Here we have a collection of politicians, strategists, etc. who seriously imagined that they could walk the American Empire right up to Russia’s doorstep and get away with it.

Notions of ‘international law’ or ‘justice’ have nothing to do with it — it’s like the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the Soviet Union and Cuba were perfectly within their legal rights to pursue the actions they did, but the Americans went off the hook anyway, because they simply could not tolerate the intrusion of another Great Power so close to home.

America responded as it did during the Cuban Missile Crisis because it could, and this is precisely why Russia is doing so now. The sleepwalking politicians and flunkeys at NATO have seemingly missed the re-emergence of Russia as a major power over this past decade, and refused to acknowledge what that portends for the generational American project of intruding on Russia’s sphere of influence. They previously got away with it only because Russia was too weak to do anything about it. The fact that this situation in Ukraine has occurred despite the numerous warnings and metaphorical ‘lines in the sand’ Russia has drawn these past few years — most blatantly the 2008 conflict with Georgia — should be troubling for anyone concerned about the stability of Great Power relations in the 21st century.

People wonder why it is that I am concerned about the possibility of a major conflict between the United States and China and what that would portend for my own nation — this is why. It’s not naked Chinese aggression I’m worried about, but the United States in the context of its relations with Asia’s lesser powers and their relations with China; the myopia which it has demonstrated over and over and over again transplanted to a new and dangerous era.

Another, not totally unrelated point – good luck getting Iran and North Korea to abandon nukes now, Ukraine did it under international “guarantees” of security in the 90s, where are those guarantees now?]

I suppose these “guarantees” would be like the ones offered to Gorbachev by the United States that NATO would not move eastward. Russia certainly learned its lesson from that: only strength can keep the Americans in check.

In any case, I don’t see the relevance. Iran and North Korea are worried about American aggression; in that context American ‘guarantees’ are just about irrelevant unless also accompanied by a willingness of e.g. Russia or China or Europe to intervene on their behalf, something that is, needless to say, not about to happen.

Seems to me the most likely alternative is ‘nothing’. Although with Brazil now in it for the long haul, Switzerland could well try again — that is to say, try for Gripen E/F again — next decade.

UCLASS Could Be Used as Tanker for Carrier Air Wing

http://news.usni.org/2014/04/01/uclass-used-tanker-carrier-air-wing

That’s necessarily going to involve a rather large aircraft…