just give me a scaled up Global Hawk – that will be fine for me

Well on top of that you need to give yourself a whole bunch of new communications sats. Think of how much data you’d have to transmit back to make up for the 14 odd crew on an MRA4, not to mention what you’d do about replacing the capability of the weapons it carries.

@bgnewf: They could actually fit Nimrods out with all kinds of bombs and missiles, it has a very large weapons bay. But as it stands you couldn’t call it a “poor man’s” anything, unless you compare it to a B2.

The official name of the J29 in the Swedish AF is “The Barrel”. Guess why? 😉
And I absolutely agree about the J21.

Me? Viggen of course! Brutal brutalis… Luuve it.

I really love this thread, makes my hart fill with joy and rather stupid nationalistic pride*. Thanks for the initiative J-7! But… it also makes me quite sad. It symbolizes an era that now definetively is a part of the past. And it shall never come again. A different time, a different Sweden and a diffrent world. For good and for worse.. Gripen will sadly be the last multirole fighter produced in Sweden, and this thread is a beautiful requiem of an aircraft industry and an air force that is no more.

But I hope we some day instead could take part in joint developement programmes with the Brits and the rest of our European friends. Multi nation cooperation is now the way forward if we ever want to be able to compete with the US and Russia etc..

*) Also makes me remember how it was like growing up in Cold War Sweden as a little kid. Nato in the west, and the Soviet Union in the east.. And the mighty roar of Viggens over my head. Oh, how I loved them! R.I.P

I’m just imagining the things we could come up with if the Swedes and Brits started working together on fighters.

At least Europe has some variety, but it wouldn’t hurt to cut down a bit to save on duplicating capability *Glares at the Rafale*.

Cold War was a bit before my time for the most part, so I never got to see a Viggen up close.

Does anyone know when the next test is?

Probably not until they figure out what the problem is.

Well the VLS on the FSC model is practically non existent so that must be quite a large amount of weight saved, don’t know how much you would lose from the radars though, like I said it does seem like a lot to save the best part of 1500 tonnes.

BTW the Harpoon launchers are amidships, what you can see at the front I suspect are Torpedo tubes.

Just had another look and the flight deck looks longer on the FSC.

Indeed, forgot about the Torpedo tubes.

The Janes article mentioned the FSC having a big flight deck (Bigger than T45 I guess) for the same reason LCS does, use of extra helos or VTOL UAVS and mission modules.

It wouldn’t take much to alter the flight deck either from T45, just push the hangar back a bit (and expand hopefully for extra helos) into space where the second mast was.

Actually I think it’s wrong, looking at this picture I think what we’re seeing is 2 Quad Camm vls, also if you have a look and compare to T45 you can see where the reduced weight would be.

To be honest I can’t see that these will be getting much else in the way of armament, shame really if the same size vls battery was used as a T45 we could think about TacTom and maybe looking at the idea of using Fire Shadow as well. I’m not keen on this design personally; it just looks like a warmed over T23 with a bow ramp for ‘mission modules’ seems to fall quite a way short of the frigate designs that other countries are offering.

I’d warm to it more myself if it meant it was cheaper than similar foreign offerings so that we can get more than the minimum requirement. It is always easier to get funding to upgrade and add weapons/VLS cells later than to buy an extra hull.

They really should think about exportability as well. Even if they’re going to build them minimalist, they should show how versatile the concept could be with designs showing a range of weapons that could be added.

Yeah but if you look at the model of it that has been posted up there’s a great deal less superstructure compared to a T45, also much less in vls.

Hmm i suppose so, it just seems like a large step down for a ship that is basically the same hull.

The tracking station on Hirta (St. Kilda) is manned year round. Without that, it would be prohibitively expensive for the owners, the National Trust for Scotland, to keep a wildlife warden there. The islands would be unguarded, open to exploitation by anyone who chose, unless developed for tourism, which would bring in large numbers of people . . .

The last 36 inhabitants left in 1930. The islands are a haven for seabirds, seals, & marine life, & have a feral sheep population (needs periodic culling, due to lack of natural predators). There are no rats, cats, etc., & the National Trust wants to keep it that way.

The MoD is a very well-behaved tenant. It enforces NT restrictions on landing (visitors are welcome, but by prior arrangement, & must obey certain rules), its staff take care not to do anything the NT objects to, & the facilities it maintains for its own use are available to the NT, greatly facilitating its operations.

Periodic sheep culls. Perhaps they could tie that in to the missile tests…

…A Tactom would do the job of several bolt guns at least.