Like always some people in this forum tend to focus on maniverability first and forget other things about it. The fact that the Gripen is able to achieve Mach 2 with a lower TWR than some American designs (incl. F-18) shows the aerodynamic benefits of the design. The TWR is surely not the best in the world, but it is sufficient. There is no need for “super-manouverability”, so designers re-think.
Fast is that the Gripen with its current engine is a marvelous machine: very low weight, high capability, true multi-role, easy maintenance and handling, very competitive flight performance. It is not the best performer, but for the customers in question it is not of importance. When you see how much some designs sacrifice for the extra deg/sec, you doubt that it was worth it.

Unfortunately, the Gripen (like the M2000) lacks the backing of a powerful nation to achieve sales in the market. Instead air forces buy crappy used F-16 or horribly expensive new F-16C.

I know the Gripen is fine as it is now. And manouverability is excellent anyway. But more thrust would not hurt, it never does.
Of course, it depends if a customer is willing to pay for a rel. small performance gain.

Any news if this date can be hold … would be in two days ?????

Deino

I think its more in the first decade 2007 range now.

I did some calculations of marble sized jsf and amraams and jsf with just two wingtip amraams seems to be detected at more or less twice the range than completely clean jsf. When talking about big, powerful radars like awacs, that can be a difference of 100 km. Better to go stealthy then.

Don’t forget there are no real wingtip stations, but missile rails near the wingtips for Sidewinder only carriage. The pylons itself will likely increase the rcs further.

Internal payload might be okish for A2A mission (allthought even then 6 missiles total is not that great) but for a strike mission it just dont have enouth internal space for good payload. So you should either get bombs on external pilons and than your range suffers, or put external fuel tanks and then you are basicaly down to several small bombs with no missiles…

F-22 is an air superiority fighter. Any internal bomb load is just an extra which is not that bad with 2 1000lb or 8 250lb.

So how many SDBs can a B-2 carry? The current rack fits onto the rotary launcher giving a total of 64 SDBs. Any other options?

Re your comments about sovereignty: What are you talking about?? As I said before, during the Cold War, with the enemy just 40km east of Vienna, back when it has really mattered, the Austrians did NOT properly defend their airspace. Why now against “the Americans”?

Austria didnt have a properly equipped air force. The armed forces were more like an armed police. Not very clever to dance with the bear.

Defending a country has to start with doctrine reflecting the political and strategic environment, followed by a clear mission statement for the armed forces, followed by acquisitions reflecting that mission statement.
Austria has non of the above (save a spongy carbon copy from the UN-charter about freedom and something about the EU).
Austria bought a plane and now they are looking for reasons why to have it, and they come up with “NATO” (baaad), “the Americans” (even worse) and Bin-Laden stuff. Kind of hoping that some bad guy shows up so they can finally prove how vital their new toy is. Wrong way round I say.

Unfortunately, Austrians dont care about defence. Most think hiding behind neutrality is enough. In general, Austrias attitude here is completely screwed.
But theres (in theory) a clear requirement to defend sovereignty. That imho is enough reason to buy 18 lousy fighters.

If they’d take an honest look at their real-life requirements (politically & strategically realistic, budgetary & operationally manageable, …) they’d be just fine with a modern subsonic trainer for their “air policing”. And basing them in the West instead the southeast would even with such a trainer give them shorter “intercept” times for those bad guys crossing from Bavaria into Italy (just in case they want to play).

Subsonic trainers suck altough I agree there should be an airbase in the west. But: good luck finding a place.

On F-16: That would be the worst possible decision. No one choses F-16 if you can have EF for air defence, esp. when you are a small European country. Digital moving map doesnt matter. F-16 is even worse than MiG-29 which would have been free of charge.

Which takes us back to the argument that buying a state of the art multi-role fighter designed for operations in the most hostile of threat environments is HUGE overkill for just policing airspace, that could be done by the Hawk, L159, Alphajet, T50 {insert other lightweight fighters}.

But those are too slow except for the T50 maybe. But that wasnt really an option.
As i wrote earlier, its also good to have one squadron equipped with state of the art fighters to preserve (rather gain in Austrias case) knowledge.

Ireland is guarded by the RAF in the same way that any threat to Austria would be a threat to Germany or Italy so neither country would stand by and see Austria bombed by a foreign power. And the point remains, any air threat to Austria would have to violate the airspace and defence systems of several other countries before reaching Austria. The UK wouldn’t help Ireland out of altruism or generosity, we’d help them as it is in the interests of UK security, much the same as whether there is a formal agreement or not Austria’s bigger neighbours have a vested interest in a secure Austria.

Its not about being bombed by a foreign power. Its about air policing. Most of the violations come from German airspace anyway.