Perhaps this is a stupid question, but have you read what is planned for the Gripen NG? How is it not a good replacement for the Hornet fleet? As far as I’m concerned the Gripen, when fitted with the proper equipment is a great replacement for jets ranging from the F-5 to the F-16 and/or F/A-18 (regular model).

Gripen NG is not a good Hornet replacement because by the time the Hornet will be replaced, Gripen NG is outdated. 😉
Don’t get me wrong, Gripen is an excellent fighter. But you said it yourself, when (if) fitted with the proper equipment, its a great replacement in the 2030 timeframe. That means imho, a further developed version is required. Afterall, the benchmark and/or contender might be F-35.

The Rafale is certainly just as capable and more so in some ways than the Gripen, but to say that you have to spend that much money to replace the F/A-18 (which I don’t think needs replacing anytime soon as long as its updated to keep pace) is just silly.

As I said earlier, good on Saab…they have a great product on their hands.

Yes, F-18s will remain in service for a long time, so Rafale too would need upgrades to be in the run.

just one small detail: the aircraft is to replace the tigers for now but is expected to replace the hornets later on as they reach the end of their operational lives.

the idea being for armasuisse to have one fighter type once the hornets are retired

That may turn out to be the case. But it wasn’t part of the official requirement.

Surely Swiss AF will try to replace the Hornets with something more capable than Gripen NG. My opinion: If development of the Gripen stops after the NG, it won’t be a contender. A follow up version of the Gripen NG or the proposed FS2025 or whatever its called however is another story. And I think these will be good enough.

The F-18 btw still has plenty of life left. 3 years ago or after around 10 years of service, the fleet accumulated 50.000 hours or 1.515 per jet.

From what I can see that image snippet you posted from Janes states that Gripen C/D did not pass 4 of the 13 tests when benchmarked against Hornet.

The way I read it, it says: … did not fulfil 4 of the 13 required benchmarks – when tested against the Hornet. Meaning they tested against the F-18, but it doesn’t imply the F-18 itself is the benchmark. It simply is the only thing around to play with. 😉
Could be wrong though.

Is there any data for NG as well or was the evaluation just for C/D ?

http://rafalenews.blogspot.com/2011/11/switzerland-armasuisewiss-ranked-rafale.html
Green should be C/D, red the proposed NG.
But as we don’t really know what the graphs want to tell us, it’s only value is to show that Gripen failed those 2 benchmarks.

What would the more “challanging missions” be? Examplify..

Two Taurus would mean only one drop tank.

What are the “deficits in capabilities” you claim?

What about two Taurus underwing and two belly drop tanks?
But if you plan to use 2 Taurus on a regular basis, the Gripen probably isn’t the best plane for you 😉

According to Dassault’s statement Swiss would have needed less rafale to perform the jobs according to the swiss air force. So depending on who you are listening you can find different conclusions. It is plain normal as in the fighter jet export businness nothing is blak or white. You can find sensible reasons to go for any of the three contenders.

Yes, the number was 15 jets for both Typhoon and Rafale iirc. But frankly, I would choose 22 Gripen over 15 of the other 2 any day. It’s debatable if 15 large jets can do the work of 22 smaller ones when payload/range is no issue.

@eagle : we know all the different categories of testing and their respective weight in the operational evaluation. We know that the rafale was was rated above the typhoon in both AtA and AtG and that it was the only one meeting the minimum requirements as far as the operational tests are concerned. What’s left ? Recce ? I don’t expect the gripen or the typhoon to reach the rafale performance in this area with the brand new Reco-NG pod. We also knwo that only the rafale and typhoon regulrly performed “significativly above the “6” threshold” while the gripen usually performed bellow. In the end the rafale was the recommended choice of the swiss air force according to those tests. What’s more to add ? That does not mean the gripen is not a good choice for the swiss airforce. As explianed above there are plenty of perfectly valuable arguments that push for a gripen decsison.

No, we know only 2 sub categories from the operational evaluation. We don’t know if the numbers are correct. And the 2 categories are defensive air combat and offensive air combat, whatever that means. No word about air to ground.
What’s left? Recce, CAS, interdiction/strike, CAP, you name it. But also operational reliability and maintainability where the Gripen rules.

Thanks to the link to the janes article you posted in the Rafale thread, we know there were 13 categories. I wonder why you didn’t post that bit of the news 😉
It’s most interesting indeed and confirms what I was guessing beforehand.

So the Gripen failed in 2 out of 13 benchmarks, and usually performed above the threshold. Meaning it passed overall, assuming it scored at least 66.7 in the remaining 11 fields. (Thats (13*6)-5.68-5.62). Pretty certain I would say.
Edit: oops, it says Gripen did not fulfil 4 of 13 which means my little calculation is useless as we don’t have any numbers for the other 2 failures.

Note: The article doesn’t say the required benchmark is the Hornet.