The FGFA is years away. At least a decade or so I’d say, as they get the new engine operational, create the production infrastructure, fix inevitable hardware problems & software bugs, streamline maintenance processes & supply chains, and set up a personnel training pipeline, i.e. everything the F-35 program has been doing over the last five years.

T-50 with current engine fly higher and faster for longer range than any other aircraft on planet.

More “paper bragging”, SAAB will have a lot of thins to answer to, however I do Believe that they will manage to deliver too.

Quots from article,
“possibilities to reduce weight”
“simulators to reduce test flight program by 2/3”, I guess using the old wing design of the Gripen C will also help in this 🙂

Source in Swedish
http://www.nyteknik.se/fordon/nya-gripen-flyger-i-simulator-6576208

Well I will not go all the way and predict that Scandinavian countries will go the way of Mexico/Poland where some big countries control there firms/ labor but there is significant risk in next 10 years that there will be far less technical and financial ability left to be continue competitive in fighter market.
how many new fighter with newer EW pods per year Sweden is building now and how many new Meteor per year the are buying.

It’s high intensity war. There will be alot of stress on transport, management and storage .

Haavarla, you are wrong in your assesment. F-15Cs were only there for 3 weeks or so. USAF operated 6 F-16’s for months. After shooting down event, those F-16’s were slowly replaced with a dozen A-10Cs. Whether not to operate same type of aircraft as TuAF to avoid getting shot, or to provide CAS better for longer times, I don’t know. In any case, those routinely operate at northern Syria there are several dozen videos “syria.liveuamap.com” showing just that. Add to that, since 10.12.2015, there are a 4-6 Tornado IDSs of German Air Force, they routinely fly recon for German Air Force since 8 Jan 2016. Since February, there are 4 Saudi F-15s in Incirlik, but I am unaware if they have ever flown a mission.

From 25 Dec 2015:

From ?? Jan 2016:

From 26 Feb 2016 (newspaper claims)
[ATTACH=CONFIG]246097[/ATTACH]

Also, Turkey gave permission to French in 02 December 2015 to operate from the base, two cargo planes belonging to French Air force came, but I am unaware of any French combat aircraft operating from base.
As for UAV’s operating from incirlik, well, one Predator belonging to USAF crashed in 3rd February during landing was all over the news. After crash, Hürriyet newspaper claims there are 5 USAF Predators remaining in the base. Nevertheless, crash itself is sufficent proof to me.
As for Turkish operations in Syria, there is at least one occassion a Turkish airforce Bayraktar UAVs was caught in the camera some 2-3 weeks ago. A few Turkish newspapers claimed in 08 May 2016 a Turkish Special Forces team consisting of 15-20 soldiers entered Syria from 13-14 km east of Kilis, to locate ISIS Rocket launchers targeting Kilis for 9 days (46 rockets fired, caused 17 deaths, 61 injured). Turkish artillery continiously fired until Sunday morning, killing 103 ISIS terrorists, and “USA and Russia is informed about the operation.” Normally, I would not take such news agency claims seriously, especially when they point to an “unnamed military source”, but somehow not one rocket fell after this day, making me think this one is true.

Here’s a new speculation topic about İncirlik (Although its totally irrelevant with the AH-1W shot-down, its more relevant to the title of the thread then the mentioned shooting down event itself). Turkish F-16’s regularly pictured in İncirlik (taxiing or taking-off) with Guided Bombs; see above picture with A-10s. Now Turkish Airforce never used İncirlik to bomb PKK in Turkey or Iraq; Its way too far away (~700km), and Turkey has very few F-16 in that base. (around 8, compared to 65 in Diyarbakır AFB as of 17th May). Its not used for training either, as pictured aircraft are all single seater F-16s, and Incirlik both lacks facilities and its not convinient to use a NATO base for that.

So the question is, what are Turkish F-16’s doing there with bombs? Could they be silently operating under the flag of NATO/coalition?

There is zero evidence that any F-16 has attacked Syrian Kurds so those Turkish F-16 most likely operates inside Turkey. Turkey has shortage of guided bombs it can’t waste it on non Kurds. That’s the reason that whole Arab coalition went away after Yemen war. Only Ruaf alone has round the clock high tempo capability.

when you install Israelis radar,ew,missiles. there is no point in going for rafale avionics.

VK-800 is somewhat underpowered for its role and fuel consumption may not be as good as their french counterpart , if they can build a better engine then the french one with growth potential for hot and high operation then its well worth the effort.

they may need two or three engines with separate factories. light helicopeters are in greater use and demand.

The fire and forget ‘local-area’ SAM is a new concept in really dealing with the kind of saturation threat posed, but, in an attrition fight its going to be lots easier for the F-35B to go back and get another 8 missiles than it would be for a frigate to go back and reload with a new complement of VL Mica or Ceptors!.

Its good after all those years you finally realized that airpower can be more quickly reloaded for next strike than ships. plus factories can make more fighters than shipyards can make more ships. plus ships are slower to move from one area to another. plus the air refueling tankers and large external fuel tanks gives tremendous flexibility to fighter loitering time and bases.

SPEAR3 will be a hell of a lot harder to programme a good counter to than any kind of same strike formation-sized attack with BrahMos, C80x, AM39 or Harpoon!

current brahmos is yesterday weopon. current weopon is klibir that can be fired at long ranges from small ships and diesel electric subs and future is brahmos NG. missiles like R-37M and Project 810Mm are developed to shot down MPAs/Anti sub helicopters at hundreds of kms thus increasing the efficiency of SSKs.