No wonder they are not authorized to speak publicly.

N

Damage control BS.

Nic

I checked Rafale beats everyone in fuel economy and empty/loaded ratio ?

http://www.aviatia.net/versus/rafale-vs-eurofighter/

Is it stealth or supercruise ?

It does supercruise at about 1.3 mach with 4 AAMs (or is it 6) & a central fuel tank.

Nic

Let’s take a simple example. Boeing might build the SH as a “Gripen competitor”, but this doesn’t mean GE doesn’t have the right to make more money with another partner, does it? Also, I wouldn’t say “at no cost”, but “at lower costs”.

Sure GE should be able to sell to anyone they please. However since the dev cost was paid by some other customer (US government), then cost shouldn’t be as low as it is for the customer who shelled the development money.

Or else something is very wrong. Or they don’t mind because they have ulterior motives.

Nic

The benefit of forcing them to an open competition is that LM won’t be able to decide the price it wants, it will have to submit an offer that is going to be compared to its competitors, and it will be harder for them to milk the canadian government. I’m sure they will somehow, but it will be tougher, and they probably are going to have to grease more hands.

So yes it’s a victory to for its competitors insofar as its going to strip them from some cash that could be used to give some other customer a discount to get an advantage in some other market.

Nic

There is sometinf about Gripen NG (and i’m a fan), more specifically about SAAB PR bothering me. On one side they say that the technology is mature, trials near done, software ready (btw finally MS21 software, same in swiss eval) etc. and on the other hand that there is plenty of spae for development and intellectual property for future buyers…

There’s also the question how Sweden can develop a fighter program that’s about half as expensive as the Rafale program for less airframes, for a small country, while we are said by everyone and their mother that it’s impossible to develop a fighter alone even if your name is France, Germany or the UK. There’s the question of all those new upgrades that seem to cost nothing to develop. Gripen NG being allegedly less expensive than the previous ones, despite having to develop a whole new GaN EW suite, an AESA while completely redesigning the internals.

Nic

Conformal radars may very well be the future, but we arent there yet. 200 degree radar coverage is pretty good for an interim solution.

It is, but then again before the MLU it seems offboard targetting is the thing. Shoot & beam is so 80ies!

Very easy. We do not have the excact data for the whole time in question and what is involved in the estimated program cost for that time-scale. The original one for the A-D is no longer valid and has to be reduced by several billions! Just the revised one by switching to E-D upgrades has some credibility. But is still an estimated one as well.

Except I gave the A-D cost through 2009 & not the whole program cost, added to the E/F cost for 2013 onwards. I didn’t give the cost from the C/D program through 2040 or something!

Nic