Nicolas10“Integration of US nuclear weapons onto aircraft of non-nuclear weapon states that have signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and promised “not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly,” is, to say the least, problematic.”
Problematic, it says. Nice bit of understatement.
It is, isn’t it?
Nicolas10Nicolas10Very nice pic!
Nicolas10Everyone belongs to a minority at some point. It is up to the majority to not trample the minority.
I see it the other way around. Democracy is the way the minority can actually trample the majority.
Nic
Nicolas10You personal claim and guessing. You are correct that some snipers were hired from the ones in support of the former president. It did not work to claim the case of national emergency to restore order by force. The parliament did not follow, despite his pro-russian party had and has the majority till today. He showed not intrest to defend his case before the parliament and the court. Be pro-russian does not mean to live under Russian control in the Ukraine.
It has nothing to do with Toocool’s guessing. It was openly stated by the estonian foreign minister to catherine ashcroft on a leaked phonecall which was confirmed legit by the estonian foreign ministry?
Nic
Nicolas10I’m with you on this one, the only good thing to say about democracy is more transparency and more questioning press,
for less corruption
I guess France ain’t a democracy by your standards :s
Nic
Nicolas10A nonsense claim. All the Gripen A-D procured and the related infra-structure and time of operations are be payed for already. For the E/F you have just to add the extra money in need for the conversion. After some time in service the A-D had to be upgraded at all to stay first-line. The Swedes did not miss that chance. The assembly line is still there to have some new built ones as well.
WTF are you on about?
Care to mention what is nonsense exactly? How does your diatribe contradict what I said thus far?
I’m trying to break out the cost of the Gripen program for Sweden, “a nonsense claim” is hardly helping.
Nic
Nicolas10Nah, you, or i at least, can’t call it a rebuild, when only ejector seat, wind shield, and some other token item is being used,
a dishonest explanation to the swedish taxpayers it is perhaps.
It may be a good idea to store the butchered c variants and in case of request, buy a new ejector seat + wind shield to restore the C models for sale/lease
It would be cheaper to offer them to some third party dirt-cheap & purchase new cockpits & new ejection seats. I think there is a LOT left unsaid as to how the gripen program actually works.
Nic
Nicolas10too small i cant read
You can click the smaller version below and it enlarges it.
(of the image I mean :eagerness:)
Nic
Nicolas10funnily though, the president that was fired was elected in general elections… and was always pro russian
most of ukrainians (eastern and central part) are more pro russian (which explains also why the former president was elected in the first place)
western part of Ukraina which is, in the end, the minority, overthrew the elected president (that he may not have been very nice is an understatement, but yet, he was there from people’s majority’s will)… what I find funny is all that fuss about “defending democracy and such” and yet, if the democratic elections of what is supposed to be a sovereign country, give a result we don’t like, we (westerners) side with those who violently reject it, help a “coup d’etat” and then say that if a part of that state, which we more or less supported in its fully anti-democratic behavior, decides to have a vote so that its population decides of its fate, they aren’t allowed to do so…
please, do remind me what the definition of democracy is???
Good post.
http://zebuzzeo.blogspot.fr/2014/03/tireurs-delite-kiev-recrutes-par-les.html
If you don’t read french just listen to the video it’s a convo in english between Urmat Paet & Catherine Ashton, which was confirmed legit by the website of the estonian ministry of foreign affairs on their website.
http://www.vm.ee/?q=en/node/19353
It’s pretty much at the end of the conversation.
Now guess who’s behind the pro-western ukrainian movements?
Nic
Nicolas10Here’s a graphic description of the fate of the 204 airframes built to date.
http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/fordon_motor/flygplan/article3806241.ece
Nic
Nicolas10Saab says the Gripen E version will be cheaper than the previous versions. About 6 months ago, I tried to check this claim using the financial data available on Saab website (budget from early 2000 to 2026) and the book “Advanced Public Procurement as an Industrial Policy – The Aircraft Industry as a Technical Industry” (by Eliasson, G., Sweden, 2010) which uses the Gripen project as an example of economical benefits on the Swedish industry. You’ll be able to find a partial PDF version on the internet with financial number from 1982 to about 2007.
I’m a bit lazy to translate the analysis I wrote in French here (quick and dirty, just to have a rough idea using the available financial numbers), but in a nutshell the main conclusion was that the Gripen E, including R&D and production costs and adjusted inflation, is very similar to the previous versions: about US $90 million per aircraft in 2012 dollars. I used 230 aircraft for the number of previous version (204 for the Swedish Air Force, + 26 for the SAAF) but only 82 for Gripen E (60 for Sweden + 22 for Switzerland) as I computed these number before Brazil selected Gripen for its Air Force. I ignored all the others Air Forces since they use converted A/B aircraft to the C/D standard and I assumed that cost is supported by the customer (ie, no overall additional cost for Saab).
If you count the total program cost you can’t use 204 airframes, as I doubt the SwAF ever used more than 100 airframes at a time. So while 204 airframes were procured by sweden, not that many of them flew their intended lifespan. Most of those who did have been converted to C/D, & 60 of them will be converted again to E/F.
Which bring me to believe that what you say about the E/F being cheaper than the C/D is wrong, because it’s actually the cost of a rebuild, and not the cost of a new plane. Pretty comparable to how the indian Mirage 2000 are going to be retrofited to 2000-5 MkII standard (albeit much more intensive an upgrade it may be). So the cost of the upgrade has to be added to the cose of the C/D airframe if you want the REAL price of a E/F. Some are going to be new built, I guess, (or are they?) but most of them will be conversions.
Did Saab really broke the “cost curve”? Yes, I believe so 🙂
Edit: This would give a total cost (R&D + production) of about $28 billion ($90 mio*312 a/c) from 1982 to 2026, so this is more or less in-line with the comment of Nic10 above.
I read on checksix (I can read a little french hopefully) that you get a program cost of 122.3 Billion SEK through 2007, it’s higher than what I came up with (99 billion through 2009), but I suppose the whole program cost 122.3 billion SEK, with Sweden recouping some of that cost through sales & lease, so that it cost the swedish government just a little under 99 billion SEK (difference between cost through 2007 & 2009) out of 122.3 billion SEK.
Interestingly I was way of in my estimate of the program cost between 2009 & 2013, since you quoted contracts for 6.21 billion SEK from 2008 through 2012.
Program cost for the swedish fleet alone should be around 195 billion SEK?
BTW I wonder how you come up with the total of 312 airframes?
Nic
Nicolas10If you make a little digging on the Wiki page, you can see a few interesting figures.
“The Defense Material Agency reported 99 billion Swedish krona for the program between 1982 and 2009, including expenses for weapons and simulators.[1]”
You can also add this:
“According to the Swedish Ministry of Defense, the cost estimation of the full system, comprising 60 Gripen E/F, amounts to SEK 90 billion distributed over the period 2013–42”
With the conversion cost of 60 airframes from C/D to E being 9 billion USD?
That’s a total Gripen cost to sweden of 99 billion SEK up to 2009 + another 90 billion of the 60 Gripen E/F from 2013 to 2042 (as compared to 60 billion SEK to keep 100 C/D Gripen until 1942).
So the program cost of the Gripen fighter to sweden would be 189 billion SEK + whatever the program cost between 2009 & 2013, say between 1 & 2 billion SEK?
That’s a program cost of 21 billion EUR, or a bit more than 29 billion USD at today’s exchange rate.
Compared to the number of fighters on inventory, that’s not as cheap as one is led to believe, at least to the swedish taxpayer.
Nic
Nicolas10Could some of the swedish speaking folk dig up some official documents on how much the Gripen E will cost the Swedish government? Program cost, unit cost, total life cycle cost, anything.
There has to be some official documents about fund allotment?
Nic
Nicolas10“Greed” has nothing to do with weapon system development. The development contract specifically defines the percentage of profit. For a Pentagon program, profit is typically 7-8% during development and 10-12 % for sustaining engineering after the production line closes and jets are in the field.
unless my mathematics have failed me, 7-8% of 50 billion is much much better than 7-8% of, say 25 billion. And if the cost of the fighter increases from 50 million to, say, 120 million each, then I guess 10% of 120 million is much better than even 12% of 50 million.
Greed has nothing to do with it? Come on! The very fact that the percentage of profit is contractually defined makes it even more interesting for the manufacturers to increase their price!
Nic
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