SOC

In one single word… Money.

The concepts that SAAB (and every single aerospace industry power house) has been studying for the last decade needs money, a lot of it, and without a signed contract those concepts dont get out of the CATIA workstation into real life.
And the Swedish Government doesnt see an external threat for the foreseable future.

Cheers

I thought Sweden was going to buy a squadron or two of those stealthified Gripens though? Even if they aren’t, this is a good opportunity for them to propose it to various European air arms on the fence about JSF. One nation liking the design might not make it workable, but three or more might.

If Saab wants to seriously try and compete with the JSF in some of these cases, why are they going with the Gripen NG and not the stealthified Gripen? I thought the Gripen NG was the one that flew recently with the relocated main gear and whatnot?

Yeah, it’s time for this one to go away now.

Plus, it’s a logical supplement/replacement for their S-300PS batteries.

It was claimed that the F-15/Aim-82 combination could achieve a 900-to-1 kill ratio against the MiG-21!

Actually, they’ve pretty much proven that the F-15 didn’t need the AIM-82 to lunch on MiG-21s…and it hasn’t hit 900 to 1 because there haven’t been 900 FISHBED pilots willing to try and disprove the theory 😀

Sorry, couldn’t resist that one!

The F-22 is a pure air superiority fighter, it’s going to perform better in that regard than the F-35 (or anything else, for that matter, short of Canada going Arrow II by buying the F-23 design…). Frankly, with everything they want to get out of it, if the F-35 is pulling down 3-1 against the latest F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 versions, that’s really not that bad for a jet people assumed to be a pretty worthless air defense type platform.

WRT to undersea defense of the fleet, the picture is a little less clear……perhaps the USN has made a strategic decision to move away from using airborne assets like the S-3 and is relying more on submarines. One questions the wisdom of this decision based upon the rate at which the sub force is declining in numbers, but then again, so has the main threat (Soviet).

Ahh, consider the probable environment where there could be a serious sub threat to a USN carrier: the Persian Gulf! Iranian Kilos are very quiet, and the fact that they’re operating in shallower water closer to shore makes them that much harder to find. In that environment it probably is better to have a few SSNs lurking around rather than trying to rely on an airborne platform.

With the continued improvements in the AEGIS system that have been made, and the unlikelihood that Russian BACKFIREs are going to be a legitimately serious threat anymore, I’d think that the air defense environment around the carrier is still quite potent.