from obligatory’s post

Originally Posted by Peter Nilsson, Gripen’s Vice President of Operational Capabilities
“I challenge any existing deck-based fighter to perform a night landing in severe conditions with snow or rain and strong crosswinds on a Swedish standard road-base strip of 17 x 800 meters,

I guess it’s 17 meters wide then 😉

in any case, again, it is maybe not a 3km long and 60m wide runway, but it’s not a “simple road” either

Do you understand a thin, minimal shape is not better than an arced, curved shape? The body of the F-35 is a better shape than you give it credit; it is an excellent shape for high speed flight. Add in the fact I’m also talking about this particular post that compares the internal carriage of weapons against the competitors that carry external loads.

er, just ask you one thing: how is it that the design top speed is around something like M1.6 while it has that huuuuuuge thrust behind?

an f-16c block 30 for example -soucre wiki) with less than half that thrust goes up to above mach 2…

probably the general dynamics guys didn’t explain well enough to the aircraft that its shape is “bad”, so it just goes on ignoring that it shouldn’t?

when the F-100 Super Sabre was introduced into service, the USAF flight test claimed it was directionally unstable (dangerous). North american, through lobbying, managed to have it bought by the USAF “as is”…

when several accidents occured, the DoD had the aircraft modified (corrected) but it’s the manufacturer who had to pay for it (almost bankrupted the company btw).

I say, if LM states that their product is so good, then ok, buy them, and anything that doesn’t work as it should, have LM correct it at a later day at their own expense… I wonder for how long it will be such a “marvel of an aircraft”

(hint: no, I sure won’t buy any LM shares in such case)

I’d be interested to know what had changed in order to have the F-35 overweight as it is?

as far as I can remember, it was aleady overweight as they started to test it. and LM was trying to reduce its weight ever since

@ gf0012-aust

two questions:

is concurrency selling a product that is matured for a given stage or standard, while keeping the developping work going for the future of the product, the same concurrency when building an immature product that still has a whole bunch of known and most certainly unknown flaws that prevent it from reaching the envisioned level of development.

for example, dassault decided to introduce F1 standard rafales into service. they were to be simple air-air fighters which were to test in service conditions. they made sure the thing did what it had to do, and then produced it, keeping developing F2 standard which would come next. however, the F1 had been thoroughly tested before getting into service.

compare to that the LM proceeding: the F-35 hasn’t even finished the basic testing, has numerous flaws that have to be adressed befoire it can enter even the most basic service safely, yet, LM is pushing to introduce it already…

to me, the first sound like “introduce things as they are ready” while the second “introduce whatever we have and eventually repair it later”

second question:

if “design by computer” was so perfect, how come the f-35 as all those issues?

I mean, it is one thing to have software bugs which take time to correct, but when you see, for example, that the airframe is developing cracks all over the place, you have to wonder: can’t they calculate the materials resistances and build accordingly? their computers don’t seem so accurate in the end… unless… there’s another option: if you can’t get your weight right, you can do as boeing and get washed out (say “we don’t have it but plan to get it right later” ), or hide it to get the deal and let the buyer discovers about it when it’s too late, but that would mean LM lied from the beginning knowing full well it wouldn’t work…

you’re from india?

it’s funny how some keep talking about “one fifth” of the costs, for now, one quarter costs more than what the french had to pay, and the typhoon today still offers less capacity… not to talk about the delays induced because not every partner wants/can pay his share for needed upgrades and drags its feet as much a possible

it’s not sure the gripen would come out as the best or cheapest of the latter.

Your attempt to convince me that I’m looking at this in the wrong way was admirable, but it really just reinforces the point I was making about the Gripen being very underrated on this forum. In particular I found the above comment to be partiuclarly humorous…..so in short you are saying that a nation with virtually no experience in building a top of the line fighter aircraft, would have somehow come up with something that was not only as good as the Gripen, but probably better than the Gripen? I’m sorry, but in all of the crazy statements I’ve read on this forum over the 10+ years I’ve been here this has got to be near the top.

yeah, sure, whatever…

yugoslavia has built several quite capable aircraft for ground attack and trainers. and maintained migs for years (if not decades), so, basically, they had quite a good understanding of “how that thingy works”

add to that the french participation (even if it’s claimed that the design was 100% yugoslav, don’t you find it more than resembling to the rafale?) and you get quite a good level of expertise. in fact, when you read wiki, for instance, strangely, the french were giving “some assistance” with electronnics, but the aircraft was to use the M-88 (only in the beginning of its development in the 80’s), which is rather a strange choice unless they had acces to all the data of the engine yet in development “from the inside”, top speed was the same as the rafale (again), used french weapons, was to be able to do interception, reconaissance, ground attack (“omnirole” ? ), etc, etc…

overall, when you look at it, take the development dates and those planned for introduction in active service, you can’t miss the linkage to the rafale program. Now, one can wonder why the french would develop a “light rafale” while they had already their hands full with the “king size” one… we can speculate, but one possible reason may have been to get some payback from the development with a light fighter that would be able to compete for markets for which the rafale would be too complex and too costly, increasing that way the number of equipments sold (engines, radars, weapons, etc…)