“Ask yourself this, if Gripen E is so great and superior, why hasn’t it won any technical evaluations? The only successful exports bids, one of which was rescinded, were based on cost and/or ToT. “

Depends on who sets up the technical evaluations and what it includes. Belgium had some serious strike roles with immense political support. Canada had long range endurance. Finland has a similar situation as Sweden, and so does Switzerland. Switzerland downgraded the Gripen with a factor of 0.7 due to the uncertainty of certain upgrades of the Gripen E, yet it was deemed good enough to replace the F-5, AND it did it at a much better price-tag. AND it has been continously been upgraded since then.

Finlands situation and Swedens are quite similar, and even more so when Sweden and Finland will enter a new era of military cooperation where Fins can utilize Swedish airbases, Swedish equipment and use joint forces on eachothers territories.

Whilst I hope for a Swedish/Finnish fighter cooperation, it would also be efficient to use multiple systems to create a more difficult and dispersed target array for any enemy [read Russia].

Without taking in factors such as wind, elevation, weight [amount of fuel, armament etc.], temperature etc. it’s impossible to have an exact figure for either aircraft. Both have good STOL capabilities.

KGB rants on about wikipedia [something any of us can alter FYI] yet claims figures estimated by the company and the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration are bogus. Yeah, that pretty much sums up his whole discussion.

To answer StealthFlanker; Saab are quite proud over the fact that the Gripen has a L/O in a wide spectrum. Here’s an article from DefesaNet:

Some slides presented in Farnborough in the s ame way seen in the offer to Brazil, pointed to the principle “Designed to be Upgraded” what suggest the evolution of Gripen NG as a base for a pure 5th Generation fighter.

But, even with a low RCS (a strength point of the current Gripen C/D), the design changes purposed for the NG do not walk into the direction of a stealth geometry fighter. Have I hit SAAB’s forecast Achilles’ heel? Eddy says no!

“First of all, we don’t really believe in the total stealth value, especially if you consider the current stealth fighters in service, their technical problems and unbalanced cost-benefit. If you look at the spectrum(¹), stealth means as maybe couple of millimeters of the Wide Spectrum Combat, which is about a half of a meter if you go on infrared, radar, high frequency (…). What we try to achieve is a balanced design that let us stealthy enough over the all the spectrum, not as others being stealth in a very, very narrow spectrum. It’s really hard to go in details on this; what we’ve done, what kind of methods we’ve using, because it is not only a company secret but a national secret as well”, finish the VP, Head of Gripen Export.

Here are some slides from Saab regarding this issue:

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Payload does affect the RCS of a fighter. For sure. Gripen was designed to combat a soviet invasion of Sweden. Gripens were to take off from airfields with a small payload of 2-6 A2A missiles, fire their payload and return to land at dispersed road bases, re-fuel, re-arm, and go back up within minutes. That’s why it had a relatively small capacity of payload and a relatively small radius compared to other fighters at that time. It was intended to fight Flankers and Fulcrums, in a scenario where resources were limited. A Gripen E does not share those features, and instead has a quite formidable range and a much bigger payload in comparison to its predecessor. For A2A-missions, the Gripen E still intends to use 2-5 Meteors and 2 IRIS-T.

What many [well, mostly KGB] fails to recognize is that stealth is more than just angles and shapes. RAM-coating, use of special mixtures of composite material and reduction of protruding objects from fuselage are just some of many ways to reduce RCS in a certain spectrum. Saab for an instance has worked thorughly within aviation, naval and armored areas to reduce IR-signature, and they’ve done so very effectively.

In terms of “stealth” there are many aspects on how to get detected. Radar emissions, com-links and IR-signatures are some of the few prominent weaknesses that can become a big factor in detection and combat. Gripen Es EW capability, Passive-mode on its radar and the silent data-fusion between other A/C are just some features that greatly aids the Gripens ability to stay undetected, or to the very least hard to detect.

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Worth mentioning is that this is for the JAS-39A. Every update [A->C->E] has had further signature-reduction measures taken. Why? Because A, size of airframe, B, SAAB and Sweden has had signature-dampening technelogy for a long time in many different areas [ships, missiles, masking-nets etc.] and C, because it’s not Russian. Does that answer your silly question KGB?

Oh and you’re wrong. 0,1sqm. Not 0.3 for a clean Gripen 39A 🙂

I disagree about Gripen’s chances in Belgium and Canada — it is much less than far fetched. Both are NATO countries; in addition Canada is F-35 partner; and even if the current PM is “against” the F-35 (for whatever reason) there is no doubt they will purchase an American a/c. Thus the F-16 has a bigger chance of being accepted in Canada than the Gripen.

For Belgium there is a clos collaboration with Holland; in addition there is the “nuke requirement” which is not expressed clearly but nevertheless it’s there. And again, Belgium is a NATO country and will prefer to fly what most other NATO countries will use.

As I said; Belgium and Canada are far fetched. Not impossible, but far fetched. As with all large international fighter competitions, it would be a huge defeat not to participate. Even if there is a slight chance, it’s a chance worth taking. If any of those contracts are won, they’d generate an incredible amount of opportunities and success for Saab.

For Finland Gripen’s chances are perhaps slightly above zero, but no by much (1-2%?). Thus very close to zero. Since the cost of F-35 is dropping and will keep dropping there will probably not be much cost benefit of purchasing Gripen instead of F-35, in particular when taking into account that Gripen will not offer the same “comprehensive” solution as F-35. You would need some extra assets to reach the same capability level. Also, the F-35 is bigger and has longer range, and longer-ranged sensors thus you probably need X+Y Gripen to do what X F-35 can do. As stated previously Sweden will have to supplement the Gripen with other assets and how will they do that without losing money on the deal (and without losing the deal)?

Saab should concentrate on countries where F-35 is an unlikely contender; e.g., India, Malaysia, Philipines, Indonesia, South America, Switzerland, Austria. A few years down the line perhaps also some African countries.

That’s just ridiculous. In terms of costs you forget the a) high maintenance cost, b) the high operational costs, c) the high cost for any potential future upgrade, and d) the high cost for conversion of the entire air forces logistics [see Norway]. With the LRIP costs coming down [not being particularly low in recent days] and there’s still a lot of problems being fixed, there’s no guarrantee that the F-35 ever will be so cheap that is claimed. I don’t see how Finland would get a cheaper deal than e.g. Norway or Denmark seeing as Finland never gave any funding to the program and is not a NATO member. JSF would not be able to guarrantee any industrial benefits for Finland, as LHM have already set up everything in terms of deals for all partner members in Europe. All money spent on the JSF would go to the JSF. Little if anything would go back into Finlands economy.

You can’t deny the fact that the Gripen is the most cost-effective solution. It screams SISU. It’s a smart fighter. A fighter that focuses on availability, combat readiness and strategic solutions. Having a few F-35’s with limited time in the air, grouped together into one airfield due to budget constraints is not SISU. Until the F-35 shows that it can use dispersed and improvised runways, be tactically placed around Finland with a high combat readiness, the JSF is not a real option. And remember, at this point we haven’t even begun to talk about the comprehensive industrial and bilateral package that the Gripen/SwAF would contribute to Finland and the FAF.

Please do describe what the F-35 can do, that the SwAF will have to complement the Gripen with. In Sweden, the discussions have been about a broad spectrum of capabilities of the military, not what we lack in regards to the JSF.

For those looking for a video:

https://twitter.com/Saab/status/875305884548825088

There is some kind of reasoning behind it; the reason why they don’t get more Rafale is because it’s too expensive. The reason why they consider F-16 and Gripen is because they need something that is less expensive than the Rafale, and at the same time can be assembled in India, with some ToT. This is what is callled “politics” (and yes the result is often not very good for the IAF/IN)

The reason is far more complex than what you mentioned. The IAF, which has had a long experience of using light-weight fighters/attack-A/C [Jaguar, MiG-21, MiG-27, Gnat, Ajeet, Mirage 2000 etc] is built upon the idea of using.a hi-lo mix. In the recent years, that ability has been lost to a large part. They’ve been more or less replaced, or are due to be replaced, with large dual-engined multi-roll fighters such as the Su-30MKI, FGFA, Rafale and MiG-29. Whilst the Tejas was intended to be something inbetween to cover the gap and being a cost-effective solution, it has failed to deliver the intended requirements on time. As such, buying more Rafales or more Su-30MKIs to fill that gap would simply hollow out the IAF budget. A complimentary lightweight fighter would however serve a broad spectrum of needs, doing many if not most of the roles the heavy fighters abilities, but at a far lesser cost. Why use a Rafale for an intercept if you can do it with a Gripen E? For a deep strike mission with heavy ordenance, a Rafale or MKI would be prefered, but that is only a small part of the whole mission envelope. The Gripen e.g shares commonality with the Tejas and the Super Hornet [for the Navy RFI] in terms of engine and weapons and is highly cost-effective in all other areas aswell.

196 wing angle
197 wing extension
198 wing loading
199 fuselage extension
200 Power steering engine / aircraft weight
201 deviation of the thrust vector
202 followed by a radar target
203 targets simultaneously being attacked
204 points of suspension
205 RCS
206 maximum overload
207 acceleration
208 flight distance

212 top speed
213 cruising speed
214 flight distance
215 Range Radar
216 followed by a radar target
217 targets simultaneously being attacked
219 RCS
220 range missiles “air – air”

223 efficiency / cost
225 generation

Even more funny, how the Russians claim the MiG-35 has a lower RCS than the Gripen. I mean, sure, propaganda and sale pitches. But come on, really? Is it using “plasma stealth”? :highly_amused: