Please do tell how much Gripen E costs to buy and operate? As far I know there ins’t any operational right now.

Who says that F-35 is killing Norwegian army?

Sweden used to calculate 90 Billion SEK to buy and operate 60 Gripen E for 25 (?) years, Norwegian budget is 264 MNOK to operate 48 F35 in Norway(already blown to pieces by exchange rate, sunk costs and excluding the new cruise missile target = the new and only unprotected airbase).

The Norwegian head of army went public in Norways main newspaper, aftenposten.no, approx. 2 weeks ago regarding the corncern that the F35 will kill off the army (and navy too?)

@JSR, Norway will always “have money” if they really need, they do have money because the use(d) to spend and invest them wisely. Some other countries waste their oil money on arms, corruption and consumption.

F35 has only been cheapest at one point and location, Nov 2008 in Norway, it will always be a lot more expensive to buy and even more so to operate compared to Gripen, we can discuss weather it will be 50 or 200% more over the lifecycle..

BTW, F35 is on its way to kill off the Norwegian army even before any “new tankers”, Finland can not effort a Norwegian fate.

Finlands choice

Will be extremely interesting to follow Finlands choice, will they go for something like 25-30 F35 at one airbase and little goodwill with Uncle Sam, or 40 gripens at 3 basis + AEW, MPA & a tanker or two? Given the budget, number of bases and number of trainers I think that even 25-30 F35 would be extremely optimistic.

Russia

“Russia is the only real economy on this planet. start with developing from water resources to titanium valley to pipelines to world beating oil/gas/nuclear industry digging resources in many countries at lowest rates. economics is completely immune from Middleastern wars and global warming that can severly impact West.”

Russia is a beautiful place in many ways but reality is that its has a good military and nuclear sector, everything else it just a corrupt uncompetitive 3rd world standard. No offence I like Russia in many ways but this is the reality. The bad news is that these 2 sectors are to a large extent driven by non market/government purchases that are funded from oil. Russia is also desperately missing most advanced Know How in the oil & gas sector.

Above has the consequences that only high oil prices can secure the upgrades and future developments of the Russian aircraft industry.

New presentation from SAAB, comments, Gripen C is still interesting with Meteor, improved radar, future with Britecloud, enhanced HMD, ESTL pods based MAWS and more.

http://saabgroup.com/globalassets/corporate/investor-relations/cmd/cmd15_gripen.pdf

The F35 is a almost a medium sized fighter with the procurement price of a heavy. Hopefully with the operation cost of a medium.

I presume the desire for medium over heavy is based on operation cost.

The APUC of a typical western fast jet is composed of 65% purchased components, 30% in-house fabricated components and assembly, and 5% pre-delivery test and checkout. Purchased components include engine, avionics, sensors, comms, escape system components including seat, canopy, landing gear, actuators, brakes/wheels/tires, pumps, valves, air cycle machines, heat exchangers, electric connectors, plumbing fittings, fasteners, Etc.

The size of the jet has direct relation to the expense of in-house fabrication and assembly due to the amount of touch labor required. (Big jets need more touch labor than small jets). Otherwise, the cost differential for purchased components and test/checkout is not terribly significant for most purchased items when comparing big and small jets.

Interesting above, some more numbers, SAAB spend about 20% of turnover on R&D and profit margin is 5%. If R&D and sales happen in same year on average, their sales margin is approx. 25%. I presume that advanced systems as jets have a higher margin.

Swedish defense planning 2016-2020 and Gripen

Back up to 6 divisions Gripen C/D for SwAF and increased flying time, no additional standoff weapons in this period, implications for air defence too, see other thread. Complete info in Swedish link http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c…3/0a9a6162.pdf