Gripen was never ment to be exported.

Export sales is a bonus. And so far it’s successful.

A combined order from Norway and Denmark would make some sense – ~40 for Denmark, and a further ~60-80 for Norway. That would certainly help Saab, especially if they can get a few more customers to buy up the used JAS-39As.

Right now we have to go by much of what SAAB tells us so the info is a bit partial but well that’s the jet business… Lockheed is very good at PR too..

Saab is getting 40 of the surplus J39A jets and can do whatever they want with them, so they can for instance modify them to NATO standard or convert them to Gripen N and offer as export product.

This Swedish news from the delivery of jets to Hungary got some info too.
http://www.svd.se/dynamiskt/inrikes/did_12251215.asp

It quotes a man from the Hungarian department of economy that they already by time of first delivery had 72% of offsets delivered sooner than expected, and had visits from Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia to hear how SAAB is keeping their promises and was told only good things.

(Romanian airforce chief flew Gripen this week in Sweden btw, anyone want pics let me know or go to mil.se)

Also, Saab is talking to 15-20 countries about Gripen sales so they have lots of options now with the current jet, new jet design, and updated 39A.

Czech, Hungarian, Swedish Gripen C/D 🙂

Will the added weight give the Gripen N the same structural problems as the F-16. Is the Gripen platform designed with weight increase in mind ?

That will be resolved by moving and changing landing gear. Also the current version C/D which this one builds on is already much stronger than the old A/B. The Gripen C/D also have refueling prope installed.

What they have yet to mention is anything about the engine to support the extra external fuel and weapons, but for a patrol scenario that’s not an issue as the pilot would just drop the tanks when he engages the threat.

This jet will be able to carry 8 AMRAAM’s (or 8 METEOR) + 2 IRIS-T.

The new internal fuel capacity will be at least 5000 liters (compared to 4365 today) and the add-on EDTL tanks carry 1135 liters each and can be put on 4 stores. (compared to 3 today) So total combined fuel is 7770 liters today vs. 9540 liters on the Gripen – N.

As seen on that pic, the Gripen sales team is also flirting with Norway’s specific requirement of Naval patrol and plenty of Kongsberg NSM missile 🙂 (Whilst with the JSF, they get a jet like everyone else, not tailor made for their requirement. And have to pay for NSM integration themselves)

Both the Gripen C/D and Gripen -N is receiving dual-pylons and the -N two extra hardpoints so it’s growing quite significantly in capability.

About the SAAB/EriEye system I can add two points.

The aircraft does not carry controllers (although it’s large enough to do so), but functions as an an airborne radar integrated with the total air defence network.

The planes called S100B in Sweden does not have operator station.
The planes called S100D does have 2 operator stations.

(For independent air command. It’s based on the temporary solution Sweden built for the Greek airforce when they leased planes while waiting for their own EriEye jets.)

Another thing to note is, the range of the radar and number of objects it can track etc might be limited in the software depending on who is the receiving state. Probably not, but it’s possible.

Operator station for EriEye onboard Saab 340B. a.k.a S100D.

In 1995 when Swedish HQ did a more cost calculated study of attack helicopters they used the AH-64 as the example. Now the talk is of 12-20 choppers but they used 40 units (2 battalions) and put them at a combined price of just under 5 billion Swedish Crowns, in addition they identified simulator, swedish manuals, support systems etc what would have to be imported and what’s locally available, as a result another 2.5 Billion crowns were needed to integrate the choppers into the Swedish military. So a total of 7.5 billion which in today’s currency is roughly 1 billion USD.

The ‘service charge’ of 2.5 billion is unlikely to be any smaller even if they go for only 12-20 choppers. But like I said, this was a budgetary study 10 years ago and things have changed. Anyway, now the large bulk of procurement money is spent on fighter jets and the wish list for other equipment is large. After 2007 all Gripen jets will (should) be delivered. Last year they spent 11 billion on equipment (~$US1.5B).

When South Africa bought Gripen I really hoped that Sweden would buy the Rooivalk in return. In the late 90´s we tested a bunch of helicopters in Sweden (IIRC Tiger, Apache, Mi-28 and Ka-50, can´t remember if Rooivalk was here to) but the decision on however we even should buy attackhelicopters have dragged on.

A month ago I read that SAAB is thinking of buying parts of Denel (mainly aviationsupport and missilessections). Maybe this can open things up a bit and we in the near future can see a swedish Rooivalk?

(BTW a little off topic: the recent years Sweden has opened up their eyes a bit on the southafrican armsindustries. We just purchased RG-32M and I have read rumours that we are interested in the Umkhonto-IR on the Visby-corvettes)

Hi M 🙂

Yeah, Rooivalk is a contender for the Swedish attack helicopter requirement. Denel build parts for SAAB today so they definitely eye those
business areas you mentioned.. There’s also a chance the Westland WAH-64 is of interest as it’s better prepared for winter climates. As a result of the UK’s winter testing of the British WAH-64 in Sweden they added anti-ice protection on the blades.

(The Swedish military apparently liked the american AH-64 especially since laser targeting for Swedish rb17 ground-based hellfire system worked smoothly, but concluded as with the other choppers it just won’t work good under Swedish conditions. Perhaps the WAH-64 is the ‘fix’ and the other UK-Swedish defense cooperation in the works on land systems might play in, but we shall see.)

SAAB bought the South African company Grintek ( http://www.grintek.com/ )last year. Now called SAAB Grintek…