Forum: F-16 versus XYZ

i love those 50% fuel and unrealistic missile loads....( with 50% fuel is time to head home)
Pratt & Whitney F100 fuel consumption:
Military thrust: 0.76 lb/(lbf·h) 0.76 lb/(lbf·h)
GE 404 Military thrust: 0.81 lb/(lbf·h) (82.6 kg/(kN·h))
yeah i should have sayd burns more fuel to produce the same trust ... but it cant produce the same trust, does it.... Very Happy

gripen best case Scenario is today f-16 reality

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50% fuel etc. is just a way to compare aircraft, nothing else.
Point is: Gripen E will have better range than F-16 on internal fuel but there´s no need for a pissing contest. Both are fine aircraft.

Regards C.

50% fuel for gripen means 2645 lb
50% fuel for falcon means 3500 lb
even with less fuel gripen t/w is worse than the f-16
if u hang 4 amraams on f-16 u can still cary 12 mk-82 bombs
hang 4 amraams on gripen what it`s left ?
maybe in 2010 the gripen would be a FINE aircraft but sweden, hungary,south africa, Czech republic did not have jas_39E
a lot of people compare the f-16 Mlu that norway and denmark have with the gripen.
these jets have serviced for 25 years and gripen still cant beat them.

A good T/W ratio is nice to have but not the only factor in aircombat as exercise between F-16 and Gripen has shown.

I doubt you will se 12 bombs on a F-16 in real missions. Longetivity of the the wing is a factor you have to count with. In Afghanistan two GBU's is the usual load if I´m not mistaken.

Regards C.

http://www.f-16.net/gallery_item43895.html
http://www.f-16.net/gallery_item43913.html

the Iraq osirak reactor was hit with mark-84 bombs after flying some 1000 km below radar coverage by Israeli f-16.

gripen would not get that far in the first place

Some range numbers for JAS39A.

Combat radius interception 900km with typical loadout and external fuel.

Combat radius for attack missions or air-to-surface 1200 km in hi-lo-hi mission with with typical stores load and external fuel. (Compared to 1250km for an F-16C med 2X 905kg bombs, 2X AIM-9 + 3940 liters of fuel in external tanks)

750 km at low altitude with typical stores load and external fuel.

When carrying 3X 1000lbs GBU-16 on a lo-lo-lo strike profile, the Gripen has a mission radius of 648km.

With 2X GBU-16's and extra fuel tanks radius increases to 833km.

Veteran Joined: Jul 01, 2007 Posts: 325

Don't buy delta wings. The europeans haven't figured this out yet. We learned our lesson in the seventies and eightys.

Deltas were bad back then because they would loose too much speed and there was a range of AOA where it would become hard to controll. But things have changed much since then, with FBW those problems have been overcome, further more the nature of the delta in the turn has been changed where now you have active canards adding lift instead of large ailerons subtracting it.

Comparing a mirage III delta with that of a rafale or Typhoon is a monumental and deadly mistake.

For example the gripen wich is a delta with canard bleeds less speed in a turn despite having less T/W ratio than the F-16.

And the Eurofighter will outmanuever anything in the sky that doesnt have thrust vectoring, even then that is debatable because its canards placement were meant to make TVC not needed.

Newbie Joined: Oct 24, 2007 Posts: 2 Status: Offline

Now, I don't know how well they would do against each other. I am a JAS-39C pilot in the Swedish Air Force (I recently graduated from Luftstridsskolan in Uppsala, I am one of the few Muslim pilots in the Swedish Air Force), and the Gripen is an extremely maneuverable fighter. I haven't had the pleasure of acquainting myself with the F-16, but what my squadron leader and experienced colleagues had said, the Gripen would kick F-16 afterburners all the way from Stockholm to Albuquerque in a dogfight.

Newbie Joined: Oct 24, 2007 Posts: 1 Status: Offline

Hello, this is my first post here. It is an interesting thread, although there is a lot of posturing and national pride involved.

I am old enough to remember when the Gripen project was started. The F-16 was the overall benchmark for the Gripen and the intention was to create a Falcon-beater that would surpass the F-16 on all specs. The rationale for this must have been that the F-16 had a very good combat record against Soviet fighters and interceptors.

Soon Saab realised that beating the Falcon on all specs would be ridiculously expensive and, ultimately, unnessesary. Rather the project adopted a good-enough philosophy and also focused on achieving small advantages in various fields such as clever EW while maintaining the tactical cornerstones of the Viggen system.

Some two decades later it has turned out that Gripen in some respects has become a F-16-beater after all, mainly by virtue of the things it does differently. To me there is no doubt that Gripen is the more long term solution which provides a cheap, reliable and very effective air force which can give the heffa planes a run for their money.

The difficulty in comparing the planes on paper is of course that the Gripen is designed to outwit the opposition rather than outgun them. That's why it's performing so well when training against other allied planes.

In the end, any nation which could fill the skies with fast, agile, reliable, hard-to-spot, clever Gripens would have very little to worry about.

Newbie Joined: Sep 15, 2005 Posts: 6 Status: Offline

From what I´ve heard and read the Gripen surpasses the F-16 in every field except that the latter has one extra hardpoint and a stronger engine. The F-16´s longer ferryrange is mainly due to larger droptanks.

Sorry for not reading every post in this 11 pages thread.

What would be interesting to know is which fighter wins from 0-10000m alt in seconds? Clean config and from 0 km/h from the runway.

Performance for the JA37 Viggen should have been: Time to 32,810 feet (10,000 m) 1.4 minutes (at max afterburner)
From http://www.temporal.com.au/Viggen_Final.Pdf

Elite Joined: Nov 27, 2004 Posts: 535 Status: Offline

Eurofighter Typhoon

* Clean configuration, from brake-off to 40,000 fts: 60 to 70 seconds.

* QRA configuration (six to eight AAMs + two 1,000L tanks), from brake-off to 40,000 fts: 90 seconds.

Rafale M F1

* QRA configuration (four AAMs + one 1,250L tanks), from brake-off to 40,000 fts: in 2 mins.

F-16C Block50

* Clean configuration, from brake-off to 40,000 fts: around 2 mins.

JAS-39C Gripen

* Clean (?) configuration, from brake-off to 31,800 fts: 1 min 40 secs.

* Clean (?) configuration, from brake-off to 45,900 fts: 3 mins.

Newbie Joined: Sep 15, 2005 Posts: 6 Status: Offline

What is your source on this?

It´s interesting, because I´ve never heard anyone boast about Gripens climbperformance to 10000m, but they boast about almost everything else.

With the JA37 Viggen it was often used as an argument that it could go from brakeoff to 10000m in less than 90 seconds, and I´ve always wondered if the Gripen beats or equals its predecessor in this field?

On the other hand I haven´t heard anything about this performance from the other planemanufacturers either. Maybe it was a typical coldwar profile for Sweden? Then again, its still important numbers since every airforce work in the interceptrole.

Elite Joined: Nov 27, 2004 Posts: 535 Status: Offline

For the climbing capability of Rafale that I mentioned above:

http://new.isoshop.com/dae/dae/gauche/s ... fox3_8.pdf

For the climbing capability of Gripen:

http://www.flug-revue.rotor.com/FRTypen/FRJAS39.htm

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/row/gripen.htm

http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/types/swede ... gripen.htm

Newbie Joined: Mar 22, 2007 Posts: 2 Status: Offline

Gripen will kick a$$, upgrades include new engine GE-F414 with 98-110kN. Weightgain total ca 300kg, gives thrust/weight ratio ca 1.14-1.23, thats superb! Combine that with new state of the art AESA radar, METEOR BWR (much better than AMRAAM), and short range air to air IRIS-T (much better than Sidewinders). Data -link superiro to any other, good avionics. Small plane with small radarprofile. Increased payload. This is a tasty little piece of a$$. Look out all Typhoon/Rafale/F-22 Raptor. David is about to give Goliat i serious upprecut... Peace. We will all together defeat the real threat, i.e militant islam. Peace brothers, Dr T

Forum: F-16 versus XYZ

F-16 versus Saab Gripen