F-35A versus Saab Gripen NG

[XanderCrews]

Again just lol...

you were proven wrong and your rebuttal was an insult-- once again proving my point. you have no numbers. only parroted claims.

You have nothing other than repeating false claims that your now trying to cover to save face.

[q
Poland get 1 spare engine... ONE!

and? you still don't know what Brazil is getting. "one!" speaks volume about the mechanical reliability of the powerplant as well.

Again hit me with counter evidence. People have been waiting years to see the Brazil deal. liars like yourself have been misconstruing it since it was inked. just like you did they drop some lines when someone says "oh what does that include? how much? how many" they have no answers.

again if you can produce it I'll be happy to see it as will the whole internet. I havn't seen it produced yet

Brazil pays the same price anyone else would.

that's contradicting yourself. should be obvious how too.

Denmark got a big discount like the other F35 nations because they were promised a plane with "affordable stealth" when they joined the program, as a replacement for their F16's. No one expected the F35 to be the most expensive fighter in the world when it was time to place the orders to replace the F16.

how much was the discount?

most expensive fighter in the world? not even close

Where is the "affordable stealth" discount that all the F-35 partners get in the line by line? I must have missed it. What is the percentage or dollar amount? how much? I'm very curious about this.

]Looking at the cost per airframe today then the F35 is cheap.

hey look it can learn

Its the cost of operating the F35 that makes it expensive.

compared to what? again if an F-35A comes in at or around an F-16 and a Gripen E comes in at around an F-16, well that makes the Gripen E far more "expensive" as once again these are not 1 for 1 comparable; and the cheap light fighter shouldn't cost near what an F-16 does should it? whats the point of it then?

Of course the "full transfer of technology" only includes what technology Saab owns.

so not what you claimed until you were proven wrong?



the next gen Gripen is not cheap enough to warrant forsaking other options. when a Super Hornet and Gripen E cost about the same, but the Super Hornet does everything about twice as well, this is kind of a no brainer. Gripen E falls short of F-16 and F-18 capabilities in some pretty key metrics, and thats before we realize the F-35 is replacing F-16s and F-18s all over the globe and is a vast improvement. In order for a Gripen to be competitively viable the cost is going to have to be far more attractive. roughly speaking it needs to be about 50 percent of the cost of its competitors its not. and its not ever going to be. thats why theyre hyping the "full transfer" meme, but forgetting that's pretty limited too.



the way this is supposed to work, the way it worked with the original gripen, is that it was about "half the cost" of the F-16 but about "80 percent of the capability." Make its a good value at a low cost. Thats not the Gripen E at all, the cost vs capability is abysmal. they botched it. what happens when the Gripen E is 80 percent of the cost at 50 percent of the capability? you sell them to brazil and tell them they get "full tech transfer" of a fraction of the airplane so they can hopefully sell knockoffs to...?




Do you have anything to add thats like actual numbers? or is "again just lol" all you have?

[XanderCrews]

Which again, it isn't that much....
(planes don't fly without engines and so on...)

yup

[XanderCrews]

Blast from the past:

Switzerland will pay far less for the 22 fighter jets it is planning to buy from the Swedish company Saab than Sweden itself would pay for the aircraft, the Swiss public broadcaster SF reported.

Switzerland is to buy the JAS-39 Gripen combat jets for 100 million francs (82.9 million euros, $107 million) each, SF reported late Sunday, citing unnamed sources in both Switzerland and Sweden.

That price is between 15 to 30 percent below the level Sweden itself has agreed to pay for the planes, according to the broadcaster's sources.

Stockholm has said it plans to buy between 40 to 60 Gripen jets, but has not said revealed how much it will pay for each.

A spokesman for the Swedish defence ministry refused on Monday to comment on the SF report.

Switzerland announced in August that it had agreed to the highly controversial deal to replace its aging Northrop F-5E/F Tiger fighters, with deliveries set to start in 2018.

It said the deal was worth 3.13 billion Swiss francs, but that amount included related services and it was unclear how much Switzerland would actually pay for each jet.

Swiss defence ministry spokeswoman Sonja Margelist declined to specify the amount paid per plane, saying her ministry would only speak about the full amount of the deal.

The Swiss Gripen purchase, which is part of a larger order for the planes to be shared with Sweden in a bid to cut production costs, is controversial in Switzerland because it will require spending cuts in other areas.

Defence Minister Ueli Maurer has countered the criticism by insisting that the Gripen "was the cheapest" option compared with the French Dassault Rafale and the EADS Eurofighter.

The deal must still receive a green light from the Swiss parliament and could possibly still be derailed by a popular referendum.

The agreement has also been criticized in Sweden for handing over very pricy merchandise at discount rates.

"Switzerland has no plans whatsoever to contribute to Gripen's development costs," Anna Dahlberg, a commentator with the Swedish daily Expressen,
lamented after the August announcement, pointing out that "the country chose Gripen simply because it was the cheapest alternative."


3.13 billion divided by 22 would be 142.2 Francs ($151.9 million each) if you went with that most basic of "cost of the contract divided by airplanes"

so we have F-35A down to $77.9 million in 2019

Based on the Gripen C/D fighter aircraft, Saab says that the US$85 million Gripen E or Gripen E/F (2017)

https://newatlas.com/saab-gripen-e-first-flight/50063/

This sure is "interesting."


So do we think the Gripen E will ever be as cheap as the F-35A?

[irt]

Blast from the past:

Switzerland will pay far less for the 22 fighter jets it is planning to buy from the Swedish company Saab than Sweden itself would pay for the aircraft, the Swiss public broadcaster SF reported.

Switzerland is to buy the JAS-39 Gripen combat jets for 100 million francs (82.9 million euros, $107 million) each, SF reported late Sunday, citing unnamed sources in both Switzerland and Sweden.

That price is between 15 to 30 percent below the level Sweden itself has agreed to pay for the planes, according to the broadcaster's sources.

Stockholm has said it plans to buy between 40 to 60 Gripen jets, but has not said revealed how much it will pay for each.

A spokesman for the Swedish defence ministry refused on Monday to comment on the SF report.

Switzerland announced in August that it had agreed to the highly controversial deal to replace its aging Northrop F-5E/F Tiger fighters, with deliveries set to start in 2018.

It said the deal was worth 3.13 billion Swiss francs, but that amount included related services and it was unclear how much Switzerland would actually pay for each jet.

Swiss defence ministry spokeswoman Sonja Margelist declined to specify the amount paid per plane, saying her ministry would only speak about the full amount of the deal.

The Swiss Gripen purchase, which is part of a larger order for the planes to be shared with Sweden in a bid to cut production costs, is controversial in Switzerland because it will require spending cuts in other areas.

Defence Minister Ueli Maurer has countered the criticism by insisting that the Gripen "was the cheapest" option compared with the French Dassault Rafale and the EADS Eurofighter.

The deal must still receive a green light from the Swiss parliament and could possibly still be derailed by a popular referendum.

The agreement has also been criticized in Sweden for handing over very pricy merchandise at discount rates.

"Switzerland has no plans whatsoever to contribute to Gripen's development costs," Anna Dahlberg, a commentator with the Swedish daily Expressen,
lamented after the August announcement, pointing out that "the country chose Gripen simply because it was the cheapest alternative."


3.13 billion divided by 22 would be 142.2 Francs ($151.9 million each) if you went with that most basic of "cost of the contract divided by airplanes"

so we have F-35A down to $77.9 million in 2019

Based on the Gripen C/D fighter aircraft, Saab says that the US$85 million Gripen E or Gripen E/F (2017)

https://newatlas.com/saab-gripen-e-first-flight/50063/

This sure is "interesting."


So do we think the Gripen E will ever be as cheap as the F-35A?

Sweden paid SEK 36.8 billion for 60 Gripen E.. That is ~$3.9 billion for 60 jets..
Brazil paid SEK 39.6 billion for 36 jets.. That is ~$4.2 billion.
South Korea paid $6.4 billion for 40 F35.
SAAB offered india the Gripen E to india for "half the price of Rafale"
Poland gets an offer for F35 for $6.5 billion for 32 jets.

Seems to me Gripen is cheaper to buy... Not even mentioning that the F35 cost more to operate per hour than the F15.
Norway expects to pay $40 billion to purchase, maintain and upgrade over a 50 year period. Thats $750+ million per plane.
Sweden expected the Gripen E to cost less than $10 billion to purchase, maintain and upgrade over a 30 year period.

The F35 is the best plane in the world today, but its not cheap by any means.

[irt]

Which again, it isn't that much....
(planes don't fly without engines and so on...)

yup

Brazil already has an aviation industry.. Why arent they just doing what Saab is doing?
Buy parts from abroad, design an aiframe, and bolt it all together. Because they can't. India tried to do what Saab is doing and failed. If you can't develop the software/codes for a modern fighter jet, you can buy all the fancy parts you want.. You still will not be able to make them all work together like they should. Thats the important knowledge Brazil gets from Saab.

[magitsu]

Seems to me Gripen is cheaper to buy...

The info that is out in the wild is there for marketing purposes. Like the often quoted one from Janes, which had Saab's logo in the title page because they paid for the study.

For example here's FDF logistics command head talking about the various cost per flight hour figures available to the public:
"- I have not yet seen any figure that is close to the right one for our system." https://www.sss.fi/2019/11/suomi-lahett ... ittajista/

What happens is that everyone includes different things in their flight hour cost calculations. The slimmest ones you can see have only another tank of fuel and not much else, certainly not even a whiff of the costs from longer term maintenance etc.

To a degree it must be cheaper to use because it weighs half as much. But that also means less performance in certain aspects. If that amount of performance is enough then it would hit a sweet spot.

The same FDF colonel:
"For example, if a cheaper fighter has a weak self-defense system, it will not get as close to the threatening target and therefore needs a more far-reaching missile, which in turn is more expensive."

Then there's that one thing which isn't mentioned. How do you account for the potential extra lives lost with a less performing choice (I guess by evaluating the system's loss of future performance by that attrition)? Aircraft Combat Survivability might indicate that you need many more of them to keep completing the tasks because of attrition.

So it's very complicated even beyond the misleading numbers. Because each of them produces effects at a different efficiency and also has different ACS.

Also the FDF's Hornet replacement project leader has something to say about this:
"Public hourly rates are not comparable and therefore not useful, for example, to support project decision making. It may not be credible if the hourly rates of a modern multi-purpose fighter aircraft are lower than the Hawk jet trainer. In Finland, the cost of a flight hour covers everything from the Air Force commander's salary and the maintenance of an air base to aircraft technician tools and jet fuel.

It is also worth remembering that the price of an individual aircraft cannot be inferred from the total cost of the HX system, since, as stated, Finland is in the process of purchasing a functional unit to replace Hornet's performance. On the other hand, a fighter deal done elsewhere in the world does not create a basis for calculating the unit price of the machine, because the entity hidden behind the transaction amount is not public information.
" https://www.defmin.fi/puolustushallinto ... .9861.blog

The first bolded part is wise to consider whether it could apply, if you see major scale difference in flight hour costs. Like in the Janes comparison study.

[irt]

Seems to me Gripen is cheaper to buy...

The info that is out in the wild is there for marketing purposes. Like the often quoted one from Jane's, which had Saab's logo in the title page because they paid for the study.

For example here's FDF logistics command head talking about the various cost per flight hour figures available to the public:
"- I have not yet seen any figure that is close to the right one for our system."

What happens is that everyone includes different things in their flight hour cost calculations. The slimmest ones you can see have only another tank of fuel and not much else, certainly not even a whiff of the costs from longer term maintenance and other infrastructure/maintenance training costs.

To a degree it must be cheaper to use because it weighs half as much. But that also means less performance in certain aspects. If that amount of performance is enough then it would hit a sweet spot.

The same FDF colonel:
"For example, if a cheaper fighter has a weak self-defense system, it will not get as close to the threatening target and therefore needs a more far-reaching missile, which in turn is more expensive."

Then there's that one thing which isn't mentioned. How do you account for the potential extra lives lost with a less performing choice? Aircraft Combat Survivability might indicate that you need many more of them to keep completing the tasks because of attrition.

So it's very complicated even beyond the misleading numbers. Because each of them produces effects at a different efficiency and also has different ACS.

So the price every nation pays for their fighters are just bogus number for marketing purposes?

Gripen is much cheaper to operate, even if you just count fuel consumption.

One of Gripen E's strong sides is supposed to be its GaN based EW suite, combined with brite-cloud, IRIS-T missiles capable of shooting down incoming AAM's and SAM's, chafs and flares and good maneuverability I'm sure its self defence capability is as good as it gets in a non stealth fighter.

[XanderCrews]

Brazil already has an aviation industry.. Why arent they just doing what Saab is doing?
Buy parts from abroad, design an aiframe, and bolt it all together. Because they canit. India tried to do what Saab is doing and failed. If you canit develop the software/codes for a modern fighter jet, you can buy all the fancy parts you want. You still will not be able to make them all work together like they should. Thats the important knowledge Brazil gets from Saab.

Be careful there, you're admitting that's really the only reason they bought it. its not cost, its not performance.

Sweden paid SEK 36.8 billion for 60 Gripen E.. That is ~$3.9 billion for 60 jets..
Brazil paid SEK 39.6 billion for 36 jets.. That is ~$4.2 billion.
South Korea paid $6.4 billion for 40 F35.
SAAB offered india the Gripen E to india for "half the price of Rafale"
Poland gets an offer for F35 for $6.5 billion for 32 jets.

Flyaway cost the F-35 is cheaper, and saab even confirmed that with their 85 million dollar claim. what youre doing here now is reposting this same thing again and again with no respect for what we've already gone over-- that these deals can include any number of options and prices can vary wildly and that whats in clued in the Brazil and Swedish deals is a complete unknown because once again, they don't publish it. Meanwhile the F-35 sales are a matter of public records and the F-35 has had a thumb jammed up its keester from 12 different countries with reams of open source material completede by alphabet agencies all over the planet from the ANAO to KPMG Canada.

Once again these amazeball Gripen deals are kept under wraps. We have to rely on the word of Saab Goodspeak to tell us all about it.

Seems to me Gripen is cheaper to buy.

Even Saab says it costs more.

Not even mentioning that the F35 cost more to operate per hour than the F15.

I'm not too worried about the CFPH of the F-35 its going to be at or around the F-16 even if its off by 10 or 15 percent thats more than within tolerances.

Norway expects to pay $40 billion to purchase, maintain and upgrade over a 50 year period. Thats $750+ million per plane.
Sweden expected the Gripen E to cost less than $10 billion to purchase, maintain and upgrade over a 30 year period.

The F35 is the best plane in the world today, but its not cheap by any means.

Youre not even giving honest comparisons. In the same way that I clearly showed that an F-35 is cheaper flyaway cost and you ignored it, youve done the same thing here. with a very limited production size there's no guarantee that the Gripen E will ever be cheap to fly. The Swiss pegged it at 27,000 dollars CPFH. The F-35s goal is 25,000 dollars but it looks there like its got a little lattitude before it ties with the Gripen E estimates. Norway in fact rejected the Gripen NG proposal on exactly those grounds. Limited production run, meant limited spares, limited spares means custom built and ordered parts to keep the fleet viable over time.

The lifespan is not flat rate, there a mountain of difference between 50 years and 30 years. For example the USMC has tracked its legacy fleet increasing in cost 3 percent every year.

(you can spare the wikileaks BS too, Norway did their homework and realized over the life of the Gripen it would suddenly become ridiculously expensive)

So the price every nation pays for their fighters are just bogus number for marketing purposes?

Most of Saabs reported numbers are indeed marketing. When Saab has to get into the legally binding phase of contracts they magically loose. Once Saabs cards can no longer be hidden they either

A. withdraw or
B. Lose.

Have you noticed its lack of sales in Europe? Have you noticed how Euro nations that have operated the F-16 for Decades and have sparred against Gripens wanted nothing to do with Gripen E? All the nations that were supposed to be Gripen E contenders in Europe and it didn't land a single one.

Gripen is much cheaper to operate, even if u just count fuel consumption.

Gripen? sure. Gripen E? that may not be the case. 27,000 an hour is F-16 numbers, which also means its F-35 neighborhood. This is why I say the Gripen E is a disaster as a concept. Its supposed to be cheaper and it isn't. This shouldn't even be a close contest. Why isn't Gripen E "Half the cost of the F-35, and 80 percent as good" like people liked to say about the Gripen and F-16? Because its actually MORE costly than the F-35 and Still not as good as an F-16.

Thats BAD.



You keep saying "Cheaper" and "expensive" I think youre misusing them. For what it does, the Gripen E is expensive. Its ridiculous that an airplane that comes in behind performance of an F-16 and the original hornet costs that much. Its absurd. I don't think the F-35 is excessively "expensive" when it costs less than a Gripen E

The F-35 is not "expensive" if it costs less, than the airplane you are claiming is "cheaper." Moreover althought CPFH can vary nation to nation, we can easily compare quantifiable numbers correct? rather than using descritpive terms like "expensive" and "cheap" I don't think the F-35 is "expensive" when compared with its peers in a lot of cases its coming in at significantly less. sub 80 million dollar F-35As are an actual real life thing now.

You can compare the F-35 to other fighters CPFH, its not tremendoulsly more expensive moreover, the CPFH like the aircraft cost itself is going to continue to decline. People were laughing about the F-35A getting under 85 million. Its 77.9 million now. the CPFH is going to decline, its just a matter of exactly how much. It would not surprise me if they get it under GRipen E CPFH and yes I'm serious. its already under Gripen E in flyaway cost, why not embarrass Saab even further?

The other issue is where the Gripen E comes in for being an 85 million dollar fighter. so its going to cost 85 million, but will be cheaper than all the other 85 million dollar class fighters? Why? despite being built in the smallest numbers of any other fighter compared to the Rafale, Typhoon, Super Hornet etc? Theres a real chance that the fighter that costs like an 85 million dollar fighter, has 85 million dollar CPFH. perhaps worse in fact due to the small overall amount, limited production runs, etc. kind of hard to convince people it costs about 30 percent more than the original gripen, and will be built in about 1/3 the number but will somehow not cost 30 percent (or higher) more?

The swiss put it around 27,000 CPFH thats F-16 numbers. why?

I'll break it down.

1. its not really "cheaper" it costs more than an "expensive" F-35 flyaway cost.
2. theres no reason to think the increased price tag isn't going to come with increased price in spares/maint
3. Theyre in the same ballpark cost wise as an F-16, which is right where the F-35 is but Gripen E is no F-16 let alone no F-35.
4. Gripen E needs to be vastly cheaper than what saab themselves is saying, in order to be competitive on the market.

really all you're arguing now is package costs, and CPFH that youre clueless about. F-35 doesn't even have the highest CPFH compared to other competitors how is it "expensive" if its not as high as eurofighter and favorably compares to the Gripen E?

One of Gripen E's strong sides is suposed to be its GaN based EW suite, combined with brite-cloud, IRIS-T missiles capable of shoting down i coming AAM's and SAM's, chafs and flares and good maneuverability

i've been hearing how amazing this thing is going to be for 14 years now. Theres a bunch of hype surrounding it and people have been taking company "projections" (thats what saab calls it when they don't make something they promised) and estimates as the gospel for just as long.

Even the dullards at LM were able to redesign the F-35 to control its weight but the super geniuses at Saab helplessly blew their weight goal by 1000 kilos on a LIGHT fighter. and again the F-35 is coming in at a lower price and damn similar CPFH.

im sure its self defence capability is as good as it gets in a non stealth fighter.

youre sure? youve been so accurate so far.

hey you forgot to show me the "special affordable stealth discount" too. no note of that on any official documentation?

[lukfi]

Hello guys, I've been trying to find some information on the acquisition and operating costs of the F-35 and Gripen E and I wasn't very successful, since the Gripen E was not yet sold internationally to anybody except Brazil and comparing CPFH is very sketchy because everybody calculates it differently.

XanderCrews, could you please provide some sources for the information you are quoting here?

• Is there an official figure from Saab saying how much the Gripen E costs? It has only ever been sold internationally to Brazil, and from there comes the nonsense $125M price, but that includes much more than fly-away cost
• In the Swiss $27k per flight hour figure, I think they might be including some additional costs than what is included in the target $25k for F-35A (maybe aircraft depreciation?). Gripen is much lighter so it needs less fuel, and maintenance surely is not more expensive than on the F-35. Are you sure these are comparable numbers?
• If the F-35 supposedly costs about the same as F-16 to operate, why is the F-16 even manufactured and why would Slovakia and Bulgaria be buying it? The F-16 is supposed to be low cost and the Gripen E is supposed to be comparable to the F-16, so that doesn't make sense.
• I thought the public knowledge about Norway was that the U.S. threatened to block the Gripen deal, which they can because Gripen uses an American engine and possibly other components. I'm interested in your sources.

Thanks!

[kimjongnumbaun]

CPFH is such a terrible metric to determine affordability. The Gripens in South Africa probably have the best CPFH because they never fly them and hanger queens are the most affordable planes to keep on the books. Planes cost nothing to maintain if you never fly them and never need to maintain them. There is no valuable CPFH metric unless you are flying the planes exactly the same amount under the same conditions, and that doesn't exist.

In the Swiss $27k per flight hour figure, I think they might be including some additional costs than what is included in the target $25k for F-35A (maybe aircraft depreciation?). Gripen is much lighter so it needs less fuel, and maintenance surely is not more expensive than on the F-35. Are you sure these are comparable numbers?

It is very simple. I have a machine that makes screws for the F-35 and for the Gripen E. The Machine costs $10,000. The screw costs 1 cent to make. Everytime the F-35 and Gripen fly, they need a new screw. There are 1700 F-35s.

The screws cost $22.88 each for 1700 F-35s which covers the cost of the machine and the cost to build the screw.

There are 36 Gripen Es for Brazil. Each screw costs $294.78 each.

If you are still confused.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ec ... fscale.asp

[lukfi]

CPFH is such a terrible metric to determine affordability. The Gripens in South Africa probably have the best CPFH because they never fly them and hanger queens are the most affordable planes to keep on the books. Planes cost nothing to maintain if you never fly them and never need to maintain them. There is no valuable CPFH metric unless you are flying the planes exactly the same amount under the same conditions, and that doesn't exist.

Aircraft which are conserved in storage do not fly at all, so they don't contribute to CPFH calculation in any way. Otherwise I agree with what you say, operating conditions are different, some components may have shorter life-span in hot/cold/humid weather, and some stuff has to be checked or replaced after some time even if the aircraft is lightly flown. But most maintenance tasks are prescribed after a number of flight hours, so regardless of the conditions, you check the engine, hydraulic system, landing gear, … after x flight hours and it costs y man-hours to do. You can only guess how often you'll need spares, but x and y are known, the costs of spares is also known and the "how often" can be reliably estimated at least for some components (e.g. the F414 engine). Fuel consumption depends on how you fly it, but that can be estimated pretty accurately, too.

There are two things that make CPFH so bad, IMO:
1) Different operators calculate it differently. Some include the wages of the pilots, some include also airbase-related costs, and some include also the aircraft itself, e.g. if it costs $80M and has a lifetime of 8000 hours, that's $10k in depreciation per flight hour;
and 2) pilot and technician wages differ massively. If some work costs $20,000 in Switzerland, it may cost $3000 in Bulgaria.

It is very simple.

…We kill the Batman
I'm an economics college graduate, so you don't have to educate me about economies of scale. That's all very clear to me.

The "generally accepted wisdom" seems to be that the F-35 is now cheap to buy thanks to economy of scale (or perhaps because the U.S. ate the cost of its development and its allies can now buy it for the manufacturing cost which will never make back the R&D), but expensive to maintain. While the Gripen E may not be that much cheaper to buy, but its operating costs are lower. There are also many "generally accepted wisdoms" about military aviation that are bogus. If you (or XanderCrews) say this is one of them, then I'd like to see some sources more respectable than "some guy at a forum says it".

Maintaining a fighter jet is less "buying screws" and more manual work that has to be performed by trained personnel, that's why your analogy doesn't fit.
The Gripen was designed for easy maintenance. The F-35 was designed for stealth and to incorporate a STOVL variant so it makes sense if maintenance is more expensive, for example because you have to disassemble more stuff to get to the component you are maintaining, maintenance covers are not just held with screws but also glued over with stealth tape which has to be removed before and reapplied after… and all of that takes more work.

In 2002, when Czech Air Force was planning to buy the Gripen C/D, some CPFH numbers were published. For the Gripen it was supposedly half that of MiG-21. For the used F-16A that was also offered, the CPFH was 15 % higher than the MiG-21. MiG-29s reportedly cost 3-4 times as the 21 to fly, which is why we quickly got rid of them while they still had any resale value and kept the older 21s instead.
An article from 2011 claims that the Czech Gripens cost half that of British Eurofighters in CPFH, but who the hell knows since they are leased from Sweden and some maintenance is included in the lease

Anyway… I see valid reasons why the Gripen E/F would be more expensive than the C/D to buy: it has more advanced avionics, sensors, and a more powerful engine, but I don't see why should it be much more expensive to fly. It is still the same aircraft, just a little bigger. Does an AESA radar require any more maintenance than a mechanically-scanned one? Does the F414 engine require more maintenance than the F404?

As you've probably guessed already, I am Czech, our Gripen C/D lease expires in 2027 and I think Gripen E and F-35A are going to be the main contenders for their replacement. That's why I have an interest in this topic

[Orangeburst]

CPFH is such a terrible metric to determine affordability. The Gripens in South Africa probably have the best CPFH because they never fly them and hanger queens are the most affordable planes to keep on the books. Planes cost nothing to maintain if you never fly them and never need to maintain them. There is no valuable CPFH metric unless you are flying the planes exactly the same amount under the same conditions, and that doesn't exist.

I do not believe this to be accurate. The metric is Cost Per Flying Hour and not reflective of fleet size. It is flying cost. If you have a fleet of 10 planes and 1 plane flies one hour @ $30K, then the CPFH is $30K, not $3K.

[spazsinbad]

Some more mumbojumbo for the CPFH addicts: https://www.defenseone.com/business/202 ... ef=d-river

"...The Pentagon wants to lower the price of flying an F-35. It costs more than $30,000 per hour now and Pentagon officials have data showing that figure coming down to about $29,000, Lord said. “By 2025, we’d really like to be to $25,000 per flight hour.”

But defense leaders say they want more data from Lockheed. “The initial proposal that Lockheed put in was extremely high level,” Lord said. “We have been working since last fall to … generate the dataset to understand the performance of the aircraft, all the elements of cost that go into maintaining it whether that be material, whether that be labor.”

The Pentagon has hired an outside consultant “to make sure that we have independent points of view,” Lord said.

“I’ve seen PBLs be very efficient and effective when it’s a win for industry and a win for the government,” Lord said. “Right now, we need some clarity around cost. We need some clarity around intellectual property issues in order to understand all the elements of cost and make the best decision in terms of the value for the taxpayer and to make sure the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps has the best service delivery possible.”

If not a so-called performance-based logistics deal, then what? “We’re looking at everything from the way we’re doing things now to a full PBL to something in between like we’ve done on other programs,” Geurts, the Navy’s top acquisition official, said Wednesday...."

[XanderCrews]

[*]Is there an official figure from Saab saying how much the Gripen E costs? It has only ever been sold internationally to Brazil, and from there comes the nonsense $125M price, but that includes much more than fly-away cost

according to saab they are saying 85 million flyaway. This is of course more than what they were claiming just a few years ago

[*]In the Swiss $27k per flight hour figure, I think they might be including some additional costs than what is included in the target $25k for F-35A (maybe aircraft depreciation?). Gripen is much lighter so it needs less fuel, and maintenance surely is not more expensive than on the F-35. Are you sure these are comparable numbers?

I think they're perfectly comparable. A Gripen E weighs what an F-16 does for 1 ( but without the F-16 sized engine, Gripen e has the lowest thrust of all the euro and US fighters, except of course for the original Gripen) The Gripen E has not yet hit 100 ordered. Its perfectly to see a lack of spares support and expensive limited run everything throughout its lifespan. Thats avery plausibly thing. Its not going to have the production scale, numbers, availiablity and heaps of international support the biggest being from Uncle Sugar. If youre tagging onto Gripen your Partners are Brazil and Sweden. good luck.

[*]If the F-35 supposedly costs about the same as F-16 to operate, why is the F-16 even manufactured and why would Slovakia and Bulgaria be buying it? The F-16 is supposed to be low cost and the Gripen E is supposed to be comparable to the F-16, so that doesn't make sense.

Theres still nations out there that aren't secure or don't want to try and prove they are secure enough to rate the F-35 would be my first guess. And if you look at slovakia, the price there looks to come in well under Gripen E. Which again, is bad news for Gripen E. Why woudn't I just buy an F-16V that does more and costs less?

Gripen E has failed at what the Gripen is supposed to best.

[*]I thought the public knowledge about Norway was that the U.S. threatened to block the Gripen deal, which they can because Gripen uses an American engine and possibly other components. I'm interested in your sources.[/list]
Thanks!

everyone complains about the wikileaks thing and ignores not only the Ambassador saying the US should let Norway play out their process, but they seem to forget norway had a process at all. Norway went through their evaluations like they should and came to the definitive conclusion that the F-35 was the right plane.

In the late 2000s, Norway selected F-35 and Bill Sweetman wrote about it (I apologize its lost to the internet now. I've tried to find it again many times). Basically said Norway was deadset on F-35 from the start and went through the competition anyway. Norway is not stupid. Norway is an F-16 operator that has sparred with Gripens. Norway knows the airplanes in question. Norway was concerned about the future sales of the Gripen NG (good call) they were concerned about long term costs 5 decades in. There was concern over future threat systems and the Gripens ability adapt to them. There was concern about saab not even being in the airplane business in 20 years. If the Gripen struggled with sales and had small numbers built and then the factory close the costs over time would begin to become astronomical, upgrades would be expensive as everything regarding the small fleet would be very specialized. There was also (good call) a lot in Norway that questioned whether Saab could pull off its hypothetical fighter with the performance promised and price tag they hyped. lastly there was the cynical decision that if both aircraft suffered problems or delays, the US backed F-35 would carry the day.

Simply put the Norwegians were not stupid. Their evaluators and air force people came to the right conclusions. Why on earth would you give up an F-16 to get this:



excluding the avioinics comparison of the F-16 vs the Gripen E (obviously Gripen E is more advanced in avionics than an MLU Norway F-16) The Norwegian pilots would be getting into an airplane with WORSE performance than that of which they currently flew. Or they could go F-35 and get an improvement in every conceivable metric at a lower cost.

Gripen E is the gripen trying to be an F-16 at less cost. and it can't do it. F-16 can still carry more, move more, will have a better T/W etc etc and it comes with the same number of pylons the Gripen E has now already-- and it can carry more and heavier stuff on them.

[kimjongnumbaun]

I do not believe this to be accurate. The metric is Cost Per Flying Hour and not reflective of fleet size. It is flying cost. If you have a fleet of 10 planes and 1 plane flies one hour @ $30K, then the CPFH is $30K, not $3K.

It is reflective on the fleet size. CFPH isn't some metric that's set in stone. If it was, then the CPFH for the F-35 wouldn't be going down.

More planes = more parts. More parts = cheaper parts because they are mass produced. Cheaper parts = lower CPFH

More planes = more flight time = more training for crews and more efficiencies in maintenance and practices = lower CPFH