XanderCrews wrote:thats not a ringing endorsement at all. Its not a secret that the original gripen struggled with power, the whole "only 3 percent growth" in the advertisement was supposed to put that to bed and assuage fears that it would be gutless.
There is a saying in Czech, "one who wans to beat a dog always finds a stick". You kept saying that Gripen E has a worse T/W than the original Gripen, when I point out that may not be true, you start claiming the T/W was always bad.
Can we put this one to bed? if you want to come after me for being a hypocrite that's easy, my almost 3 year old does that all the time "but daddy you said... "
Yeah, let's. I would only be repeating what I already said earlier, and I don't think we are so much in disagreement. Canada's predictions turned out to be right but they might as well have turned out to be wrong. They were unable to justify it in front of the people.
it just doesn't add much to the thread, but knock yourself out. but before you do, please remember you were telling us Saab could accurately price things out to a design youre also telling us was in constant flux, and of course I've gone over how a small fleet, much smaller than their estimates could affect costs.
Sorry, that's a misunderstanding. Whether you're Saab, LM or any other manufacturer, you have a general idea of what it's going to cost to maintain an aircraft you are developing. For a conservative, evolutionary design like the Gripen E, that shouldn't be hard. Of course, as the design changes, the estimates may also change. If the aircraft becomes heavier, it will need more fuel, some components may be replaced earlier due to more stress, etc. Where economies of scale apply, obviously you don't know in advance how many aircraft you're going to sell and that may skew your calculations. But I've repeatedly tried to explain that spare parts are only part of maintenance costs and that small fleets of aircraft exist and are not prohibitively expensive to operate, with the Gripen C/D being one example. For a small air force that would be buying 8-12 planes it is not ideal to operate a type that almost nobody else has. But Canada is looking to buy about 65 aircraft (Saab offered them 88), so is Finland; if either one chose the Gripen E, that would make the fleet size close to the number of Gripen C/Ds flying now.
If you want to let us in on all the Gripen E/F sales the next 10 years, and overall numbers I'd love to hear it. F-35 had whats called a "Program of Record" its pretty helpful when you're trying to figure cost and fleet things out.
Obviously we both know that the Gripen does not have a backlog of 1000+ orders from the USAF. We can only guess how successful it's going to be in the sales competitions it's currently involved in. That's what companies do to estimate cash flow, they look at deals in the pipeline, guess how likely they're going to win, multiply the $ by the % and add it all up. Apart from Canada and Finland where the Gripen is up against the F-35, Saab is participating in several bids where the F-16 will be the most serious competition. Namely in Colombia and Philippines they have a good chance of winning, though both would be small deals.
how dare you? Implying its not a TRUE multi-role fighter?
It is multirole, but with obvious limitations of being a light aircraft. Sweden wanted a fighter suitable for the country's defense (with the dispersed base capability, quick turnaround and all that, which is why I'm sad Switzerland hasn't bought it because it would have been a great fit), not a freedom and democracy dispenser. That's why the Gripen is what it is. USAF and RAF wanted a plane with good air-to-ground capabilities as they have F-22 and EF Typhoon for air superiority, and that's why the F-35A is what it is.
and why on earth was Saab then and now competing it against the joint STRIKE fighter? That seems stupid doesn't?
Why is LM entering their
strike fighter into competitions for what should be primarily air superiority fighters? Finland is a neutral country, much like Sweden, that doesn't plan on attacking anyone. The ability to destroy enemy SAMs is probably not the highest priority of their air force. Canada needs to guard its own airspace but it also wants to participate in foreign missions, so they need a good balance of abilities in a single type and it will always be a compromise.
Can you handle it when people point out the many issues with F-35?
LOL is this a serious question?
Well then let's see you jump as a jack out of the box, saying how this is inaccurate and outdated.
https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-wing ... 81.articlehttps://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/2 ... productionhttps://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/2 ... y-problemsThe one that all the Europeans are buying up instead of the Gripen E? that one?
"All the Europeans" that bought it recently are Slovakia and Bulgaria. 22 planes in total. (Romania is replacing their MiG-21s with F-16s, too, but used ones.) Slovakia had an offer for Gripen C/Ds but they made a political decision to buy American fighters to strenghten their alliance with the US, and never even sought an offer for Gripen E. I wasn't following Bulgaria closely but they had an expert commission that selected the Gripen C/D (either from storage or used), the competing offer was used F-16A/Bs. Then they decided they want to buy new aircraft instead of used and that they want to buy from a NATO member instead of a neutral country. Thus the Gripen E was never considered and under these conditions the F-16 Block 70 was the only one in their price range.
eagle3000 wrote:What some people choose to ignore is that the idea behind Gripen E evolved. At first, it was little more than increasing internal fuel by moving the gear to the wing roots. Estimated weight for that was 7000 kg.
Later, the program added a lot of additional stuff, resulting in Gripen E we see now. Estimated weight for that is 8000 kg. We don't know the actual empty weight afaik. But hopefully it's not north of 8 tons
Yes, that makes sense. But I would expect that 8000 kg is a final number since the design has been final for a few years now.
ricnunes wrote:Moreover that "swiveling radar" of the Gripen E will certainly do wonders for its frontal RCS
I don't really want to get into a discussion of which plane has the lower RCS since the true numbers are classified and we can only guess, but I'm curious, could you elaborate on this in particular? Assuming the radar antenna acts as a mirror, it will contribute to RCS from whatever angle it's pointing, that's why a stealth plane would usually angle itself not directly against a target but a few degrees off. Same would go for a plane with swashplate radar, you would lock it in a position where it sees the target but doesn't reflect directly back at it. What am I missing?
08 Feb 2020, 19:56
