Is Sweden's Gripen fighter jet the answer to Europe's F-35 fears?
Is Sweden's Gripen fighter jet the answer to Europe's F-35 fears?
Micael Johansson, the CEO of Swedish company Saab, confirmed to Swedish media that Portugal and Canada are studying whether to buy the JAS 39 Gripen E/F fighter jet.
I wish my country, Germany, would cancel its F35 orders
The answer? Yes. The solution, though? No.
The F35 is the overall more advanced platform. That's simply a fact. But given the current state of the world, it is definitively the correct answer to the US' new attitude.
The solution for the future however is pushing the two big fighter programs currently in development in the EU.
If EU does not start investing into its own fighter they will never have one as capable as the american ones.
We need to stop thinking in short-term solutions.
PS: this comment is not directly against yours. Just an addition
Yeah but wasnt f35 a joint project between EU and america
Depends. You want 20 Gripen E/F flying or 2 F-35 ? Because that's the difference in running costs.
My instincts say 20 Gripens (Sherman v Tiger comes to mind)
Fingers crossed for Flygsystem 2020
The problem with the Gripen is it is a 4th generation fighter. Nice, but it lacks the stealth of the F35 which means you either lose pilots a lot or you keep them well away from the fights. They are still useful in their role, but you want a better plane for a lot of roles that it cannot do. And of course 6th generation fighters are already on the drawing board.
The advantage with the Gripen is that the Americans can't turn it off on a whim
The way to run it would be dispersed across the wilderness and not in the air for too long at any one time. That was Sweden's plan (and why it's built to resist ingestion of loose rocks among other things), and it would be Canada's as well just on a much larger scale. That may or may not be enough to overcome the lack of stealth, though. It's hard to say with public information.
The rest of the EU has a bit of a wilderness shortage, so probably it's not a good fit. South Korea has an F-35 clone they're selling, or the EU could just break their agreement with the US and code their own jailbroken software for the F-35.
Gripen is actually very capable fighter jet with very modular design. It's not as cool looking as F-35, but makes up for it with capabilities, reliability and ease of maintenance.
Looking at the Ukraine and Armenia war I am getting curious about "cheap" drones or drone version of light aircraft. For the price of a Grippen, you can get 100 VL3 (even counting the modification for a drone version). Sure a cool ultra light plane isn't barely as cool as fighter jet.
However, With a swarm of 100, I doubt air defence will intercept all of them even in modern countries. Let alone operations in countries with no air defences
Drones have without a doubt changed warfare a ton, but there's still no fighter jet equivalent on speed and impact power. Situation in Ukraine is a bit different as Ukraine doesn't have much hardware to spare and Russians seem to be afraid of modern defences and neither of them have real infrastructure in place for fighter jet maintenance close enough to the front lines.
Drones work now because they are $1000 (random number in the right range), while a patriot missile is $4 billion dollars each. Sure you could shoot a drone down with one, but if you do the enemy will just send more and bankrupt you.
Ukraine has already seen some success using WWII air defense rifles, or hunting shotguns to take out drones, there the cost is around $1 each. It will need more effort, but there is no reason we cannot automate building such things, and from there mass production means drones are no longer cost effective because they get shot down. (note that shotguns have a range of about 50 meters, and the rifles maybe 10km - we need a lot of this on the lines to make a difference, but that means large amounts of mass production and so the cost should be maybe $5-10k each)
Drones work now because they are $1000 (random number in the right range), while a patriot missile is $4 billion dollars each. Sure you could shoot a drone down with one, but if you do the enemy will just send more and bankrupt you.
I agree with the point but these numbers are some orders of magnitude off. A patriot missile is typically 4 million dollars (so not billion). Drones vary widely depending on the type. Man-portable scouting drones can go as low as a few hundred dollars. I don't think a patriot missile would ever target something that small flying that low though. The Iranian Shahed is estimated to cost around $30-50k. Russia produces its own upgraded version (better navigation systems, bigger warheads, etc.) that costs around $80k.
Even then, you can make 50 drones for the cost of a single patriot. The economics are not favourable.
FCAS is the answer, not Gripen or for that matter Eurofighter or Rafale.
Not for 15 years or more...
Any order of new fighter jets takes about a decade as well. If you do not have them on order already, then why order new ones, when you could buy FCAS, which is a much better system instead.
I cannot comment on this because I’m just a mere civilian