Posted on 07/20/2008 11:11:16 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Sweden's Gripen competes with the F-35
By BOB COX rcox@star-telegram.com
FARNBOROUGH, England — Just a few years ago, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter was widely viewed as the world’s leading next-generation, high-technology aircraft, with no strong Western competitor. That’s no longer the case.
Saab, the Swedish industrial conglomerate better known in the U.S. for performance cars than airplanes, has impressed potential aircraft buyers with an aggressive marketing campaign for its upgraded Gripen fighter jet.
Denmark and Norway, two nations that have invested in the F-35, are now holding competitions pitting the F-35 against the Gripen. Denmark is also considering the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet.
Defense officials in the Netherlands, pressured by minority parties swayed by Sweden’s "buy from your neighbor pitch," are conducting a "review of alternatives" that include the F-35, Gripen, F/A-18 and perhaps later model F-16s.
Led by a cocky, even brash Scotsman with a wicked sense of humor and a sharp needle, Saab has become a presence in the world combat-aircraft market and at events like last week’s Farnborough Air Show.
With a boast here and jab there, Bob Kemp, senior vice president of international sales for Gripen, has complicated Lockheed and U.S. government efforts to secure sales for the F-35 and F-16.
"In my opinion, the JSF is not [a fighter], it’s a bomb truck," not well-suited to the aerial dogfighting role, Kemp said in an interview at the air show.
If the bad guys are after you in a hot fighter plane, such as the latest Russian designs, Kemp says he wouldn’t want to be an F-35 pilot. "You can’t outrun [the enemy plane], and you sure can’t out-turn him."
It’s a bold comment and certainly one Lockheed officials disagree with.
(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
Thats why its labeled a *strike* fighter.
The competition of ideas always breeds a best of class.
When you agree on everything, everything is compromised.
Although Lanchester’s Laws can’t be applied without modification, you can’t count on not entering a dogfight...and that’s not just based on RoE restrictions.
Bonder-Farrell, darn it.
And the big hole in both, is that you cannot predict collapse.
Well if he wants to complain about the F-35, and how much “better” his plane is at dogfighting, then let him pair his plane up against an f-22. Heck, let him put up a 1/2 dozen Grippens against 1 f-22.
More to the point, having a netfire capability is vastly different, than being able to use it.
They always say this crap until the shooting starts.
Ummmmm... if you change your attack plane to be competitive in dogfighting then it’s no longer an attack plane! Jeeez. That’s why you use fighters to escort the attack squadrons. Cripes. This guy’s supposed to be ab expert?
Which part - you lost me?
The Gripen is a nice airframe with some good capabilities, but saying it is a better choice than an F-35 is really silly.
First, its lack of stealth is a death sentence. 15 - 20 years from now if you don’t have stealth ability you will not be able to enter most combat environments except on suicide missions. The advantage of being able to pick your fights and surprise the enemy is overwhelming.
Second, the F-35 will have a much larger industry behind it with a lot more funding so it will be upgraded continually with even more capable avionics and weapons. Much more so than the Gripen.
Third, the brilliant system layout of the airframe will make operation and maintenace much cheaper and that is what really costs you the most over the life of an aircraft.
It is a good airframe, but I don’t even think the author really believes this could happen. We heard this same type of talk when the F-16 was new and everybody ended up buying it and they still are.
I have been all over the world and the militaries of the world have great respect for American weapon systems.
“Well if he wants to complain about the F-35, and how much “better” his plane is at dogfighting, then let him pair his plane up against an f-22. Heck, let him put up a 1/2 dozen Grippens against 1 f-22.”
That would be a very embarrassing engagement for the Grippen. They would be trying to explain it to customers for years.
In their defense, SAAB has never said their aircraft can outperform an F-22. The F-22 costs a whole lot more and is completely revolutionary. You could take an F-22A of today 25 years into the future and it would still fare well against most threats and defenses.
Does the Grippen come with a Starbucks finder?
The Gripen is not in the same class as the F-35 or the F/A-18E/F.
The JAS-39 is a lightweight multirole fighter with a max takeoff weight of 39,000lbs. the F-35 is a medium fighter with a max takeoff weight of 60,000lbs, and the F/A-18E/F has a max takeoff weight of 66,000lbs.
Really?
Based on what population? The majority populations of Los Angeles and Fort Worth will be ethnically Mexican in the not too distant future -- about the life cycle of the F-35 airframe.
And you and I both know that that is where this aircraft is designed and built, although the temporary refuge known as Palmdale still holds a few "American" families that still work at Lockheed.
But those cohorts are rapidly aging. It's remarkable to walk the corridors of those places these days because you see so many guys in their late 60's - early 70's. Retirement is in-place, because the companies can't do without them. The alternative is to hire Asians who are increasingly regarded as security problems (note the recent convictions of supposedly law abiding and "loyal" Asian immigrants).
Who will do the upgrading that you refer to, hmmm? Newly educated Mestizo engineers, resurrecting the moribund Aztec aviation scene? The sons and daughters of Chi-Com refugees, the sort of people who demonstrated the other day in Thousand Oaks against criticism of the enforcers who came with the Olympic flame?
I work with Europe's engineers all the time. Although it's true that the suburbs of Paris have an alarming number of Mohammed's there, the fact is that European engineering firms are still rather clubby, and you do have to be capable to be hired and stick around.
That means that SAAB will have access to better and better avionics. If you've ever worked with SAAB now, you'd know that they're a damn good engineering organization as it is - and have gotten so on a fairly small base of human capital.
So don't be too quick to extrapolate American success of the past to the future 20 and 30 years out. The people responsible for all that are dying and being replaced by populations who have nothing but failure in their past, and I won't bother to get into the "nature or nurture" argument other than to say that early empirical evidence is not good for the nurture side of it, and anyway multi-culturalism allows them to cling to the failed norms of their past.
All of which doesn't bode well for a future U.S. military aerospace industry.
Saab cars are made by GM. I think the aircraft maker does make midsized and large trucks.
Sort of like the F-16 when it came out, 32 years ago.
Though they never said they could go up against a F-22, they are railing against the F-35, a definite multi-role plane, because they think it can't dogfight. If they want to dogfight, dogfight a dogfighter.
Anything I've read basically says as a multi-role the F-35 is it.
A few counterpoints:
First, there is such a thing as being good enough for the job a machine is required to do. There is no doubt that the F-35 can fly rings around the Gripen (or the F-16) in a dogfight thanks to its enhanced maneuver capabilities; however, it is unlikely that the Gripen will be up against the F-35. Nations likely to end up on the wrong side of an F-35 are more likely (at least in the short term) to buy Russian aircraft due to long standing procurement ties.
That means that the Gripen should be measured against Russian, and maybe even Chinese or French, aircraft rather than the much more expensive F-35. We Americans are willing to pay a heavy price for something like the F-35 because of the effort we put into our pilots and the trouble it would take to replace them in numbers ... and pay we do compared to something like the Gripen or the venerable F-16.
Also, American military doctrine is in love with the idea of close to zero American casualties due to our own political realities. This has not always been the case. For example, in WW2 there was a workable plan to build giant carriers out of picrete (ice formed with a slurry of wood pulp) that could service our heavy bombers in numbers, be relatively cheap to build and maintain, nearly impervious to attack (40’ plus thick hulls of a material similar to highly reinforced concrete), and would have precluded the need for the costly in human lives island hopping campaign. This was obviously passed over ... but not because the ships wouldn’t work.
Also, the SIZE of American industry isn’t that big of a factor because its widespread and specialized distribution can be a potential weakness. It isn’t the same as in WW2 when any aircraft factory could produce nearly anything in our inventory with a little retooling — back then we made weapons like we made cars — but our current production realities are more like those imposed on Germany by their own heavy machinery industry (which was not centered around cost efficient production and which is why, for example, the Germans could never produce enough tanks).
Third, reduced cost for maintenance must be weighed against increased cost for procurement. Yes, the F-35 is a brilliantly designed aircraft that is intended to be easily maintained and have a high readiness; but, buyers may not see that as an overriding economic concern when they can get more also-reliable airframes for the same money. Frankly, someone who would buy the F-35 for its uncompromising capabilities would possibly do so even if it were a pig to maintain.
Finally, the F-16 was and is unlike the F-35 in one respect. It was not a do-it-all aircraft at the beginning but has been developed into one much as the series cumulating with the Gripen has been. These are maximizing their potential that was unrealized at the beginning. The F-35 should also provide an excellent upgrade path of its own; however, it is just starting out and the direction and merit of that growth has yet to be determined.
Yes, if the pilot is from California or Seattle. Otherwise the pilot will need to land at a shopping center in the US. Doesn't matter which shopping center, any will do. They all have at least 2.
I understand some of your points, but the U.S. still produces more scientists and engineers each year than any other country.
I agree our country has too many people that care too little about education, but hopefully we will continue to see their numbers drop if even local jurisdictions continue to start enforcing the law. Things like this run in cycles and hopefully the pendulum will have swung the other way in a few years.
Here at Edwards AFB we continue to see a good supply of young engineers and scientists so my personal opinion is we will be okay. I still don’t see a tiny country outproducing a huge collection of nations like that behind the F-35.
Couple of questions:
what, if any, comm/command/control capability does the Gripen have with something like an AWACS? I’m guessing it doesn’t match ours and I’m guessing that the AWACS and our C3I systems have something to do with our success, yes?
And not to rub it in, but... have any of Sweden’s aircraft been used in, you know... actual combat?
I’d have to say that a huge piece of our success is the men who fly our aircraft, their experience and how they transmit that experience to successive generations of pilots. If hardware alone won engagements, wouldn’t those third world tin-hats flying relatively modern Soviet-era fighters have a little higher success rate than they do?
The Eurofighter...
Gripen... 
Actually, the days of dogfighting are over.
Why do you need to turn & burn to get behind someone, when it is easier and faster for a kill to shoot him in front of the 3-9 line?
Those who argue for dogfighting don’t understand air combat after, say, 1995.
We have a small shopping that has 3.
Yes the engagement envelopes of missiles and the radars are so capable they can practically toss one over their back and still hit the opposing airplane.
btt
The Eurofighter can sling a lot of ordinance cant it.
I’ll just say that the Eurofighter must have some terrible downward visibility.
Ya know... If ya got AMRAAMs, and stealth, dogfighting is usually a waste of time. And, of course, the latest Sidewinders are pretty scary, too.
Don’t worry about it.
If you’re not going up against the USA or our allies, the Gripen is perfect. (Relatively) Cheap, versatile, and effective.
If you are going up against F-22s and F-35s, you screwed the pooch long before you go to the Air Combat phase.
Just purchase according to your planned enemy.
But don’t forget, the Pakis and the PLAAF are working on a stealth fighter together, also! You can’t tell where stealth fighters will turn up...
Maybe LA, but not Ft. Worth. We are being flooded with Michiganders from GM land. We'll have engineers!
Combine the EU countries for a start. Then tell me how many that China will graduate just this year. And, as I pointed out before....how long will that really last, considering the population that now lives just over the hill from you?
I agree our country has too many people that care too little about education, but hopefully we will continue to see their numbers drop
Umm...hoping it's going to change won't make it so. And one other little problem: even if they did change, do we want to give them the keys to the nuclear arsenal? Can Mexico simply vote to take possession of the inventory of the USAF by insisting that their citizens are actually ours?
Here at Edwards AFB we continue to see a good supply of young engineers and scientists so my personal opinion is we will be okay
Mmm...and I note that in looking at the pictures on the Edwards civilian employment website that a disproportionate number of them appear to be, er, Asian. Oops! There I go, bringing in ethnicity again! How Un-PC of me. Like I said...are these the sons and daughters of the pro-PRC parents in Monterey Park and Thousand Oaks? If so, what's the point? Who are you then developing weapons for - the greater glory of totalitarian East Asia, or the formerly free States that were United?
You may be right. There may still be an "American" aerospace industry in 30 years worth talking about. But will it exist to protect Greater Mexico and Chinese hegemony?
A rather sad day for the world that will be. The Americans will be gone, and some of the worst the world has to offer will inherit what was built by so much sacrifice.
Well I guess there's a sunny side to every cloudy day!
OTOH, those are the guys who gave us the Vega !
Dude, ya gotta drop that whole “Asians are evil” thing you have just because of one bunch of pro-PRC morons. Seriously. I know a LOT of Americans of Japanese and Chinese descent. Some even came over as adults and naturalized. You would be hard pressed to find a more pro-American anti-PRC bunch anywhere. Seriously. Can some of them be a bit arrogant? Sure, but when you look at how so many Americans don’t appreciate what they have and are so lazy, can you blame then? That said, two I know have served in Iraq, one with a particularly hard core MOS (lotsa time in the sh!t pre-surge).
None appreciate freedom more tha those who have lived under the yoke. Do they look like us? Who cares. They think like (far too few) of us do. That’s all that matters. (There is one exception in the largest bunch of ‘em I know. He is a pro-China libtard of the first order. He’s also learned to keep his dumb mouth shut around us.)
“I work with Europe’s engineers all the time.”
I’ve worked with UK engineers. Never dealt with a more arrogant set of useless engineers in my life. I’m sure there are exceptions, and maybe th rest of Europe is different, but these pukes couldn’t engineer their way out of a paper bag with a chainsaw.
Don’t forget that Palmdale has Northrop Grumman (an American Company), which builds a sizable portion of the F-35.
“Those who argue for dogfighting don’t understand air combat after, say, 1995.”
That kind of thinking has bitten the US in the rear several times, most recently at the start of the Vietnam war. The US military has learned for those mistakes, so dogfighting capability will be part of US air combat doctrine in the foreseeable future.
“I’d have to say that a huge piece of our success is the men who fly our aircraft, their experience and how they transmit that experience to successive generations of pilots.”
Bingo, we have a winner! Add class A tech to that, and we have the reason for the US’s utter dominance of the air in modern times...
There BTW is a large cadre of Japanese Americans in aerospace engineering.
Dog fighting is a craft that should not be neglected, especially if the conflict lasts long enough for the air to air assets begin to degrade.
You are completely wrong.
In Vietnam, or even as late as when I flew F-4s in the 80s, it was true. Why? Radar missiles were unreliable, and heat seeking missiles needed to be fired from the rear of the other aircraft. Therefor, being able to maneuver to the rear (dogfighting) was critical.
However, modern radar missiles are much more reliable than the AIM-9P was, and certainly a higher Pk than a machine gun. The modern heat seeking missiles are even more reliable, and work as well from the front as from the rear. There is now no noticeable advantage to maneuvering to the 6 o’clock position, and a great deal of disadvantage - it costs you SA and opens you up to attack from someone you do not see.
Dogfighting is fun. Its practice teaches young pilots a lot about getting performance out of their plane. It is NOT a useful combat skill.
Yes, of course...but Bonder-Farrell is a derivative of Lanchester's work, and it also requires modification (the assumptions aren't necessarily met in even an aerial meeting engagement, and heck, even Bonder and Farrell modified their own :-).
I was going back and giving original credit; even if Lanchester's differential equations might be superceded by current simulation-modeling techniques, his laws draw attention to some concerns that exist regardless of how they are quantified.
And the big hole in both, is that you cannot predict collapse.
That's one big hole. :-)
But regardless of the details, and regardless of how we bring in behavioral modeling or parameter estimation or the like, my point is that the purchase of the "best" platform is not always (and often isn't) the most cost-effective decision for a nation. And it is a decision that can't be made in isolation of considerations beyond direct combat effectiveness platform-to-platform (such as mission, crew availability, C4I burden/contribution, maintenance, TAT, collapse susceptibility, international relations, casualty sensitivity [strategic, political], etc.)
Uh huh. That is, until you consider heat seeker jamming laser tech (such as the Russians just put on the intl market and the US is putting on some civilian planes) and radar-defeating stealth. Then you’re back to dogfighting.
It’s classic thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis, in other words the way miltech has evolved and then devolved over the last few thousand years. Another example is teaching ground troops hand-to-hand combat, which some people at the start of WWI thought was obsolete because of firepower advances, esp. artillery.
Totally agree, but with a caveat. While it is true that the F-35 is a better plane than the JAS, the question of it being a better choice is up in the air. The reason is that being a 'better choice' is not dependent on how good a plane is, but how good it is based on the full-spectrum of underlying conditions, potential threats, and cost-benefit available. The F-35 is a superior airframe (depending on who you listen to, second only to the F-22), but the Gripen will be able to tackle nearly all potential foes available, is also a highly sophisticated airframe (including a NORA AESA, as well as advanced AAMs like the AMRAAM and Meteor, and for high-intensity missions capable of carrying stealthy cruise missiles) and will do this for far cheaper than the F-35. The thing is, a Bugatti Veyron (analogue for the F-22) is far better than a Lamborghini Murceilago (analogue for the F-35), but a Porsche 911 (the Gripen) will still do the job quite well if you are not the USAF (and are not facing off against the USAF).
First, its lack of stealth is a death sentence. 15 - 20 years from now if you don’t have stealth ability you will not be able to enter most combat environments except on suicide missions. The advantage of being able to pick your fights and surprise the enemy is overwhelming.
The first thing is that the Gripen can carry precision stealth cruise missiles for attacking targets protected by integrated air defense systems. However, the most important thing is that most countries approached for the F-35 (and the Gripen as well) will not be having the same mission types as the USAF. The Gripen will be able to survive quite well against the type of threat situations such countries would be facing, and nations like Norway would get no additional benefit from having the F-35 instead of the Gripen. Again, its back to the Porsche 911 against the Lambo and the Bugatti. The USAF needs the best, particularly since it is the USAF that always kicks the door down in high-intensity situations.
It is also interesting to note that the F-35 will only be going in after F-22s (and B-2s) take down the really high intensity defenses (e.g. IADS made of S-400s), and the F-35 then comes in. Thus, a nation like Norway having F-35s will still not have the level of stealth to avoid a 'death sentence' 15-20 years from now. The F-22 is a different story (and countries like Japan and Israel, and I hear Australia, would want it for their specific locus, but the plane is not for sale)
Second, the F-35 will have a much larger industry behind it with a lot more funding so it will be upgraded continually with even more capable avionics and weapons. Much more so than the Gripen.
The Swedes have done a very good job with the Gripen, and have continually upgraded the variants (resulting in the upcoming NG iteration). In terms of data-links, and the upcoming NORA AESA radar, they have done a great job. As for weapons, in terms of PGMs and AAMs the Gripen is stellar (it can even carry the Meteor BVRAAM, as well as a number of the new generation IIR-AAMs). Thus, it is not exactly losing out on that front.
Third, the brilliant system layout of the airframe will make operation and maintenace much cheaper and that is what really costs you the most over the life of an aircraft.
In terms of cost management, the Swedes have done a great job. In terms of bang for buck, only the F-16 can claim to deliver more (and it is on its way out, and unless you include the Block 60 used by the United Arab Emirates, which has AESA and what not, it is not as technologically advanced as the Gripen NG will be). The JSF on the other hand has a very interesting cost curve ....while all new programs have teething problems, it is interesting to see how the final variant will manage its weight and cost issues (cost is one of the main reasons while airframes like the Gripen are starting to look so attractive to some of the nations that were thinking of the JSF).
I have been all over the world and the militaries of the world have great respect for American weapon systems.
The reason for that is simple ....they are the best. People will always respect the best. Another reason is their success rate, and American weaponry have had a very good success rate (and people also respect success, although to be very honest this should NOT be a big point because a lot of the foes have not been exactly profecient. The USAF could have used Russian SU-27s, against an Iraqi airforce using American F-15s, and the results would have been the same ....the USAF would have won! And a fight between India, using Russian made SU-30MKIs, and Pakistan, using American F-16s, would end up with the Indians blowing up the F-16s without even having to cross over into Pakistani airspace. Thus, the enemy does matter quite a lot .....).
However, the Gripen is not a bad plane. Particularly when you look at the capability you garner (better than ANY foe nation a country like Sweden, or Switzerland, or Norway, or South Africa, or a guestimate of over 95% of the countries in the world, will EVER face). You get cutting edge Western capability (in terms of radar, avionics, mission capability and weapons), constant upgrades, no-strings attached service, and full NATO compatability ....and all at a very affordable cost.
The JSF is a wonder plane (particularly if all the bugs are worked out), but to be honest very FEW nations would require it because they do not have a threat matrix that requires such a fighter. The Gripen can offer good strike capability against 'bad' targets (e.g. using stealthy cruise missiles). It should also be noted that against high-level IADS networks, the level of stealth afforded by the JSF (primarily against X-band radars, unlike the full-spectrum protection afforded by the F22, plus other advantages the F22 has such as super-cruise) would also make it not a prudent choice to use unless it is supported.
Anyways, both are good planes, and the F-35 is a better plane than the Gripen (they are even in different weight classes, leave alone capability). However, the main selling point for the Gripen is that a Porsche 911 can give you the same REAL WORLD performance that a Lamborghini Murcielago can (sure, the Lambo is faster, with faster acceleration and all that, but unless you are on a track, and your name is Lewis Hamilton, you will not notice any real difference between a 911 performance and a Murcielago performance). For most nations, the Gripen is perfectly analogous to the JSF.
It is only for countries like the US, Japan, Israel and Australia ....and to a lesser level maybe India and such nations ....that require a F-35, and for those the 'best case' scenario would be to have F-35s supported by F-22s (although only the USAF gets to play with the super-plane).
BTW, unless the cost overruns on the F-35 are sorted, I'd expect to see more partners start having serious looks at some of the Eurofighters (or even the advanced versions of the F-15 and the F-16), all of which would serve them perfectly.
BTW, thank you for your service.
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