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.
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.
Depends. You want 20 Gripen E/F flying or 2 F-35 ? Because that’s the difference in running costs.
Running costs are the least of your concerns when shit hits the fan. The F-35 is simply more capable, there’s really no way around it. This isn’t an issue vs Russia but against China it could be.
I fail to see a scenario where Europeans and China come into direct conflict. Even if/when China invades Taiwan I don’t see the Europeans committing to the Pacific, given the Russian threat directly at home. Therefore the only real war scenario seems to be a direct war with Russia. For this the Gripen should be solid, especially with uncertainty about the availability of some capabilities of the F-35 likely depending on US support.
You’re right, but these aircraft will have a service life of at least 20 years, and who knows what the world will look like then? Russia could be a Chinese vassal by that point. Mind you, I’m not suggesting that anybody buys more F-35s, I’m just saying they are not comparable. What needs to happen is Gripen/Rafale short term and a serious fast-tracking of the FCAS.
The last sentence is the one important one. Any Plattform bought at the moment has it’s downsides. Grippen/Raffaele/Typhoon all have massive downsides in terms of capabilities, survivability, integration. They can be overcome by now, but the difference to the F35,F22, Su57, and similar aircraft will only become bigger - and that doesn’t even consider the sixth generation fighters that will enter the market during their lifetime.
So any European jet can only be a bridge for Europe finally get their fucking act together and get the whole FCAS Plattform up and make that shit competitive. Which is absolutely possible, necessary and mit be achieved at all costs.
My instincts say 20 Gripens (Sherman v Tiger comes to mind)
This is a question of capability, not economics.
They’re the same thing. War has casualties; in the long run the important thing is who runs out of stuff first.
That said, I’m not sure the cost difference is actually 10x, and the survivability difference could be quite large, especially if you’re running it out of a fixed airbase.
I’m no specialist but the f35 seems to cost somewhere around 25-44.000 dollars per flight hour depending on type, the JAS somewhere around four to six thousand.
Yep, that actually checks out. Which is interesting, because just the purchase costs are much closer together (40-50 vs. 90-110 million).
Off topic, but the f35 is still doing a lot better than older stealth planes, from everything I’ve heard. The wonders of a few trillion dollars of engineering work.