Comments by "afcgeo" (@afcgeo882) on "This Aircraft Was Designed For War With Russia - Discussing the Gripen and F-16 with Alex Hollings" video.

@Oddball_E8 You’re not arguing! You’re trolling! You haven’t presented ANY evidence for your claims at all! I’ve been in the US Air Force for 22 years now. Trained and fought all over the world, including in Svandinavia. Most countries operate from dedicated military facilities, but have back-up plans to operate their fighters from alternate air fields, including unimproved, and from highway stretches specifically designated for that purpose. Even the US has a few of these, although it has little to no need, due to incredible numbers of small, paved airports everywhere. In Europe, the Cold War doctrine created this use in every single country, in the West and in the Warsaw Pact as well. It’s LITERALLY normal, and if you bother to do some research, you’d find it to be true. Sorry that your ego bubble was burst by reality, but Swedes aren’t at all unique in this. You were saying that Sweden uses highways as its regular operational sites fir its air force, which is 100% a lie. It doesn’t. It occasionally trains its air force on how to use highways as air fields, in a WAR EMERGENCY. This is because Sweden doesn’t have many developed airports throughout its country. Most of Sweden is sparsely populated and heavily forested. It has no major cities in its interior, so no airports either. Almost all of its airstrips are on the East Coast. Most are general aviation, about 400m - 2,000m long. Sweden didn’t make its highways into runways. Quite the opposite. It designed small airbases called Flygbassystem 90 and then converted their runways into highways and roads, along with hard stands for heavy aircraft. That’s what’s unique about Sweden. Any country can operate from highways, but only Sweden built these small bases and converted them to highways. By the way, most of the Bas90 system has been shut down and eliminated since the 1990s. That brings the main point - Ukraine didn’t! They don’t have these layouts, hard stands or maintenance hangars on their roads. They don’t have the heavy forests to hide them. They don’t need STOL aircraft. They are a MUCH larger nation, with a lot of vast, open areas. They have lots of existing airfields and plenty of ways to operate the F-16, just as they operate the MiG-29 and SU-25.
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@johanmetreus1268 You’re the first person in this thread that gets it and knows it. Thank you for your comment. Yes, that’s what I mean by a wartime emergency. That the system isn’t a system of regular air force operation in Sweden, but is rather a system of reserve infrastructure designed to be used during war.
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The Grippen isn’t awesome. It’s incredibly behind the times and if employed against an actual peer air force it’ll lose almost every time. It’s a good value in terms of cost, but in terms of ability… it’s VERY basic. Finland and Norway chose the F-35 for good reasons. It’s not even a contest.
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Everyone has this.
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@Oddball_E8 Sweden isn’t “famous” for it. LITERALLY every country has this, including Russia!
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@johanmetreus1268 You must suffer from the very problem you pointed out about other Swedes. First off, I was never frustrated. Please don’t project. Second, “Reserve” has nothing to do with reservists. “Reserve” is a backup plan to what is used normally, during peace time. Sweden DOES NOT normally base its fighters at these locations nor normally operate them from there. The locations are for back-up use - reserve.
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@stuarthamilton5112 You’re 100% mistaken and obviously ignorant on everything you’ve said. I grew up in Russia - born in St Petersburg. Many highways in the USSR were designed for use by the air force and there are actual road signs indicating them. Same in Finland and many other nations across the world. No, the US doesn’t do that. Not because the F-16 can’t operate from austere runways - it can. It’s just that the US has so many private and municipal airfields that there’s no meed for it. Also, the intake on the F-16 is low, but it’s not inches from the ground, and having served for 22 years in the US Air Force I can tell you that EVERY aircraft needs a FOD walk to operate anywhere, including the Vigen and Gripen.
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Mostly right… except the pronunciation of the missile. It’s KINZHAL, not KINZAL. Also, the US Army is capped at 218 General officers, while the US Air Force at 170. The Marines at 62 and 21 for the Space Force. So… the USA alone has 471 Generals (not including Admirals). Also, the F-16 can be operated on highways. It’s not ideal, obviously, but it can be. It is a part of Taiwan’s and Singapore’s air force doctrines and they’ve conducted exercises for it. The US does not do this as US highways weren’t designed for it. We have many physical barriers on highways in the US that would damage aircraft.
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@Brocuzgodlocdunfamdogson Those are too worn out. They’d need to find some low use F-18s, but… Is an F-18 better than an F-16 or a MiG-29? I’m not so sure it is. The C models do have FLIR and laser designators though. I’d think Finland would offer them as they get deliveries of the F-35, but they likely won’t be able to for at least 2 more years. By the way, the US Marines are still flying Ds.
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@6XCcustom What are you rambling on about? You’ve obviously never been to Ukraine. Ukraine’s aircraft are similar to America’s in that they require long, improved runways and taxiways to operate, albeit Russia mostly uses concrete paved runways and not asphalt. The Gripen NEVER outperformed the F-16 or the F-15 at Red Flag, EVER! The Gripen has been used in adversary training for the F-16 and F-15 where the US-made aircraft acted as adversaries (Russian) attackers and were forbidden to engage the Gripens at stand-off distances to provide the Gripen crews training in close-in dogfighting. In EVERY situation pike that, the defending aircraft ends up with a favorable kill ratio. They’re supposed to. That’s the training. They create situations SPECIFIC to what the Gripen excels at - close-in dogfighting. In the 21st century, NO ONE dogfights. Every engagement is done BVR. Stop spreading lies!
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Ukraine can ABSOLUTELY do all three with the F-16, and the biggest thing here is that the F-16 is capable of doing Wild Weasel missions, while the Gripen is not (and if you don’t know what those are, you don’t belong commenting on the topic).
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@Merecir It’s a decade newer than the old blocks of the F-16, but definitely not more advanced, and it certainly isn’t more advanced than the Block 70 F-16s.
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@Merecir You’re as brainwashed as the Russians. 😂 The F-18 wasn’t even an upgrade. They’re entirely new aircraft. Still… to compare the Gripen to an F-22 is 100% hilarious.
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@MarkBarrack The intake is lower, but the thrust on both is enough for that to be pretty irrelevant. They’ll suck in whatever’s on the road. Both operators still need to do regular FOD walks. Besides, Ukrainians operate the MiG-29 just fine. Its intakes are just as low as the Vipers’.
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@MarkBarrack Nothing special on the 29s. They do have heavier duty landing gear than the F-16s. That’s the one aspect that does worry me in using the Viper in Ukraine. Ukraine’s bases use concrete slabs as pavements, instead of asphalt on concrete. Ukrainian pilots are also used to landing harder because of it. That’s something they can re-learn, but it’s a consideration. We (USAF) have tested F-35s and F-16 on austere airfields before, but not for continuous operations. The biggest issue is that Russia’s S-300 and S-400 SAM systems outmatch all Gen 4 fighters.
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@MarkBarrack We don’t have autonomous vehicles that can fly that fast yet. I doubt the Russians would launch an S-300 or S-400 at a bunch of drones either.
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I read a lot of these comments and NONE are coming from knowledgeable Air Force maintainers or logisticians. The reality is that no, the F-16 doesn’t require all those man hours to generate sorties. That’s just what the US uses because we have the personnel and it increases safety and long-term reliability. We have different airmen specifically trained to arm/disarm aircraft, fuel/de-fuel, crew chiefs, avionics, structures, hydraulics, etc. and they all do major maintenance as well as mission generation. The tale of a Gripen needing just one crew chief and a few untrained airmen is absolutely misleading. They still need to do proper maintenance every few flights and untrained people have NO idea of what they’re doing. That’s all just a sales pitch to developing nations - the primary users of the Gripen. Also, not a single Gripen has ever been used in any combat. They’re completely unproven. I’ll be honest, a C Gripen may be better than a Block 15 Viper, but a Block 52 will annihilate it all day, every day, in both, air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. I don’t even want to go into the Wild Weasel capabilities, which the Gripen simply doesn’t have and Ukraine desperately needs.
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@Brocuzgodlocdunfamdogson I don’t think Ukraine needs hundreds of aircraft. My guess is 20 for time being. The Corps are upgrading their D models right now, so they’re not going anywhere and the Finns apparently said they can’t, as their F-35s will take years to backfill.
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BAS90 hasn’t existed for many years.
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@fishyfish6050 Not according to the Swedish defense minister.
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@fishyfish6050 I didn’t mention timelines because frankly, they’re irrelevant to the conversation. Also, non-NATO countries do this too, including Russia and Ukraine themselves.
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@fishyfish6050 This does: Jodenius, Per (2017-05-08). "Försvarsmakten intresserad av flygfält i länet". Smålandsposten (in Swedish). Retrieved 2017-12-10. As well as this: Andersson, Janne (2017-09-14). "Se när JAS Gripen landar – mitt på vägen: "Det är old school" While some airfields still do exist, and can be used in training, the BAS90 system was shut down in the 2000s. Don’t confuse locations with the system.
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@fishyfish6050 EVERY SINGLE ARTICLE AND MENTIONING OF BAS 90 SAYS IT WAS SHUT DOWN IN THE 2000. EITHER STOP TROLLING OR PROVIDE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY.
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@user-pretzel Exactly.
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@user-pretzel The cope is hard with you.
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@Smithsj82 Stop it with your historical facts and logic. Swedes can’t handle it.
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@matso3856 I hope you don’t mean Red Flag Alaska, which isn’t Red Flag and where the F-16s were PURPOSEFULLY sacrificed to the Gripen in order for the Swedes to get training against something similar to Russia…
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@matso3856 I was there, you pestilent child! A fanboy? I have 22 years in the air force. I’m an expert, not a fanboy. I simply know what the two aircraft can do, what they’re good at and what they’re not.
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@AndersJackson Are you mentally ill? Not reserve? What war time were they active during? Sweden hasn’t been in any war since 1814!!!
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@Dave DeVille WTF are you trolling about?
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