Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Gripen Fighter Jet - Canada's Future Fighter?" video.

Nothing beats the f-22 and t50. But the difference in performance between the 2nd 3rd tier fighter jets aren't that big... and Gripen is somewhere in between tier 2 and 3 in my opinion. But its trumphcard is that it is much cheaper and more versatile than the other planes. Not only will a country have a plane it can afford to lose, it will also be able maintain its plane in wartime as well in peacetime. Its a cheap plane to fly and maintain... while old F16 planes makes military budgets bleed, and F15 is a great plane but it got two engines that needs lots of maintance and fuel while it is not a plane that is clearly better than the JAS39 Gripen. And Finland also got F18 hornets, that got two engines that cost money, while their planes usally gets defeated in excercises by Swedish Gripen planes. Gripen is a plane you can use in harsh wartime. You only need one technician and two concripts to maintain a Swedish warplane, while a typical American fighter needs 15 mechanics. Gripen could also start from very short runways, in case of the enemy has destroyed all your airfields, so you can use ordinary highways as runways in the case of war. So Gripen has the good potential of becoming a Navy jet on aircraft carriers as well due to its great ability to start and land on short runways. Its also a plane suited for Canadas cold climate, since Swedens climate is pretty much the same. While I heard the F35 is unable to operate in sub-zero temperatures. And it needs 12 hours of maintenance and 17 mechanics required PER AIRCRAFT just to fly it for 1 hour. While Gripen is relativly cheap.
42
I rather see Canada waste money on some useless overpriced jets than taking in cultural enrichers like Europe. Maybe I should endorse the F35 project after all..
11
It was canceled because of high costs, and ironically people placed their hope in the F35 as a good budget alternative. But now things have taken more time than planned, consumed more money than planned, and worst of all so is this F35 thing crappy at everything it was supposed to do. It was intended to replace the AV8B, but F35 cannot make a vertical take off without melthing a carrier deck. And when they tried to give the F35 vertical take off capabilities to make the Navy happy they gave it small wings because that makes things easier to takeoff vertically and they placed the engine and everything inside the body... which in turn creates more drag when flying around normally. So when the Airforce wanted an air superiority fighter to replace the old F16, they got a plane with too small wings and a shitty aerodynamic design. Which is the reason why the F35 often gets beaten in air combat by planes that are many decades old. And all the intentions of making this plane close air support aircraft to replace the old A10 have been unsuccesful as well. Because when they tried to make the F35 a plane capable of fighting other aircrafts. So this plane is fast (eventhough it isn't as fast as the best fighter jets). And the problem with having a "fighter like" aircraft performing air support tasks is that they fly too fast and cannot see the targets on the ground, read the situation, and help the troops on the ground. Another problem is that this plane got a very thin skin and therefore is very vulnerable to fire from the ground. And this plane also lacks the ability to stay up in the air for hours and circling around the own troops on the ground and help them support is needed..... because it doesn't have the fuel to stay up for 4-6 hours, instead it needs to land after about an hour and a half.
8
Gree-pen (gree like in "Greed")
6
I guess Canada would get all jobs and technology when they buy Gripen (and thus strengthen its own aviation industry) just like South Africa got in their deal when they bought JAS.
5
Single engine planes are usally better. - And here is the long answer...... Single engined fighters have typically been favored due to their low procurement and operational costs, ease of maintenance and assumed better air-to-air performance. Yet there is also a belief that single-engined fighters are inherently less survivable and lower-performance than twinengined fighters. In the end, P-38 had to withdrawn from Europe in fighter role (it did continue in photo reconnaissance role) due to heavy losses. For these reasons, twin-engined configuration was typically reserved for lumbering bombers, and night fighters whose only task at the time was bomber-hunting (Me-110 and Mosquito were notably successful in such role). And also after the war have single-engined planes been the most successful Western fighters – F-86, Mirage, F-16. Twin engined fighters only became popular when multirole requirements became standard, starting with F-4. But F-4 had disastrous performance in air combat considering its cost, and its ground attack performance was not stellar either. Single engined fighters tend to be cheaper to buy and operate, easier to maintain and have lower basing requirements. Easier maintenance is primarly due to twice the number of engines means twice the work and twice the likelyhood of something going wrong. It also means that twice as many spare parts are needed, increasing aircraft’s logistical footprint. Even with a possible benefit of fewer peacetime losses. This means that they provide advantage in two most important areas: 1) pilot training and 2) allowing larger number of combat sorties for the same cost. Furthermore, does a small size tends to make single-engine planes easier to camouflage on the ground. Reasons why single engined fighters tend to have better combat effectiveness are several. Single engined fighters tend to be smaller, lighter, and better optimized aerodynamically, which automatically improves survivability in a dogfight. Having one engine means that mass is distributed closer to the centerline axis, which reduces roll inertia and improves roll onset rate. Wing loading is also typically lower for single-engined fighters. And smaller size means that they have surprise advantage, as they are harder to acquire and track either visually or with optical (visual, IR) sensors. Lower drag oftentimes (though not necessarily) means higher cruise speed despite often lower Thrust-to-weight ratio. Gripen C similarly is capable of cruising at Mach 1,1 at dry thrust and with 6 missiles despite being underpowered, and its economical cruise speed is again Mach 0,92. F-16 can achieve Mach 1,1 at dry thrust and with two missiles, most likely due to added drag of horizontal tail, while the F-15 can achieve a cruise speed of only Mach 0,71 despite far higher thrust-to-weight ratio, primarly due to the high cruise drag. Note: increased drag in twin-engined fighters is primarly a result of a number of factors. First is increased tail-boat drag due to shaping required to place two engines next to each other – there is an area between the engines which typically ends in a flat plate if engines are close together, and if not then additional fuselage required to separate engines still leads to higher drag. Secondly, a typically wider body leading to higher form and profile drag. Single engined fighters also tend to have higher fuel fraction, and thus combat persistence, than twin-engined ones. This resulted in the F-8 and the F-16 having significantly greater persistence and range than their twin-engined counterparts (F-15 and F-18 for the latter; speaking of USAFs competence, USAF did not want a single-engine fighter to have a greater range than the F-15, but focused on total fuel capacity as opposed to the fuel fraction and thrust-to-drag). With modern European fighters situation is opposite, mostly due to differing requirements France, Sweden and Eurofighter consortium had for their fighters. That being said, Gripen E is expected to have almost as high fuel fraction as, and better endurance/range than, twin-engined Rafale. And as counter-intuitive as it may sound, single-engined fighters have better combat survivability as well. Most modern Western fighters have engines so close together that any amount of damage taking out one engine is almost certain to take out another as well. Even if a twin-engined aircraft loses a single engine without another one getting taken out, it immediately looses 50% of the thrust and 81% of the performance, making it a sitting duck and easily killed by the opponent. Due to all above factors, twin-engined fighters are more likely to get hit in combat while not being any more likely to survive getting hit.Twin engined designs do not necessarily have better peacetime survivability either. F-106, despite being single-engined, had 15 losses in first 90.000 hours, compared to 17 for the F-4. Single-engined F-105 also had low peacetime loss rate. Swedish JAS-39 has a better safety record than the F-18 despite having one engine less – 13% of Canada’s CF-18s have been lost in crashes compared to 2% of Gripens; a loss rate of 0,36% per year versus 0,08% per year for Gripens. Rafale suffered 4 crashes in 64.000 hours. Gripen suffered 5 crashes total in 203.000 flight hours. None were related to either engine or aerodynamic configuration of the aircraft: 2 were due to underdeveloped FCS, 2 were due to the pilot error and 1 was due to ejection seat issue. Typhoon suffered 3 crashes total in 240.000 flight hours. One was due to double engine flameout and two due to unexplained reasons. F-22 reached 100.000 flight hours on 11.9.2011., and by that time had 4 losses. Overall, F-15 had a crash rate of 2,36 per 100.000 hours and F-16 of 4,48 per 100.000 hours. Less than quarter of the F-16 losses were due to the engine failure, with leading cause of losses being FCS issues and human mistake. On the other hand, most F-15s lost have experienced engine fires, meaning that engine-related loss rate is actually higher for the F-15 than for the F-16. F-18 crash rate is 3,6 per 100.000 hours, and Gripen’s is 2,46 per 100.000 hours, and 6,25 for Rafale. Overall, statistics show that single-role air superiority fighters tend to be safer than contemporary multirole fighters regardless of number of engines. And while very rare, it is also very possible to land a single-engine fighter with engine out. More common are crashes of twin-engine aircraft due to a single-engine flameout. In the end, theoretical superior peacetime survivability of a twin-engined aircraft is neither large or certain enough to offset lower combat survivability and performance, typically smaller fleet size, higher maintenance downtime and higher operating cost. That being said, aircraft has to be well designed aerodynamically in order to take advantage of a single-engined configuration (ref. Gripen); single engined F-35 is the worst-performing Western fighter, and one of most expensive ones, due to two factors: bad aerodynamic design and weight more typical of twin-engined fighters. It is also likely to have high crash rate – not due to its single-engine configuration, but due to its extremely complex hardware (overly complex engine and avionics) and software (24 million lines of code) design. Analysis of air operations in Vietnam and Arab-Israeli wars has revealed that 62% of losses of single-engined aircraft was caused by fuel fire, 18% was caused by the pilot being disabled, 10% by damage to control surafces, 7% by engine loss and 3% by structural damage. https://defenseissues.net/2014/08/09/single-vs-twin-engined-fighters/
5
I am not impressed by the F22 or the F35. F22 is a good plane, but overpriced and uninteresting since its not on exports. I would say therefore that Gripen is the best plane a country can buy right now. Unless they wanna buy Russian. I think the F35 is clearly inferior for 3 reasons. 1. Its a shitty compromise between many roles a plane can play, where the worst traits seems to have been picked for each role. 2. Americans arrogantly thinks that we now live in the age of missiles and therefore manouvering is useless. Just like they thought in the past when they didn't give the F-4 Phantom a cannon. Which is just a stupid belief. Furthermore doesn't stealth give any magic protection, so maybe its therefore a good idea to look for other ways to increase the surviveability of a plane. Speed and maneuverability for example. Russia also got superior missiles to the American stealth fighters so ithey would be able to kill the American planes from 400km away - while the American planes will have to get within 160km range of their enemies before they could engage them. So the Russians got a clear advantage. 3. The F35 doesn't camoflage the heat from its engine so it can easily be spotted by heat sensors a 100km away and shot down. So the F35 isnt stealthy. Is just a piece of junk. And people saying oterwise are idiots. 4. And a fourth reason would be that we shouldn't focus so much on planes. Having skilled pilots is a much more important factor in determining the outcome of air combat. And all planes are built to do dfferent thing things. Some are great fighters but bad attack aircrafts, and vice versa. Overall, do I think Pak-Fa and Gripen are the best planes in the world today.
4
Once air superiority has been won, it doesn't really matter what kind of plane that deliever the bombs. The old ancient F16 can do the job just as well as the new F35 in this regard. So for that task I would prefer a plane that can carry much bombs, that is cheap to fly, a plane that doesn't cost much to build and isn't too expensive too lose. So preferbly I would like to have a plane with A6 Intruders bombload, Gripen's low maintance cost and low production costs, and having a plane that isn't too expensive too lose - like the F35. The F16 and Gripen are much better bombtrucks in that sense. F16 is an old plane that can be afford to be lost, while Gripen is also a low cost plane. Another bonus with Gripen, is its ability to make many sorties per day. While the F35 is just a maintance hog sitting in the repairshop most during the time of the war. Actully I think that the F35 seems crappy for the bombtruck role, just as it is crappy and almost everything else - such as the close air support role due to its fuel thirsty engines, its high speed and vulnerability to fire from the ground. And as I said earlier, flying a Gripen only costs 4700 dollars per hour while a F35 costs 31.000. Letting F35 fly bombtruck missions is like hiring a Limousine to drive to the grocery store down the street to buy a package of milk. It seems quite odd to me.
4
So no F35
3
All SAAB commercials is
3
Another ignorant commentator. Here is the thing. - Gripen has better range than the F18 Hornets currently serving in the Canadian airforce. And Gripen also got better ferry range than F35, Eurofighter, Rafale and the super Hornet. So its ironic that you talk aboutt range as a weakness when it is superior to all its competitors. - Having only one engine is not a disadvatage. Gripen got much fewer crashes per 100.000 flight hours than for example the Canadian Hornet, so if you are worried about a crash in Northern Canada you should then seel your Hornet and buy Gripens instead. And neighter does two engines mean you getter better speed, since two engines takes more place than one engine, and therefore creates more drag that slows the plane down. Other benifits of just one engine is lower costs, lower fuel consumption, and lower costs for maintance. And since Gripen needs less maintance than two-engine planes it is possible for it to fly more sorties. - The payload is almost as large as it is on Gripens competitors, and Gripen can carry a large variaty of cargo suited for every kind of mission. Furthermore can Gripen fly more hours per day than any of its competitors due to its low demand for maintance... which means Gripen is able to fly more bombing missions per day than other planes.
3
The F22 was great, but it was too costly so they started to look at the F35 as a cheaper substitute. But the F35 have failed that hope in every way, and the project is constantly going more and more over budget. And seen with facts in hand, we can now be clever in hindsight and say that it have been a failed project. Many might be surprised, but I am not. Stealth is overrated, and I don't think that the time has yet come when one type of plane can fullfill all roles of all planes to a good degree. The Navy wanted a VSTOL plane so they got a plane with a relativly fat fuselage and small wings. And in order to get more stealthy the plane also had to hide all weapons inside the body of the plane - which in turn made the plane fat. That helped the plane do vertical take offs better, but on the other hand did that also make the plane shitty in air combat since it got too tiny wings to make sharp turns. And the attempts to give the plane fighter capabilities have in turn made the plane too fast to see any targets on the ground, so the plane therefore also suck att giving close air support. And its fuel hungry engine makes the plane expensive to run, and it cannot stay in the air for hours to be ready for giving the troops on the ground support whenever they need it. So it sucks at aircombat because have the highest wingload of any modern fighter jet. It suck at VSTOL since it cannot carry weapons and the engine heat could melt carrier decks. It suck at close air support because its too fast and fuel hungry. And it is a cost-ineffiecent bombtruck. And the stealth was compromised away like anything else, when it was decided that no device would be added that could hide the warm exhaust gases coming from the engine. And the plane crashes just as often, and is just as expensive and maintance demanding as most two-engined planes. Indeed, oftentimes even more. If the US military could make this stupid decision to build a plane that is "good at everything", then I question their competence. The F35 is to planes what TOGII was to tanks. Stealth is a good, but is it worth sacrificing everything else good in plane for it? I think not.
2
Gripen got less crashes per 100.000 flight hours than the two-engined F/A 18 Hornet that Canada now uses. So if safety is your greatest concern, then you should sell your CF18's and buy Gripens instead. Gripen is also much less likely to chrash than the shitty F35 built by Lockheed (the same company that built the F-104 Starfighter). So lets compare Gripen with other modern two engine planes..... Gripen’s crash rate is 2,46 planes per 100.000 hours F-18 crash rate is 3,6 per 100.000 hours Rafale got 6,25 F22 got 5.49 F117 got 4.07 F4 got 4.41 (but some data say more than 20) F14 got 5.76 And the shitty F35A got 7.34 Conclucion: Gripen is among the safest fighter jets one can fly. And your argument about planes with 2 engines being safer is just a baseless claim that doesn't hold up. And since you think a 60 year old fighter is a relevant in 2017 as an argument for not having single engine planes.... then one could just as well use the twin engine B-26 Maruder (aka "the widowmaker") as an argument why Canada should not use twin-engine planes because they are "unsafe".
2
A joke lost in translation
2
Swedish JAS-39 has a better safety record than the F-18 despite having one engine less – 13% of Canada’s CF-18s have been lost in crashes compared to 2% of Gripens; a loss rate of 0,36% per year versus 0,08% per year for Gripens. Rafale suffered 4 crashes in 64.000 hours. Gripen suffered 5 crashes total in 203.000 flight hours. None were related to either engine or aerodynamic configuration of the aircraft: 2 were due to underdeveloped FCS, 2 were due to the pilot error and 1 was due to ejection seat issue. F-18 crash rate is 3,6 per 100.000 hours, and Gripen’s is 2,46 per 100.000 hours, and 6,25 for Rafale. Overall, statistics show that single-role air superiority fighters tend to be safer than contemporary multirole fighters regardless of number of engines.
2
F35 is too fast for being a good attack aircraft. It will not be able to see the targets on the ground and less so have time to target them with a bombload. The plane cannot stay up in the air for hours and then answering a call for help from the men on the ground like the A10 can, because the F35 cannot stay up in the air for 6 hours since it run outs of all its fuel in just an hour and a half. Furthermore is the plane thinly armoured like a fighter jet, and got lots of vulnerable parts.
2
I think stealth is overrated today, and it will probably become even less important in the future when detection technologies improve. Some types of radars can see all kinds of planes and have done so since radar was invented in the 1940s so stealth is just a relative concept. Furthermore does stealth also depend much on from which angle a plane is getting ovserved from. And finally, even if a plane cannot be seen with radar, it could be detected with other types of sensors - such as heat-skeeing detectors - and the Rafale can easily see the F35 from many dozens of kilometres away since the F35 got the most powerful engine in the world and it also lacks any device that cool off the hot air from the engine so it can remain undetected, because F35 doesn't carry a such thing onboard to save weight. Good stealth might allow your plane live a little bit longer and allow you to get closer to the enemy, so you could get in range to kill him. But one should not overestimate the importance of stealth. Atleast as important is the equipment onboard, and if you can find an enemy plane far away and got good missiles to kill him before he even got a chance to spot you, then you got a huge advantage even if you fly the shittiest most unstealthy plane in the world. I also think that auto-cannons on planes are a bit outdated and that we live in a new age of missiles, but I wouldn't want a plane to be without a little cannon just in case. The Russian planes looks best on paper since they are super-manouverble and can engage targets 400km away, while F22 and F15 are less manouvarble only can attack targets 160km away. And with stealth on top of all that, I think that the Pak Fa will punch the crap out of any F35 coming its way. PAK FA is the best plane. But Gripen is the best plane one could get in relation to price. In a computer game I would only have Pak Fa's in my air force, but in the real world with money constrains I would go for the Gripen, and perhaps also get a few Su35, F22 or Eagles to get this Hi/low mix.
2
F35 cannot replace the A10 in the close air support role. And it is true that F35 can bomb targets a thousand meters up in the air, but so can the F16 do as well so there is not really much of a needed for this overpriced truck to deliever a bombload. And you seem to have missed that Gripen got a longer range than most twin engine planes - such as rafale, typhoon and F18. And sure one extra engine gives some extra power, but on the other hand does an extra engine also increase the air resistance since it makes a plane much larger. So most single-engine planes are actully faster than most compareable two-engined planes.
2
f35 isnt a stealthy plane killing things from distance, when its heat profile is the largest of any mentioned fighter jet since it got no mechanism to hide the heat from its huge engine because such things was sacrificed for the sake of weight constraints. And since F35 got the most powerful engine of any fighter jet it also generates more heat than any other, and thereby becoming an easy target. So a Rafale can easily detect F35 ten miles away and kill it.
2
JAS39 Gripen is the brother of JAS37 Viggen and J35 Draken. All of those great planes, but later ones is getting old and have gotten replaced. Viggen is still a worthy opponent of any 4th generation plane. And Draken (The Dragoon) is also still a capable aircraft despite being born in 1955 and having a 40 year old service in multiple airforces... atleast it could be used as a ground attack aircraft in a modern war. However, the world is going into new age where manuvering of an aircraft is no longer done mechanically by pilots with a joystick, but planes are instead becoming more relying on electronics, computers and sensors for the plane to fly and fighting targets. So old planes like F4, F15, F14, F16 and others are getting replaced by newer planes. Some countries goes for an expensive replacement, while other countries goes for a cheaper option. And maintance is also becoming an issue after the cold war when European defence budgets have been reduced. A f14 and a j35 Draken each consume 50 hours of maintance for every hour in flight. So it is a benifit to have a plane like JAS39 Gripen that only cost half as much to fly as a F16 (or a sixth of a F15) and only needs 7.6 hours of maintance for every hour in flight.
1
Its a VERY old plane and it is expensive and demands large amounts of maintaince and costs large amounts of money to fly. But if your country is rich and you don't mind having most of your aircrafts sitting on the ground most of the time and getting served by mechanics, then sure, F-15 is a great plane. Its powerful and sexy and it got an impressive killratio. But if you are gonna buy such an expensive plane, you might as well buy something more modern plane straight away.
1
Eurofighter is as old as Gripen, so I think I will have to disagree. Eurofighters history have been troublesome and filled with deleys and compromises. While Gripen has followed a long tradition of succesful Swedish aircraft design following succesful planes such as Draken and Viggen - planes with a single engine and excellent capabilities of taking off from short runways and highways... and its design is simple, so the maintance can be done by only 5 people (1 technician and 4 conscripts). Unfortunatly for Sweden, have the sucess on the export market not been in par with the performance of the planes, because Sweden has never been a Nato member - and Nato countries prefer to buy planes from other Nato countries. I am not an airplane expert. But I am more worried about the longterm future for the Eurofighter than Gripen when spareparts are so desperatly lacking that the RAF have to cannabalize some planes on parts so other planes can keep on flying http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2003979/RAF-strips-jets-spare-parts-Typhoons-torn-Libya-air-fleet.html And when the German Luftwaffe only can keep 8 out their 109 Eurofighters available for combat tasks! http://airheadsfly.com/2014/09/15/alarming-low-availability-german-air-forces/ Furthermore is maintance costs more than 3 times higher on the Eurofighter, and it require twice as many men for doing the maintance.
1
A Gripen could do the bombtruck job since its maintance costs are only a tenth of the costs of flying a F35. And the F15SE is atleast on paper the best the 2nd best fighter jet in the western world. And since the best jet - F22 - is not up for sale, then the choice is pretty simple for a qualityminded customer.
1
Yes B52 does have its charm and value of its own.
1
Jag ser krigsmaskiner som verktyg snarare än leksaker. Visst är det förmodligen kul att flyga fort och snurra runt och så, men prylarnas existensberättigande vilar på deras effektivitet i strid. Ofta tror jag att militärer ofta blir besatta av att endast titta på sina maskiner som leksaker istället för att nyktert och cyniskt bara se dom för hur effektiva dom egentligen är. Tiger stridsvagnen, F105 Thunderchief och alla slagskepp är väl typ-exempel på överdrivet påkostade vapensystem där effektiviteten inte är särskilt stor. Förmodligen skulle Hitler ha byggt nån enklare och billigare stridsvagn, förmodligen borde jänkarna ha förstått att det fanns bättre flygplan lämpade som taktiska bombplan än F105, och den Tyske kejsaren använde årtionden till att bygga upp en stor flotta av slagskepp till en enorm ekonomisk kostnad. Och under hela första världskriget så fick hela den där massiva flottan ligga i ankar, eftersom man inte vågade ge sig ut i ett sjöslag mot den något kraftigare Brittiska flottan. Så alla miljarder var bara bortslösade pengar, och hade man istället använt pengarna till att bygga ut armén så hade Tyskland förmodligen vunnit kriget 1914. Och slagskeppen under andra världskriget kom inte heller just att drabba samman med andra stora krigsskepp, utan de flesta blev sänkta av krigsflygplan.
1
Compare the statistics of the range with other planes or fuck off. I have no time for people who doesn't care about facts.
1
Most of the problem with the F-104 was how the Germans used it (they played around with it as a low altitude attack aircraft with a plane that was fast and easily stalled and it therefore quickly went down into the ground). Other countries (as Spain) didn't have excessive crashes with the plane because they used it on high altitudes where there was much more time for a pilot to save his plane from crashing by a stall. It was not the best plane, but its biggest problem was how it was used.
1
"I have nothing against it, except that if one engine stalls, there's no other to keep that bird flying. Up the Canadian North, that means a dead pilot if he's not found and retrieved fast. I lived in the Arctic. I know the problem: a minus 40 degrees can go down to the minus 90s if the windshield factor really interacts." - A plane could go down crashing for multiple reasons and not just the engine - the flight control system can fail, the landing gear could jam, the B26 bomber often had accidents because it came into landing at a too high speed, and the Me109 had its tight landing gear that caused many crashes, and so fourth. So it makes more sense to actully look on how many planes have been lost in total than just stirring oneself blind on the fact that a plane lacks an extra engine - like you do now. JAS39 Gripen have so far not have not had a single crash caused by its engine. And it is also overall a safe plane that is more likely to get you home alive in a trip to the north pole than a F/A 18 Hornet. And a twin-engine pilot will just be equally dead in the artic if his plane gets hit by lightning and crash, or if his plane gets destroyed in a mid-air collision or hitting the ground, or if his flight control system fail, or if the pilot makes a mistake because of spatial disorientation or if he forgets to close a hatch after his plane has undergone aerial refueling and run out of fuel and crash, or if someone shots down his plane by mistake. A fuel tank could also catch fire and bring down the plane. So as I said, much things can bring down a plane - not just a failed engine. And with that in mind I would say Gripen is one of the best planes for artic climate. Northern Sweden is a also a cold place that needs to be defended, so its an obvious must for Swedish military aircraft that it should be able to function in cold harsh climates. Northern Sweden is very cold, and this is why this country produces so many NHL-players. And Gripen also got equal or better range than F35, Eurofighter, Rafale, and Superhornet. http://gripen4canada.blogspot.se/p/how-the.html
1
An extra engine didn't prevent two-engine planes from crashing more often than Gripen in the past. So what do you suggest then smartass? Is it better to take a plane like Rafale only because it got two engines eventhough it is 3 times more likely to crash in the Artic? Do you rather fly a F/A 18 Hornet that is 50% more likely to crash in the artic than Gripen?
1
It is true that 4th generation planes are nearing their end of their age. But to me it seems like there is no good 5th generation replacement out there when the F22 is not up for exports, and the PAK FA seems as an unlikely purchase due to political reasons. The only choices left are 4th generation aircrafts and a shitty 5th generation plane - the F35 - which performs worse than all the best 4th generation aircrafts. So what would I pick? If I had rich oil nation I would buy the stealth version F15 or the the Stealthy SU35 rather than the shitty F35. And if my budget was constrained I would pick Gripen for sure. its a budget choice. But its not a bad choice in terms of quality of the plane - which oftentimes outperforms planes that costs 2-6x times as much. So why not have a huge fleet of planes like this? Quantatity is a quality in itself.
1
F18 costs 3-6 times as much money to maintain as Gripen. https://www.stratpost.com/gripen-operational-cost-lowest-of-all-western-fighters-janes/ According to Jane's
1
- It got crappier thrust to weight ratio than Rafale Gripen and Eurofighter. - Its ferry range is lower than those three earlier mentioned planes. - It also got a lower maximum speed than all those earlier mentioned planes. - Its wingloading (91.4lb/ft2) is also shittier than all those three planes. - It is also uncapable of supercruise unlike the other planes. - Its combat radius is smaller than both Gripen and Eurofighter. http://gripen4canada.blogspot.se/p/how-the.html
1
"god i hope not" Why not? "F-35 has lower flyaway costs than EF-2000 or Dassault Rafale with next gen capabilities" You are wrong. A study conducted by IHS Jane’s Aerospace and Defense Consulting, compared the operational costs of the Gripen, Lockheed Martin F-16, Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, Dassault’s Rafale, Eurofighter Typhoon and the F-35 aircraft. F35 costs 31.000 dollar per hour to fly. F18 E/F 24.400 Eurofighter 18.000 Rafale 16.500 F16 7.000 Gripen 4.700 https://www.ftm.nl/upload/content/files/IHS%20Jane%27s%20Jet%20Operating%20Costs%20White%20Paper%20FINAL%2013th%20March%202012(1).pdf F-35 will revolutionize next gen warfare when in service How?
1
Gripen and F22 is my dreamteam. But F22 isn't up for exports, so I would replace it with the F15 silent easle. And Gripen is getting old. Gripen is still the best plane though, but that is only because competition is quite crappy. -F35 is Supershit. Eurofighter is old and lacks spareparts. -Rafale is a short-range fighterbomber that sucks up maintance. -F22 needs days of maintance for a single flight, and it costly to fly, and the plane crashes often compared to planes of the last generations. -F/A18 is old and needs much maintance and isn't as good at dogfighting as Gripen. -F15 is very strong up in the air, its fast, manouverable, got good range, good ability to climb etc. It have the best killratio of any fighter plane in history (104 vs 0). But it is an old plane that is costly to fly and that needs lots of maintance. And it can only engage targets that are 160km away (compared to SU35 and PAK FA that can engage targets 400km away)
1
The F35 is a single engine plane too
1
Gripen is built by a cold ice hockey country, and that plane got bot longer range and fewer crashes per 100,000 flight hours than the FA-18. Gripen has been in service for over two decades and never had a crash caused by an engine problem. Its okay if people don't like Gripen. But this talk about 2 engines in the comment section under this video is just getting annyoing right now. Why can't people just bother to read?
1
Due to costs overruns, one could no longer say that the F35 is the cheaper plane and the F22 the better more expensive one. The F35 have been a dissapointment - both in performance and costwise. And neighter is the F35 stealthy according to many top notch aircraft experts. And good aerodynamic planes are beautiful, while this plane is ugly as fuck and suck at aerodynimics, because it is more designed at being stealthy and hiding its weaponary inside the plane... which gives the plane a pot belly and shitty aerodynamics and bad stealth. The F22 is undoubtably a great plane. Its overpriced in the minds of us living in countries with smaller defence budgets than the USA, but it is a great plane. If price was a non-issue I would pick that plane for my ideal airforce. But since we don't live in an ideal world with unlimited money and where USA have allowed export of the F22, that option goes out the window. So if importing Russian planes is not an option either, I would then buy the JAS-39. Simply because you get a hell of a lot of fighter aircraft for a small amount of money. No other plane gives as much bang for the buck. And while I am an admirer of US fighter jets (F4, P51, F14 and F16 are sexy as hell), I also have to admit that the F35 is a huge fucking failure. Its an overpriced shitty plane... F15E is much better, SU35 is much better, Typhoon is much better, MIG31, and MIG35 is better. And many of those plane are old 4th generation planes. The JAS39 is ugly and it is tiny and cheap... but it can carry all kinds of modern weaponary (unlike the F35). And with a good pilot it is a worthy opponent of any jet in service today. Overall do I think aircrafts today are quite overly expensive in relation to the benifit they do to the wareffort.... and that includes all modern planes, but JAS39 is the least shitty plane in that aspect among any other plane on the top 10 list of the best fighter planes. I can see where other people are coming from when they say they want a better plane if it means a higher price. But that F35 is just overly expensive crap that is getting outclassed by plane after plane as I already mentioned. Planes that are both older and cheaper. And despite its huge costs, this plane doesn't perform much better than the JAS39. And in many aspects its actully a little bit worse. I can actully not come up with a single good reason to have the F35 in any airforce in the world.
1
I was not the one making the claim that there was any strong correlation between the number of engines and crashes. It was you who made that claim . So the burden of proving twin engine planes is more reliable is on your shoulders, and not on mine. To me it seems there are lots of statistics that points either way. There are good twin-engine planes like F15 just as there are good single engine planes like Gripen. There are also shitty single engine planes like the F35, just as there are bad twin engine planes. Until you somehow show that twin-engine planes are objectivly better at survivabilty I will take your orginal statement as a nonsensical baseless claim. Gripen is a plane with very few crashes compared to other planes according to mainstream media. And according to the data above does most twin-engine planes crash more often - as for example CF18, F22 and Rafale. So I cannot see that twin-engine planes are better than JAS39. On the contrary do they seem worse.
1
Working with the Canadian Air Force, I get the pleasure of understanding both the pilots and maintenance crews views on this subject matter Just now you only sound like a Reza Aslan. A classic example of the "Argument from Authority" fallacy. Where is your real arguments against the points I took from the blogpost?
1
Fair enough. But I cannot see that it is good at much else too. A10 beats it in ground support. Its not as stealthy as a stealthbomber. The cannot make a vertical takeoff as well as a Harrier, but instead melts the deck of the Royal Navy's Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers if it was ever deployed on one.
1
It would be wonderful if one could have just one plane for the entire military. That would keep production costs at the minimum when everything could be standardized and massproduced cheaply. And the need for spareparts would be minimal. And mechanics doesn't have to be taught how to repair different planes etc. But the problem is that planes cannot do all jobs well at once. Some planes are good for air combat, others are good for attacking groundtargets, others are good for transport, others for recon, others for serving or aircraft carriers, others for long-range patrol missions in the North Sea, others are good at knocking out tanks and resisting ground fire. And if you try to merge all those features into one single plane, its easy to just end up with a plane that cannot fullfill any of those roles as good as other planes can. Your "jack of all trades" simply becomes good at none. And the F35 seems to have fallen victim to the wishes of becoming good at everything and save costs. But now this plane have long since gone over budget, and despite the F35 program already have consumed more money than the GDP of many rich European countries, so is this plane not at all any impressive in its performance. Actully it is quite bad in comparison with many other planes. I guess the US military became overambitious, and in hindsight most people would say that it had been better that America had gone with building many types of planes instead of replacing all F18's, A10's, F16's and AV8B's with the F35.
1
It would be wonderful if one could have just one plane for the entire military. That would keep production costs at the minimum when everything could be standardized and massproduced cheaply. And the need for spareparts would be minimal. And mechanics doesn't have to be taught how to repair different planes etc. But the problem is that planes cannot do all jobs well at once. Some planes are good for air combat, others are good for attacking groundtargets, others are good for transport, others for recon, others for serving or aircraft carriers, others for long-range patrol missions in the North Sea, others are good at knocking out tanks and resisting ground fire. And if you try to merge all those features into one single plane, its easy to just end up with a plane that cannot fullfill any of those roles as good as other planes can. Your "jack of all trades" simply becomes good at none. And the F35 seems to have fallen victim to the wishes of becoming good at everything and save costs. But now this plane have long since gone over budget, and despite the F35 program already have consumed more money than the GDP of many rich European countries, so is this plane not at all any impressive in its performance. Actully it is quite bad in comparison with many other planes. I guess the US military became overambitious, and in hindsight most people would say that it had been better that America had gone with building many types of planes instead of replacing all F18's, A10's, F16's and AV8B's with the F35.
1
"Wow I will give you the F 35's range is an issue for the Canadian Air Force it is a literally a whole generation ahead of the Griffin" F35 is shitty compared to many 4th generation fighters. Its an overpriced, overly complex piece of garbage. Su35, Mig35, Silent Eagle, Rafale, Gripen and Eurofighter are literarly a generation backwards, but yet they all outperform the F35 in most things.... in everything from maximum speed to wingload, to thrust-to-weight ratio, to combat radius, to ferry range, to hardppoints, to operating costs, to peacetime crashrates per 100.000 flight hours. Plus you would lose the ability to network and integrate with the US Air Force the F 35's greatest feature. Sweden is not located in another galaxy like you seem to think. It is a rich modern western country in Europe with a long proud history of its weapons industry, and lots of western armies have bought Swedish military equipment (including the USA) everything from warships, to planes, to rocketlaunchers, to IFVs, to bofors guns of a large variety of calibers, to RBS70 SAMs to other things. And things made are Nato standard. Believe it or not :O
1