SAAB Gripen and Gripen NG thread #4

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15 years 9 months

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The problem is when you put so much stuff on an airframe with half the power of an f-16, it becomes practically a flying truck, not a flying sportscar like the f-16 or typhoon. Only saab creative marketing that has hidden so much of the planes performance deficiencies, the comparative evaluations by various airforces has shown that at best it would perform no better than old f-16 or FA-18.

Again; you have to determine your requirements. Do you need a sports car or a Golf? Or do you need a SUV?

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13 years 4 months

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The problem is the gripen e/f is like a tarted-up vw golf sold for audi r8 prices...

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14 years 11 months

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Strange while Gripen pick up orders while F16V fail to get shortlisted, the E has equal wing loading better thrust to weight than Gripen C. Gripen C certainly doesn't have any issues (under statement of the year:)?) when flying against F16A..

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15 years 9 months

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The problem is the gripen e/f is like a tarted-up vw golf sold for audi r8 prices...

LOL; they have not started producing it yet... Look at how long it took Rafale and the SH to get their first export order... (and for SH it is still the only export order).

If Saab and Embraer fail to sell Gripen E within the next 5 years then it does look grim -- however if they manage to score some export orders during the next 2-4 years then the price will start to drop quite fast.

Many countries are looking at it but it's still early days. I doubt anybody would sign up until after the prototypes have been finalized and demonstrated that this is as good as Saab claims.

With Brazil/Embraer onboard I would be surprised if no country in South America will buy it... Then there is Asia of course, some African countries, and a few European countries, in particular Switzerland and Austria could be potential candidates.

Looking at how F-35 is falling in price, I doubt Finland would buy it though; but you never know, if Saab gets some big contracts before the Finns decide, Gripen price may drop sufficiently to become attractive to Finland (although F-35 price keeps dropping I still don't think they will be able to buy the number of a/c that they want if they go for the F-35.)

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15 years 5 months

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which is why i dont think it a reasonable objective compariy
How can the gripen be stealthy from UHF to MMW bands?

Can you post the source for the documents? i cant locate original pdf file

i couldnt upload, but the name is 47753666-DutchAirForceAssociation-Gripen-2009.pdf

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If it is forced to dogfight with heavy weapons load, it won't be as maneuverable as say a typhoon.

what a mind-job, come off it

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12 years 3 months

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In real life this is how professionals make the assessments of fighter a/c:

1. They come up with a list of requirements
2. They check each fighter against the list of requirements.
3. They can then determine which fighters meet the set of requirements, and which do not meet the requirements.

It does not really matter whether A is inferior or superior to B; the important thing is whether A and B can meet the requirements. If only A meet requirements then A would be recommended. If both meet requirements then one would typically look at other factors to determine which to choose, e.g. cost, political impact, etc.

Yes, and that is exactly what both the Swiss eval, and the Polish competition were, professional evaluations. The aircraft selected is not always the one that scored highest in evaluation. In one, the F-16 block 50 was chosen (it did score the highest) and won due to "offsets"- cough. And in the other (Swiss), the Gripen was chosen on the basis of costs, despite scoring the lowest.

I am aware what the process was, as I stated above, it was not intended as a knock on the Gripen. But the fact remains that there are two fighter evaluations that now a matter of record that pitted the Gripen against contemporaries (which is two more evals than we have for most). In both, the Gripen was not given the highest rating, rather, in the case of the Swiss, it was given the worst overall rating.

The point is: Some of the above claims about legacy Gripen (A-D) parity with the other offerings in Europe are overstated. As stated in the Polish eval, there is little disparity in performance between the rough contemporaries (F-16 block 50, Gripen, Mirage 2000).

Granted, if the Polish tender had taken place in 2012, as opposed to 2002, it would be reasonable that the Gripen C would score the highest. Saab has done a commendable job updating the Gripen and keeping the software/hardware relevant.

Regardless, it was time for a bit of reality to be injected into the thread after reading the unsubstantiated dross posted like:

to go with the Barn f16 with lousy rcs since it gets shot down faster ?

and
Compare performance.....you mean that gripen e with its low rcs and better radar will see the f16 long way before a f16 will see it and get meteors in its butt ? Sure. Even gripen c does that.
You mean 40-50m$ ? Well, its a completely new built fighter, so that's the price you have to pay

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18 years 9 months

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The problem is when you put so much stuff on an airframe with half the power of an f-16,

Half the power of an F-16? What are you smoking?

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15 years 9 months

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Regardless, it was time for a bit of reality to be injected into the thread after reading the unsubstantiated dross posted like:

Agreed.

Meanwhile, in Sweden:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]243990[/ATTACH]

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12 years 10 months

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Its interesting, the F-16C has an empty weight that's just 7% more than the Gripen E, but packs roughly 30% greater thrust. On the face of it, Saab's intentions vis a vis supercruise seem.. optimistic.

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15 years 9 months

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Its interesting, the F-16C has an empty weight that's just 7% more than the Gripen E, but packs roughly 30% greater thrust. On the face of it, Saab's intentions vis a vis supercruise seem.. optimistic.

I recall I once read something about the canard layout allowing the Gripen (and probably also Rafale) to "trim" the a/c (within certain limits), so that the drag would be reduced quite significantly, compared to a similarly sized a/c without canards. Anyhow my knowledge of aerodynamics is close to nil, so take this with a bucket of salt until one of the local experts has chimed in.

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8 years 4 months

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In the end, it is still a light fighter with a small engine. I see the gripen as a "gucci" light fighter that should be realistically compared to the tejas/jf-17/fa-50, not with typhoons/rafales.

That makes no sense at all. We are not anymore in the days of singular combat, so the comparison is quite ridiculous. The question is, how many hours of flight so many billion Euros, Dollars or whatever will buy over a few years? Austria bought Typhoons and could barely fly them until Russian activity convinced Vienna it had to spend or else…

I would much rather have better trained pilots in a capable light fighter in good numbers than to buy the latest toy in too small numbers and with poorly trained pilots.

Remember, pilots win battles, and logistics wins wars.

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12 years 3 months

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I recall I once read something about the canard layout allowing the Gripen (and probably also Rafale) to "trim" the a/c (within certain limits), so that the drag would be reduced quite significantly, compared to a similarly sized a/c without canards. Anyhow my knowledge of aerodynamics is close to nil, so take this with a bucket of salt until one of the local experts has chimed in.

This is true, the close coupled canard configuration has a higher critical mach and lower drag in the transonic. The high drag divergence number is probably why the Gripen is able to fly at roughly mach 1.1 without afterburners (and why the Gripen E/F can maintain "super cruise") despite modest thrust. The penalty is the delta wings higher induced drag, and higher drag at supersonic speeds (above transonic). The IAI Lavi had a similar aerodynamic layout, and despite being inferior to the F-16 in T/W, it had superior transonic performance, maneuverability in the transonic region.

As I was saying in the posts on previous page, most modern fighters don't follow the Sears-Haack, or area rule design principles as closely as early fighters did (The F-15 is a prime example- but it has massive thrust). The little Gripen and Lavi do; as one can imagine, the lesser thrust to weight when loaded and the drag of pylons and weapons would have a larger impact on them in the transonic.

If you get a chance to read the book about the IAI Lavi, it discusses the transonic performance of the close coupled canard. In the meantime here is is the DTIC research from the 1970's on close coupled canards and transonic performance:

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a085065.pdf

(P.S.- @ Obligatory, the above information is the reason that your post on the Gripen "exiting" the transonic region around Mach 1.05 was moronic. Maybe it's time to start learning what your talking about rather than posting nonsense and prevarications.)

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13 years 4 months

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Half the power of an F-16? What are you smoking?

The engine power/ engine thrust I mean

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13 years 5 months

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Its interesting, the F-16C has an empty weight that's just 7% more than the Gripen E, but packs roughly 30% greater thrust. On the face of it, Saab's intentions vis a vis supercruise seem.. optimistic.

It's the difference between a flying machine and a machine that happens to fly.

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15 years 5 months

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Its interesting, the F-16C has an empty weight that's just 7% more than the Gripen E, but packs roughly 30% greater thrust. On the face of it, Saab's intentions vis a vis supercruise seem.. optimistic.

yes, thats because speed is a function of T/D, with W only partially contribute to overall drag
we can therefore conclude gripen has by far lower drag.
the demo demonstrated M1.25 btw

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11 years 7 months

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yes, thats because speed is a function of T/D, with W only partially contribute to overall drag
we can therefore conclude gripen has by far lower drag.
the demo demonstrated M1.25 btw

Yes... clean. Even Saab's famously optimistic marketers only predict M1.1 for the Gripen NG with a minimal air to air loadout:

The engine, a General Electric F414G turbofan, is a modular, fuel-efficient low-bypass ratio, afterburning turbofan with the latest technology. With a thrust rating of more than 22,000lb (98kN), the F414G produces 20% more thrust than Gripen’s current Volvo Aero RM12 power plant, and will enable super-cruise performance of Mach 1.1 with air-to-air weapons.

http://saab.com/air/gripen-fighter-system/gripen/gripen/Proud-to-be-brazilian/the-fighter/

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15 years 8 months

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Its interesting, the F-16C has an empty weight that's just 7% more than the Gripen E, but packs roughly 30% greater thrust. On the face of it, Saab's intentions vis a vis supercruise seem.. optimistic.

USAF and reserve websites give F-16 empty weight as 8,936Kg.

http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/FactSheets/Display/tabid/224/Article/104505/f-16-fighting-falcon.aspx
http://afreserve.com/about/aircraft/f-16-fighting-falcon

If empty weight of Gripen E turns out to be 8,000Kg, F-16C will be more than 11% heavier than Gripen E. I wonder how soon the actual weight of Gripen E will be revealed. I assume a nice, round value of 8,000Kg is an approximation.

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12 years 7 months

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That AESA radar structure is heavy for Gripen NG. Plus F-16 has only 2700kg internal fuel without CFT.

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14 years 1 month

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Reality check time again..... The Gripen was INFERIOR to the F-16 block 50/52 when evaluated in Poland.
Now there have been two evaluations: The Gripen was rated inferior to the F-16 50/52 in the first, and inferior/comparable with the F-18C in the other.

The deal with Polish Block 52 was a political order.. US-Polish relations, control zone in Iraq, etc. etc.. Not that the Block 52 was a bad aircraft, but an US design had to "win".. I would take those results with a grain of salt.