Gripen International is aggressively marketing the Saab JAS39 Gripen as a potential replacement for Northrop F-5s, Lockheed Martin F-16s, and MiGs of every hue, but are also actively promoting the aircraft to nations that have signed up to the US Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme, but which are increasingly worried by the US fighter’s escalating cost, and by dissatisfaction with arrangements for industrial workshare, technology transfer and capability.
“The Joint Strike Fighter makes sense in a USAF context, as part of a two-aircraft solution with the F-22A, but I view the F-35 as a bomb truck. It’s not a multi-role aircraft, and many air forces will have only one new fighter, and that fighter will have to be multi role – like Gripen,” Gripen’s director of sales, Bob Kemp, told Flight Daily News.
The Gripen offers extremely low costs, with a cost per flying hour (audited by the Swedish government) of less than €4,000 ($4,765), and with life-cycle costs only twice that of the original purchase price, or about half that of an F-16. The aircraft is in every sense a modern fighter, with fully integrated avionics systems, a sophisticated fly-by-wire flight-control system conferring excellent agility, a long-range multi-mode radar, and data fused sensors.
Sweden is widely acknowledged to be a world leader in the use of data links, and Gripen International claims that the aircraft is 10 years ahead of its rivals when it comes to net-enabled capability. The aircraft is also remarkably stealthy, with a radar cross-section 10 times lower than that of the F-16.
Gripen International has received formal requests for information from JSF members Denmark, Norway and Turkey, all of which Kemp describes as being “serious about looking at alternatives to JSF”, and “not just issuing RFIs to apply leverage on Lockheed Martin.
“We will rock the boat, and we will do everything we can to win,” Kemp promises.
“The Joint Strike Fighter makes sense in a USAF context, as part of a two-aircraft solution with the F-22A, but I view the F-35 as a bomb truck. It’s not a multi-role aircraft, and many air forces will have only one new fighter, and that fighter will have to be multi role – like Gripen,” Gripen’s director of sales, Bob Kemp, told Flight Daily News.
The Gripen offers extremely low costs, with a cost per flying hour (audited by the Swedish government) of less than €4,000 ($4,765), and with life-cycle costs only twice that of the original purchase price, or about half that of an F-16. The aircraft is in every sense a modern fighter, with fully integrated avionics systems, a sophisticated fly-by-wire flight-control system conferring excellent agility, a long-range multi-mode radar, and data fused sensors.
Sweden is widely acknowledged to be a world leader in the use of data links, and Gripen International claims that the aircraft is 10 years ahead of its rivals when it comes to net-enabled capability. The aircraft is also remarkably stealthy, with a radar cross-section 10 times lower than that of the F-16.
Gripen International has received formal requests for information from JSF members Denmark, Norway and Turkey, all of which Kemp describes as being “serious about looking at alternatives to JSF”, and “not just issuing RFIs to apply leverage on Lockheed Martin.
“We will rock the boat, and we will do everything we can to win,” Kemp promises.
Source: Flight Daily News
