JAS 39 for Rumania, foolow up Next Gen. Fighter contest

[AlexC]

EF with CAPTOR AESA for air superiority and Super Hornets for strike would be one hell of a combination

[Zayets]

Read my lips : F 1 6

Why? We don't have money. Is that simple.

[AlexC]

Soething interesting about the Gripen, I found this on another forum:

"Sweden has been participating more and more in international excersises, flying with/against U.S, Norweigan and Finnish airforces. The outcome has proven that the Gripen far exceeds the capabilites of earlier generation fighters such as the F-16A/B/C/D and F/A-18C/D. There has been WVR dogfights aswell as BVR engagements. I've had the great opportunity to meet and talk to several Gripen pilots during the summer and all of them say the same thing(although not in the excact same words). In WVR combat against F-16's the Gripen showed to have no problem in position itself on the tail of the F-16, and the F-16 could not match the superb manouverability of the Gripen, offered by its unstable delta/canard configuration. The Gripen cannot match the T/W ratio of the U.S fightes but the Gripens more modern aerodynamic design allows it to pull tighter turns witout losing momentum. In the words of one of the Gripen pilots: "If the F-16 and Gripen would both excecute a 9G turn, the F-16 would lose alot more airspeed in that turn than the Gripen". In BVR there was no contest at all.
In excersises with Finnish F/A-18's the Gripen won ALL of the WVR and BVR fights. The TIDLS proved to be a superior tool in the BVR fights. The F/A-18's were hit with multiple simulated AMRAAM shots, before they even knew that the Gripen fighters were present. The Gripen pilots said in WVR dogfights the F/A-18 became easier to take out the lower they went, and at 2000m, there was simply no contest."

And about the swedish Gripen TIDLS datalink:

"* The Flygvapnet was a pioneer in the development and deployment of datalinked combat systems, secretly fielding an initial version of a national defense datalink network with the SAAB 35 Draken fighter in the mid-1960s. They have continued to refine the network.

The Gripen is fitted with the "Tactical Information Datalink System (TIDLS)", which gives the fighter four high-bandwidth, two-way datalinks with a range of about 500 kilometers and very high resistance to jamming. The datalinks allow the Gripen to engage in combat using another aircraft's sensors or from targeting data provided by other defense systems. Data acquired from remote sources is fused and displayed on the fighter's main MFD. The link is fully operational when the aircraft is on the ground, allowing a pilot on standby to have high situational awareness of the battle environment.

One Gripen can provide radar sensing for four of its colleagues, allowing a single fighter to track a target, while the others use the data for a stealthy attack. TIDLS also permits multiple fighters to quickly and accurately lock onto a target's track through triangulation from several radars; or allows one fighter to jam a target while another tracks it; or allows multiple fighters to use different radar frequencies collaboratively to "burn through" jamming transmissions.

TIDLS also gives the Gripen transparent access to the SAAB-Ericsson 340B Erieye "mini-AWACs" aircraft, as well as the overall ground command and control system. This system provides Sweden with an impressive defensive capability at a cost that, though still high, is less than that of comparable systems elsewhere."

[tomcat1974]

can you provide the source of this info?

[AlexC]

It was from www.f-16.net forum but of course you can't trust everything you read there.

http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-1029.html

This post has been edited by AlexC on April 10, 2006 02:23 pm

[tomcat1974]

Ah yes... well then you should list also the topics that said otherways ..