JSF - Norway going the way the hen is kicking...

Later today in about 45 min. there will be a press conferance in Norway, and they will nominate the F-35 JSF as the new first line fighter, replacing the aging F-16 fleet.

The competitions for this was the Swedish build SAAB JAS 39 Grippen GN
and Eurofighter.

Eurofighter dropped out quite early in the "end race" and proclaimed that the winner was allready chosen.

The other competition - Saab's Grippen, fought until the very end.

One of the main causes for the chose of the F-35 is that the Grippen only complies with some of the threat assesments, as the F-35 complied with all 4 scenarios layd our by the goverment.


Allthough I am quite .......skeptic about this, as there has been issues with the JSF to opperate in the cold, as the Saab has 25+ years expirience with cold...Will the JSF be able to opperate in the northern Norway, where they will be stationed?

The planes are set to be sendt to Bodø, and the move will secure the work for the local population up there.

Would be fun if the plane only can fly 6 out of 12 months due to cold weathe....

Anyways:
Norwegian sources, please post English bulletins if you see any:

www.dagbladet.no...
www.vg.no...
lp.aftenposten.no...://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article2781493.ece
go.nettavisen.no...;siteId=191/www.nettavisen.no...

What are you talking about cold? All planes are built to tolerate cold since its -40 to -60 C° where they fly. I dont get the your logic, please explain what Im missing.

thx

Last year there was a issue when they tested the JSF, no details was given, but there was indication that the plane is not up to par on cold conditions.

A friend of mine in Bodø suspected it might be engine related, but as i said, thats limited info that was "leaked" to the media.

Sweden are offering 100% industry offset for the Gripen , and its 1/2 the price of the F-35 with tech transfer.


edit:


looks like they chose jsf from the video on the tv2 website

edit 2

www.reuters.com...



thats for 48 aircraft - so they say the contract is for $52 million each
edit 3


political BS going on here - that figure is not the real figure but for the aircraft as it stands from the factory - not the fly away price , SAAB were offering a total price package , whereas lockmart refused - apparantly the real figures could be as much as double (on tv2)

[edit on 20/11/08 by Harlequin]

I have allways thought that the figures comming from the US industry is somewhat...disturbing to say atleast.

JAS has prommised that work in Norway is more or less guaranteed and they have given price info that seems to be way more relayable then what we can see on the F-35.


The more and more i read about the development of the F-35, and how much money Norway has spent on development on the plane, the more and more i belive that Eurofighter had some inside info, eighter in US or in the Norwegian goverment.

Perhaps it's time to go over those that has been working on the contract, i suspect som illigal lobying been done by the US in this case.

[edit on 20-11-2008 by Phoebus]

I wonder how Norwegians feel about spending 2.5+ billion on unproven fighter planes that probably will never see action, or is no more valuable than a fleet of low cost jets.

Someone said 48 jets for 2.5 billion dollars? I would choose 300-400 proven older jets over 48 new jets that are unproven for 2.5 billion dollars.

Maybe the stealth technology is the clincher.

I think the F-35 has some problems with vertical landings or takeoffs. In that case, debris is going in the engines, and they can only do it on a special pad.

But what's true is the military-industrial complex is hard up for money, and they'll ram through any deal.

reply to post by star in a jar

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The Norwegian version of the F-35 will not be VTOL as that is on the B version and they will receive the A version which is conventional take off and landing. I wont even bother asking for source on the supposed lift fan debris issue as it is already a dead issue in regard to Norway not even getting that version.

As far as the cold issue. All planes have to be able to operate in cold environments. In fact the USAF has a special facility (I think its in FLorida of all places) that allows airframes to be cold soaked for days a brutaly cold temperatures and still operate.

Remember that at altitude they are exposed to cold all the time.

Regards to snow etc, this is also tested.

The F-22 are operation out of Alaska have no such problems.

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I am a bit dissapointed by this result however. The Grippen NG was to have been offered with an AESA and the F414 engine that is used int he F-18E. It will be an impressive single engine strike fighter.

The socialists didn't get things their way, and that's good




From a operational point of wiev i think the Norwegians picked the best aircraft.

reply to post by star in a jar

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Well the, 'proven', aircraft did not meet the requirements. Did you expect them to buy 'proven' aircraft that clearly cannot do the job? The aircraft are still in testing, and the majority of the technology is already in flying aircraft. Gripen NG is far more risky.


The aircraft were 53 million dollars each. 300 aircraft is 6.25 times 48. 53 divided by 6.25 equals 8.48. Would you mind finding a single fighter that costs 8.48 million dollars? One that cannot, do the job, I might add? Furthermore, how many new airfields, logistics, maintainence, pilots, fuel, weapons would you need for 300 aircraft? And how much would that cost? Likely at least 300 times more expensive than the JSF deal, as much of the infrastructure, pilots, weapons, already exist.



F-35 is superior to, unproven, Gripen NG, in pretty much everything, especially stealth, sensors, avionics. And was the only one that could meet requirements. And it was cheaper. It did have less industrial offsets, however.


Never heard that one before, but Norway is getting the F-35A which doesn't take of vertically.


Explain?

[edit on 20/11/2008 by C0bzz]

Source

This is interesting. I bet 15 minutes before someone shoots this article down.

And how did they manage to make that comparison then? There is nothing known about Pak Fa to allow any sort of comparison with anything.

reply to post by waynos

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That never stops militaries from hypothesizing what a near future threat will be like. Essentially the F-35 was the more capable aircraft, there should be no real surprise here. What is surprising is that it was also cheaper, or near the same price! With these two things in mind it's a no brainer, provided the F-35 will be on schedule and within stated costs. However since Norway will receive the F-35 after production has been rolling and after initial block versions have been fielded, so that should not be a problem.

Thats where my scepticism kicks in westy, what is the point in dismissing an aircrat based on a hypotheticl adversary, those assumptions may be completely wrong. For example the Gripen will be smaller and lighter, how can they be sure that these wont prove to be extremely advantageous qualities in the future?

As far as I am aware the needs of Scandinavian forces are completely different to the needs of American (and even British) forces and I just don't see how they can comprehensively say the F-35 is better for them, especially as they cannot possibly know what level of ability their F-35's will be allowed to have or how the fully developed Gripen NG will compare. The current Gripen demonstrator is just a converted standard model and no more representative than the X-35 was.

The cost issues could well be reflected in the old 'economy of scale' thing as the likely production run of the Gripen NG will be tiny by comparison, but again the F-35's cost are far from settled or under control.

I find it very odd that they can issue such a definitive statement and it all smacks of a political justification rathe than a practical one. I think that Eurofighter got it right when they withdrew themselves from the competition saying it was a farce.

It reminds me of the many reasons put forward by our own govt to justify the scrapping of TSR 2 over forty years ago, because we HAD to buy the American alternative, that were all subsequently proven to be crap. Once seen never forgotten.

Don't get me wrong, the F-35 may well prove to be better, but its their premature certainty that is ringing alarm bells with me.

Well the Norwegian air force is seriously going to regret this decision in the long run when they eventually get JSF's half a decade behind schedule and for three times the cost. IF JSF export models comes in below 150 million dollars ( total program cost) a plane it will merely be so because the US taxpayers kicked in the rest.

As for system integration the JSF is as far as i can see just about as far behind as the F-22 was and with projected program cost already 45% higher than initially proposed one can but wonder what they will cost once they reach serial production....

Stellar

This isn`t over - whilst the goverment might want the F-35 , it has to pass a vote in parliment - and the goverment is a coilition - with at least 1 of the triparty group very much against the US jet - citing the true and real costs were not given and the labour government is misleading them.

My government also have to decide between the Gripen and the JSF [although we contributed about $800 billion to the JSF project and get some "discount"] the former is still half the price, got a good radar system and important for the enviromentalists here, is more quiet =]
what is really a better choice? [although most of the cabinet have already decided: JSF it is...]

[edit on 22-11-2008 by Foppezao]

The Swedes are mad at the Norwegian government now. SAAB's shares plummeted bigtime after the announcement. They didn't just loose the Norwegian contract, but may now loose more contracts in a domino effect. They don't understand why the Norwegians had to criticise their plane in such a way. I suspect they did it in order to "cover their backs". They were afraid of any negative effects/criticism from the Norwegian people (and the opposition), from making this decision. The JSF is no doubt a better plane, but the question is if it's really a "cheaper" plane than the JAS, as they claim. The JAS would've provided jobs to Norway and Sweden, and picking the JAS would have many positive effects for both Norway and Sweden. Maybe the JAS would've been good enough for defending Norway. Seems to me that the JSF is a more offensive plane than the JAS. More suitable for attacking than defending? I'm not a pilot, and I haven't seen the details in the contracts, so maybe I'm wrong. But my impression is that they chose the JSF for other reasons than what they claim.



Here's from a swedish source (in english) :

Anger over Norway's fighter plane rejection



[edit on 2008/11/22 by Hellmutt]

Here is apparently why Norway picked the JSF. New tests gave them this result :




From this norwegian article. They were apparently very surprised about the results, and ran the tests several times...

The cost is a real interesting, if you compare this with the total project cost for Israel which works out at over $200 million per plane. Of course Israel wants theres at start of the programme.

www.dsca.osd.mil...