Flightglobal:

Saab has attacked the assessment process which led to Oslo eliminating its Gripen NG in favour of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ......

Author: Craig Hoyle

Date: 10 December 2008

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Most specialists here support wholehartedly the decision to go for the JSF. We simply cannot go for a fighter which actually resembles the last production line of F-16`s when a true 5th generation fighter is available. The Russians are building a 5th generation fighter, the Su PAK FA, and we simply cannot go for a fighter less capable than the fighter we may well share airspace with in the future regardless of price.

Styx

This is another example of a missunderstanding of the F-35 mission. It is not a fighter, it will not outspeed or outcurve the in-today production aircraft, it is a stelthy attach aircraft with some air to air missiles and a pretty good radar. But to 95% an attack aircraft. If you go for air to air against the best russians and need the range the F-15 is the obvious choise. If you do not need the range a Saab 39 is not a bad choise after full integration of the Meteor and Iris-T, since it will have all systems go and be ready to fly more often than any of todays fighters (maybe the Mirage 2000 can give it  a fight on that) however getting into a vertical fight with a not too heavy Su is maybe not so fun in a Saab, but the Su is a big target and a IRIS-T will nail it long before that.

I think Saab are right to  feel somewhat aggrieved at not winning the Gripen NG/F35 competition. If Styx thinks the F35 will be successful against the Sukhoi a/c then I would ask that he/she has a read of the report in

                                                 www.ausairpower.net/0830-ASPI-Rebuttal-HR.pdf      It reports on the F35 v F22 v Sukhoi Su35.

To those who think Gripen NG will be more expensive than the F35 then I would suggest a quick read of the US GAO report in:-www.gao.gov/news.items/d08388.pdf might change your minds somewhat.

 
After having a good nose around specialist (Aviation/Govt) websites over the last few days it appears that

The F35 programme has slipped to 27 months from 12

2 less test aircraft are to be built. (thats why they're doing the F35 avionics testing on the 737 CATbird.)

880 hours less testing from the original programme of 5000 hours.

LM realise the costs keep increasing and want to gets orders NOW to keep the costs down and to"justify industrial ramp-up."

LM want the manufacturing to start asap while testing continues (which it may do until 2013) by which time it is hoped that the programme "is too far down the line to cancel".

During this testing-while-manufacturing phase is ongoing, the figure of 500 (already manufactured) a/c has been mentioned.

Also mentioned- in order to get orders asap, the low (original) price will be on the contract. (This may explain why the Norwegians said the F35 is less expensive than Gripen.(The original price of the F35 was, I think, in the region of $45-50M while the cost per airframe of Gripen NG is, I believe, around the $55-60M figure).

 Allegations are that once an export customer has paid their $45-50M per F35, the costs would rise (no saying by how much) in the future. However if at that time the export government wanted to cancel, there would be huge penalties attached.

Some US forecasters say the price of the F35 could rise as high as $137M per aircraft. 

There are reports that the 'export' versions of the F35 may not be built to the same levels of 'stealth' as the US versions.

It appears that in the last few days there are reports eminating from Europe stating that not all members of the Dutch government are in love with the idea of the F35.

It would only take one export customer to bail out of the F35 programme  to cause LM some serious headaches.