Leaked Sea Gripen briefing emerges in India

India defence blog Livefist has published a briefing about the proposed naval variant of Saab's Gripen fighter. The idea of a Sea Gripen is nothing new. In late May the company announced that it would set up a design centre for the proposed aircraft in the UK.

As for the presentation itself, page five caught my eye, as it shows the world's carrier fleets. Interesting to see that Saab classifies Australia's two Canberra assault ships as carriers, though Australia has consistently said that the two flat tops will operate only helicopters. Also, were all of Japan's 32 carriers de-commissioned? Could the battle of Midway be regarded as a four-ship de-commissioning? And didn't the US have a few catastrophic de-commissionings as well? 

And while I'm a fan of naval aviation, I don't know anything about Germany's three aircraft carriers - need to hop onto Wikipedia. And what are statistics about all these old aircraft carriers doing in a presentation about 21st century carrier aviation?

Back to the aircraft itself...interesting to see an illustration of the Gripen's ability to operate from roads, requiring an effective runway of just 9x600m, and that Saab is looking at thrust vectoring, which would help with STOBAR launches.