I think the Gripens are mostly good at operating in austere conditions. Snowy roads for runways, short distances, quick turnaround with one professional crew chief and a few conscripts, low operating cost per hour, etc.
You know, the most boring but most important part of warfare: logistics.
The French have (had?) a bit of a reputation in electronic warfare. I remember reading about (3rd gen) Mirage F1s (maybe it was Mirage 5) with Barrax jamming pods absolutely beating the shit out of fresh new 4th gen F-16A in the 80s in exercises, due to their jamming pods and BVR capabilities. Dassault still claim that their Rafale’s EW system is good enough to provide some sort of stealth.
But I don’t think anything made in Europe today gets close to what the US and Israel are doing in Electronic Warfare.
The Gripens main advantage is that it’s basically impossible to ground them by blowing up some airbases.
They can land and take off again in the middle of nowhere, on some random strip of road. And the maintenance crew can move to a new spot during each sortie, so that each resupply occurs in a completely different location.
The idea is to make it really, really difficult to take out air capability without actually shooting down every single plane, while it is in flight. Something which has been happening less and less with all modern fighters.
Not that that has truly been put to the test with the Gripen.
But it’s a plane made for the defense requirements of European countries, which may need to sustain air capabilities while under active siege.
I think the Gripens are mostly good at operating in austere conditions. Snowy roads for runways, short distances, quick turnaround with one professional crew chief and a few conscripts, low operating cost per hour, etc.
You know, the most boring but most important part of warfare: logistics.
The French have (had?) a bit of a reputation in electronic warfare. I remember reading about (3rd gen) Mirage F1s (maybe it was Mirage 5) with Barrax jamming pods absolutely beating the shit out of fresh new 4th gen F-16A in the 80s in exercises, due to their jamming pods and BVR capabilities. Dassault still claim that their Rafale’s EW system is good enough to provide some sort of stealth.
But I don’t think anything made in Europe today gets close to what the US and Israel are doing in Electronic Warfare.
The Gripens main advantage is that it’s basically impossible to ground them by blowing up some airbases.
They can land and take off again in the middle of nowhere, on some random strip of road. And the maintenance crew can move to a new spot during each sortie, so that each resupply occurs in a completely different location.
The idea is to make it really, really difficult to take out air capability without actually shooting down every single plane, while it is in flight. Something which has been happening less and less with all modern fighters.
Not that that has truly been put to the test with the Gripen.
But it’s a plane made for the defense requirements of European countries, which may need to sustain air capabilities while under active siege.