Denmark Relaunches Fighter Jet Competition | Defense News | defensenews.com
LONDON — Denmark has restarted a competition to select a fighter jet to replace the Air Force’s fleet of F-16s and has reopened the door to a bid from Eurofighter with the Typhoon.
Anybody here willing to bet if they really will abandon the JSF and go for something a little bit more affordable and sensible?
If they do it will be very hard for the Dutch DoD to convince their parliament to go ahead with their JSF plans, a new multi-party acquisition program ala F16 in the late 70'ies might once again be a very real possibility.
Personally I'm rooting for a B/NL/DK and maybe a 4th partner like CANADA joint venture and then, hopefully a split buy , Gripen NG + EF T3 or GripenNG + F18SSH ,possibly even with EODAS(like Northrop already said would be available for other platforms) + latest most powerful F414 engines
Too many advantages over the JSF to simply disregard.
-more involvement in developping high asset core systems
-cheaper purchasing costs
-2 platforms , optimal use, cheap to operate over the long run.
-lots of commonality between the possible fighters , RADAR+ weapons in case of the EF+GnG, engines+ possibly other Northrop kit that could be implemented on the Gripen, even an EJ200 (26,000Lbs thrust) equipped Gripen might be a possibility.
-2 seater available, I know some of you think that it is a thing of the past but I still believe their are many missions that benefit from the second pair of eyes ,hands and brain-halfs.
Like a clever Admiral said before, we shouldn't be too focused on stealth and maybe go for the more fiscally attainable alternative(s).
fingers crossed, but I'm realist enough to know that this is possibly a small politically correct detour to the inevitable JSF.
PS
If the JSF gets chosen by the nations involved we'll be looking at
30 for the Danish Air Force
38 for our Dutch friends (forget about the 55 figure quoted last week)
20-ish for our Belgian Air Component
if all is payed for , the pilots can be happy to clock 100 hours per year, after that , the wallet is empty.
Next step will be to just give up completely on maintaining an air Force because it will be more Farce then Force.
The guys at Lockheed have then effectively done what not even the Sovjets could for 50 years post WWII , destroying the core of the West European Air forces.