> any jet fighters available to buy that Finland would be the only operator of?
The concern isn't being sole operator at time of sale, but decades down the road. The Gripen, for example, is used by Sweden, South Africa, Hungary and Czechia [1].
The concern isn't being sole operator at time of sale, but decades down the road. The Gripen, for example, is used by Sweden, South Africa, Hungary and Czechia [1].
I really wish they'd send a couple of squadrons of Gripens to Ukraine, because I think they'd be the perfect aircraft for that theatre.
Agree about Ukraine too. Sending highly sophisticated jets that will take months to learn is wasting Ukraine's time - Gripens, maybe Mirage 2000s, MiG-29s make the most sense.
Stopped being produced 15 years ago.
> MiG-29
Ukraine can't get new ones.
> Gripens
Could be an option, but available only in low numbers.
The Ukraine war will be won through stocks and new production.
Ukraine can't afford a dead-end platform. Especially because "sending highly sophisticated jets that will take months to learn".
The F-16 is probably the best option, still being made, but much more importantly, available in large numbers, thousands of them out there.
Or on the diplomatic table. While I agree it is a good thing to send Ukraine all we reasonably can, it is a nonzero probability Putin gets into hot water and ousted - bad health, pissed-off bureaucracy, domestic protests once he's forced to conscript people in central (ethnic) Russia.
Ukraine being a part of Russia is a mainstream opinion in Russia. It's a core part of Russian propaganda abroad and has been so since the 1800s (Novorossya).
I'm not saying it's impossible, but a new leader will adopt many of the nationalist tropes.
Russia completely leaving occupied territories, especially Crimea, diplomatically, will be extremely hard to do.
And Ukraine without Crimea will always be exposed. It's too easy to choke off their maritime access without it.
And European messaging is... strongly in favor of Ukraine but at reduced/no cost for Europe. So in practice European messaging is actually weak.
There are quite a few big European economies that would want to open up the Russian economy again. Conflicting interests are still fighting it out and we can't be sure which side will out. It could very well be that the winning political side in the West says a chopped up Ukraine is sufficient at the end of this war.
We'll see, it's super hard to predict.
For Russia at least, wouldn’t that be plenty enough to get by on?
Doesn't really matter when there are hundreds in stock (recently decommissioned or soon to be decommissioned) - they're faster to deliver than ones that are yet to be produced.
> Ukraine can't get new ones.
They don't need new ones, they need flying ones, yesterday. The proposed swaps with various NATO countries like Bulgaria sounded like the best option - Ukraine gets jets they can fly today, and the other country gets an upgrade for their help.
I guess, it really depends on your threat model.
If you assume that Russia is the main threat, and assume that what's going on in Ukraine is what future combat would likely look like, forward deployed SAMs are the main threat to aircraft. I have to imagine that advanced stealth capabilities would really help Sweden maintain an air capability in such an environment.
From what I understand, the Ukrainian airforce has taken a pretty severe beating (understandably). Heck - the Russian airforce has been pretty limited as well - they do run sorties, but they aren't exactly operating with impunity.
With or without pilots?
But even without pilots, and crewed by Ukrainian pilots lacking training on the system, I think the ability to lob 100 km range missiles over the horizen, has to be worth something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Operational...
That makes the Gripen a non-starter for picking a new aircraft to base your air force around in 2023. Stealth is now the single-most important factor, bar none. Non-stealthy aircraft are sitting ducks to a wide variety of threats.
> it does have over the horizon radar, can carry the Meteor air-to-air missile which has a 100km range
Yes see this is the kind of capability that allows stealthy aircraft like the F-35 to completely obliterate a Gripen at long range, with the Gripen never having a chance of even detecting the F-35. And of course the F-35 has long range air-to-air missiles for it too.
There is a probability (only indirect rumors) that F-35 can already be detected in some situations on some systems (global eye?) and there is definitely no guarantee that F-35 will keep it's stealth ability in the future.
> there is definitely no guarantee that F-35 will keep it's stealth ability in the future.
Of course as radar and computer systems improve it's likely that stealthy airplanes will become detectable from farther away, but they're not just gonna lose their stealthy characteristics entirely, in a boolean manner!
Only Sweden and Brazil ordered the new Gripens.
Not really, and even if they did, it might not be worth the effort. Instead they got a super attractive technology transfer deal from SAAB.
For example, Australia became the sole operator of the F-111 from when the USAF retired it in 1998, until the RAAF retired it in 2010. The Australian Army also found itself in the position of sole operator of the ARH variant of the Eurocopter Tiger, a situation which lead to severe sustainment issues and exorbitant per-hour flight costs (estimates of up to AU$34k), and eventually lead to the 2021 decision to replace them with Apache Guardians.