gggggg5

Which was a barely contested treetop-skimming helicopter assault, and went extremely poorly.

You wouldn't have any luck dropping bombs like those out of helicopters.

I was rather baffled by so many sources claiming that this would be super difficult to find.

It seemed like such a simple task to drive up and down roads with some radiation detection equipment, log the data and investigate any hotspots.

Well, I guess it was? Or maybe I'm severely underestimating the complexity of this?

>As for article 5, that might explain the second gulf war and/or Afghanistan

No it wouldn't.

The Article 5 invocation resulted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Assist and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Active_Endeavour, that's all.

>Whenever Uncle Sam says “jump”, you’ll see all the small NATO states lining up to ask “How high?”.

Consider that small NATO states want to partake in this stuff because it offers their forces an opportunity to gain experience.

Interesting choice to mostly rely on SAAB marketing materials in an effort to make the case that the Gripen E is better.

>STOL capabilities https://www.saab.com/newsroom/stories/2020/august/gripen-des...

Who really cares about STOL capabilities of the Gripen? Unless you're on a small island, you can build longer runways.

>Radar, note that's I'd said it's an estimate, based on the fact that it's the first GaN radar and has a wider FOV https://www.saab.com/markets/india/gripen-for-india/technolo...

Gripen E's radar being better than that of the F-35 is certainly an unique take. The AN/APG-81 has a 71.4% bigger aperture than the ES-05. While the ES-05 does benefit from reduced power consumption due to the GaN transistors, it still has significantly lower peak output power than the AN/APG-81.

Wider FOV is nice, but the AN/APG-81 can see further. AN/APG-81 is the better radar out of the two, and also offers better EW capabilities than the ES-05.

>More mature here means has been around longer in one from or another, since the Viggen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_37_Viggen

I believe the word you're looking for is "older", even though "more mature" sounds nicer.

>Supercruise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise

The Gripen E can only supercruise according to SAABs very own original definition of "supercruise", and so far there's been no indication that it can do so while carrying weapons.

>RCS is an overall estimate, certainly not from the front as the F35 is designed as a strike fighter, but with a smaller plane, the RCS may well be similar elsewhere https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2021/01/07/gripen/

If Gripen was as stealthy as you like to suggest, SAAB would be shouting it from the rooftops. Yet, they aren't.

>Fast software updates https://www.saab.com/newsroom/stories/2021/january/gripen-so...

Meaningless marketing speak.

Anyway,

> Ownership in this case means having the ability to independently run the aircraft without reliance on other countries' benevolence.

Good luck operating Gripens without relying on the benevolence of the US, UK and Sweden.

Political reasons that may or may not make sense. Brazil would perhaps benefit in many ways by aligning themselves with the US, but for a variety of reasons they simply don't want to do that.

In the fickle Brazilian political environment, not aligning with the US might end up being a rather pragmatic move. As a politician, who knows how badly your successor will fuck up those ties?

It seems that you're missing the obvious assumption that we're talking about disputes won by the seller, i.e. friendly fraud attempts.

>Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matra_Durandal so about $30k, which is quite cheap

Uh, how do you plan to use dumb bombs like that in a conflict like Ukraine?

That would require you to be able to fly right over the enemy airfield, they'd need to have no air defenses whatsoever.

You'll damage a runway at the cost of a pilot (probably $5M+), aircraft (at least $10M), and dumb bombs ($30k each). Putting your total price paid for thousands of dollars worth of runway damage in the tens of millions.

> when a high intensity conflict with a real military power begins you can be sure most of your airports will be targets, which is exactly what happened to Ukraine, not even 2 weeks in the conflict

That kind of damage is fixed within hours at a cost of low thousands of dollars at most. Russia can do only it using incredibly expensive standoff-range missiles, spending at the very least hundreds of thousands if not millions to punch a hole on a runway that takes a few hours to repair.

> Don’t they have the capacity to produce something of their own?

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.

Why not? Could you give an example as to why this would not be legal in some country of your choice?

Perhaps charge a chargeback fee of 40 euros? It'll cover both of the chargeback fees you'll have to pay stripe.

That's not at all how payment processing works in 2023. You can absolutely "re-run" their tokenized card without storing their card info yourself-

It sounds like you can't actually find any research strongly in support of lockdowns, and that's because of funding bias?

So, we're just supposed to believe without evidence that the lockdowns were good because ... ?

I don't necessarily disagree, but I guess you could run their card again for the 20 :)

Yes. But those are the old Gripens, not at all relevant in this conversation.

So great that only Brazil was willing to buy them. And not at all because they were the best planes they could get, but because Brazil strongly prefers to not buy from the US and SAAB offered a great technology transfer deal.

>This strikes me as weird. User buys something from me, regrets it and issues a chargeback, dispute gets started and bank says I did nothing wrong, so the charge still sticks, but Stripe gets to keep the fee for handling the dispute?

You should include this in your contract terms with the customer and collect the dispute fee from them.

It's not reasonable of you to expect Stripe to just absorb this cost.

Are you kidding? How is destroying runways cheap?

> look at Ukraine

Go on, give me some actual examples. What sort of cheap missiles are used to cause more than a few thousand dollars worth of damage to runways in Ukraine?

>It's claimed to have an operational range of 3000km.

Which may be true in a land attack role, but is obviously not the case in an anti-ship role (if that capability really exists at all!).

Realistically, you'll be very happy if you hit a target 300km away with current anti-ship missiles.

I lived between Barcelona and London through the lockdowns.

As far as I can tell, current studies indicate that in all likelihood only the first lockdown in the UK may have been "worth it" (and even then, it should have happened earlier and not lasted nearly as long as it did)

You'll easily find a bunch of rather credible literature on the subject, e.g. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/d.miles/document/7583/Mile...

Or more folksy news articles like https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/14/coronavirus-co...

Are you aware of conflicting literature?

>Ukraine has repelled Russia very effectively with just manpads, ATGMs and NATO intelligence.

MANPADs are nice to have, but it's Ukraine's own Soviet air defense equipment which is keeping Russian aviation at bay.

The focus on MANPADs really makes it hard to take anything else you say seriously. It's the 100+ active S300 batteries Ukraine had that made all the difference, not MANPADs.

They're also more expensive.

Ukraine is very far from being overrun, almost entirely operates from regular airfields and not roads or other unexpected locations.

Are they operating to great effect? The HARMs are nice, but surface-launched anti-radiation missiles would be both far cheaper and more resilient than Gripens.

Presumably in a "partisan warfare" scenario, you wouldn't be worrying about stuff like Shahed drones destroying your infrastructure either.

> F35 is more expensive and complicated to operate

It does provide advantages for that money, and certainly has a brighter future than the Gripen E which nobody will buy.

> anti-ship missiles with ranges that in many cases exceed 1000km,

What now? A Kinzhal will probably fly that far, but it won't hit a moving ship at that distance.

That's cool and all, but in 2023 you aren't going to successfully operate jets in those conditions. You'll either fly right above the treetops or get shot down, well, actually the enemy jets with down-looking radar will shoot you down anyway. Even if you manage to keep flying, you won't get much value out of those jets in partisan warfare.

The idea of Sweden being overrun in 3-4 weeks is a bit absurd anyway, perhaps it's just not a reasonable assumption to start building upon.

>Edit: and you say propping up defence industry as if insinuating it's just a boondoggle. When it comes to geopolitics, it's not. It's the only way to have total control of supply chains and constant upgrade of arms.

Well, that's not what I was insinuating. But since you bring it up, the Gripen isn't exactly a great example of "total control of supply chains". That's a big part of why nobody wants to buy it, if you're going to deal with ITAR you might as well buy the F-35.

>it seems to do well in adverse conflict conditions (takeoff/landing from public roads, etc.)

This is largely an irrelevant capability, it's easy and cheap to build lots of runways.

Note that Czechia, Hungary and South Africa have much older Gripens which are not relevant to this conversation. Czechia is moving to the F-35 instead of ordering the Gripen E.

Only Sweden and Brazil ordered the new Gripens.

> can land and depart with regular roads

This is worth way less than it sounds like. Building runways is cheap.

> The Gripen is basically designed for Finland by virtue of being designed for Sweden

Sweden wanting to prop up their domestic industry does not mean that Gripen is the best fighter jet for Sweden.

Which competitors? The J-20 or SU-57? Yeah, I wonder why those wouldn't be selected.

Are you kidding with these sources? Perhaps next you will go to Greenpeace for their opinion on the F-35?

Both of these are groups which exist to oppose any kind of military spending, neither of them have any relevant expertise.

>But still, without lockdowns there was great risk as can be seen from what happened to the likes of the UK...

Uh, what exactly happened in the UK?