Saab sees as many as 500 Gripens being sold worldwide.
I tend to agree. I think that the Gripen is the Mirage III of this era, offering the equivalent performance of its counterparts for somewhere around half the price.
There are some tradeoffs in payload and range, though less so for the heavier variant they are now offering, but the new aircraft out there are too damn expensive.
Basically, we have an enthusiastiac endorsement of an unmanned combat air vehicle launched from carrier decks:
Imagine a Navy strike plane launching off the catapult as its carrier begins steaming out of its San Diego naval base. The jet refuels over Hawaii, then again over Guam; it gets updated targeting data from its mother ship 6,000 miles away and launches its strike on an enemy nuclear missile silo in East Asia — all in one sortie.
Sound impossible?
And, oh, it could turn around and land on another carrier in the Red Sea after taking some surveillance photos of a suspected terrorist training camp in Pakistan and beaming them down to commanders in Bagram.
That’s just the half of what a naval unmanned combat drone could potentially do, says a new report from a respected Washington, D.C.-based defense think tank. Why land on the carrier in the Red Sea? Why not tank over the Med, fly up to the Arctic and beam back radio transmissions from an ongoing Russian war game, then fly back to its mother carrier now a few hundred miles from its home port?
Given the increasing effectiveness of conventional submarines and anti-ship missiles, this is one way to ensure that a carrier is able to provide support from relative safety.
Of course, you could do the same thing if you launched that drown from an airfield in San Diego, and it could do the same thing, and not buy the carrier at all.
More chocolatey goodness in the FISA bill:
The FISA law currently being debated in the Senate redefines weapons of mass destruction in a very broad way. Jason Sigger looks at Under title VII, section 110:
`(1) any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas device that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause a mass casualty incident;
`(2) any weapon that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors;
`(3) any weapon involving a biological agent, toxin, or vector (as such terms are defined in section 178 of title 18, United States Code) that is designed, intended, or has the capability to cause death, illness, or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons; or
`(4) any weapon that is designed, intended, or has the capability to release radiation or radioactivity causing death, illness, or serious bodily injury to a significant number of persons.’
(emphasis mine)
Two things of note:
If this pans out, then the European missile consortium MDBA will have scored a major sales coup.
India is looking to upgrade its 70s vintage SAMs purchased from the USSR, and the market is in the thousands.
Well, NASA dropped ground landings from their new Orion capsule, because it was too expensive, but they felt that there was still the need for an emergency gound landing capability (Paid Subscription Required), so as opposed to an air bag collar around the base, they will place a smaller number of air bags on the “corner” of the capsule.
I think that I’ll fly Russian, thank you very much.
There is no evidence that this is happening yet, but US merchants of death are worried that it might(paid subscription required):
Access to the European defense market for U.S. companies could be one of the first areas where the GAO decision will leave its mark. One senior U.S. industry official developing business opportunities in Europe says there’s concern that European countries will react by excluding U.S. products for consideration in competitions on their home turf.
If the Northrop Grumman/EADS North America team were to be stripped of the tanker contract, it would have “unpleasant” implications for the transatlantic security relationship on a broader scale, notes Giles Merritt, director of the Security & Defense Agenda, a Brussels-based think tank. “Europe will be in a distinctly unfriendly frame of mind” when it comes to matters such as troop commitments to Afghanistan and other initiatives that would require burden-sharing, he states.
Let’s be clear. This is not yet happening. What’s going on is that Americans are afraid that the Europeans will act like them.
Aviation journalist Stephen Trimble notes that the B-52 dedicated standoff jammer has been resurrected.
This idea has risen, and been killed a number of times, the last time in 2006.
I’m wondering if this is not an attempt to pull the B-52 from the bomber force so that the path for the USAF’s next generation bomber is clearer.
Basically, this is an acknowledgment that the program as currently was ill conceived (see here and here).
They will be accellerating the small airborn and ground vehicles, and soft pedaling the armored vehicles:
The moves will shift the focus of the overall FCS effort to infantry brigades instead of armored units. The Army will also work to get large numbers of robots and miniature aerial drones — both of which are designed for use in crowded urban areas — out to forces in Iraq and Afghanistan by late 2010, instead of in 2015 or 2016 as initially planned.
This is an admission that it will be infantry, and not armored units that will be necessary in the most likely future war fighting scenarios.
The manned ground vehicles will be small and lighter, and so in a number of ways inferior to their predecessors, so this should come as no surprise.
It appears that people in the USAF who have seen the whole GAO report do not believe that it will require a complete rebid of the contract.
I’m not sure if this means that the errors are small, or if the Airbus bid was that much better, or that they need the tanker right now, or some combination of all of the above:
“Their finding is that the full document is quite different from the summary,” issued last Wednesday, said a source familiar with the issue. The source said Air Force leaders believe much of what was challenged is “procedural” and can be resolved without rebidding the deal.
We should know in the next week.
It’s derived from their CSS-5 intermediate range missile and uses technology similar to that of the Pershing II, which had a CEP in the single digit meter range.
The current version has a range around 1800 km and a nuclear warhead that weighs around 600 kg. I imagine an anti-ship (carrier killer) version would have a similar range and a similar weight warhead.
In any case if one of these hits a flight deck at mach 4 or so, the warhead is guilding the lily.
It looks like Bob Gates is not the only one who thinks that the USAF is refusing to carry its weight in a counter-insurgency campaign. The army has found it necessary to expand its own aviation services to meet its needs.
The system is called David’s Sling (paid subscription required), and it makes no sense at all.
The system’s features:
So, you’ve got a missile that weighs somewhere north of 500 pounds (bottom pic for scale), and will probably cost something well north of $¼ million a piece, and they will use it to intercept Kassams and Katyushas that cost something less than $100 and $1000 each respectively.
That’s sounds like a really good trade….not.
This is a good sign, though I believe that the electrical systems are actually not holding back the program, it’s structures and fasteners.
Still given that the 787 is replacing most of the pneumatic systems powered by bleed air with electrical ones, this successful test is good news for them.
June is looking good for Boeing.
Ayveq, the masturbating walrus dead at 14.
It appears that Neera Tanden has been hired by Obama to work on his campaign as director of domestic policy.
This is some very friendly signaling from the Obama campaign to hillary supporters:
She was a key architect of, among other things, Clinton’s health care plan, whose more aggressive push for universal coverage through mandates was probably the key domestic policy difference between the Democrats.
My guess is that all these imagines slights that we have heard about over the past are more figments of the imaginations of the Beltway Boyz than anything else.
Yep, we have Rupert Mordoch’s New York Post going front page on an article about CPS reporter Lara Logan having an affair in Baghdad.
Imagine that, a war correspondent in theater having an affair.
In any case, I agree with Will Bunch. Lara Logan is being smeared for her criticism of Iraq war coverage, which she has been highly critical of.
This started when she said on the Daily Show, that, “If I were to watch the news that you’re hearing in the United States, I’d just blow my brains out. ‘Cause it would drive me nuts.”
And it appears that it’s not enough that Mugabe and his thugs forced Tsvangirai out of the race, that they are now using violence to force people into the ballot booths:
In some other suburbs of Harare, the capital, residents said they had been rounded up Thursday night, forced to chant pro-Mugabe slogans until daybreak and then force-marched to the polls. They were told to copy the serial numbers off their ballots so it could be confirmed later that they had voted for their 84-year-old president.
(emphasis mine)
The interesting thing is that I think that I’m more disgusted with South African President Thabo Mbeki than I am with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.
As near as I can figure out, Mbeki is Mugabe’s butt boy because he is afraid that what is happening in Zimbabwe, where the trade union movement became the basis for a popular political movement, will happen in South Africa, where the trade unions have become increasingly hostile to the ANC and its IMF driven cheap labor policies.
Consumer spending jumped 0.8% in May, largely driven by the income tax rebates, though one wonders how much of that spending went into people’s gas tanks.
What’s more, given that oil hitting a new record, even if retail gasoline is edging a bit lower, it’s highly unlikely that the giant sucking sound coming from our cars will change.
What’s more, this is continuing to drive the dollar lower.
At the core of the American economy, we have been living beyond our means for many years, and there will be some painful adjustments.
Despite the best efforts of Dick Cheney and John Bolton, who have always wanted war with North Korea, it looks like an agreement has been forged, as the DPRK has demolished the cooling tower at their Yongbyon reactor.
The things that they are asking for, formal recognition, trade, and some aid are much cheaper than war.