Brazil has finally made its selection of the Saab Gripen for their air force:
Buying a new jet fighter can be a long-drawn-out process. Brazil, after many years of planning and procrastination, has finally signed a contract for its future combat aircraft.
Officials from the Brazilian Defense Ministry’s Aeronautics Command and the Swedish Saab Group put pen to paper recently, and the Brazilian air force is now set to receive 36 Gripen NG fighters.
The jets, worth a little over $5.4 billion, include 28 single-seat Gripen Es and eight twin-seat Gripen F aircraft. Deliveries will begin in 2019 and will be completed in 2024.
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In late 2007, the government formally relaunched the new fighter project, and at the time excepted to acquire 36 multi-role jets at a cost of $2.2 billion. By July 2008 the F-X2 project had split into two phases. In the first, Brazil would get 36 new fighters, blowing the $2.2 billion budget.
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By September 2009 it looked as if the twin-engined Rafale had cinched F-X2. Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced the Rafale’s victory even before the competition was over. Saab and Boeing were both furious, and Lula instead declared that the government would delay the F-X2 decision until after a new president took office.
In January 2011, new president Dilma Rousseff deferred the decision to 2012 owing to budgetary problems. As the defense budget began to feel the cutbacks, the pricey Rafale started to lose its edge. At this stage, the program cost ballooned to $8 billion. Rousseff launched new comparative studies and called upon Embraer for its opinion.
The two cheapest options now became the front-runners. The Super Hornet offer—for 36 fighters—was for $7.5 billion, while the Gripen offer cost $6 billion. The Rafale offer exceeded $8 billion.
There are a number of ways to cost aircraft, and it can vary by a lot.
The numbers here run to about $150 million a plane, which I believe is the total weapons system cost, while the quotes that we normally see in the press for US systems are flyaway costs, which looks to run something like 50% of total system cost, so this is actually significantly cheaper than the F-35 JSF.
Still, $150 million a pop?
That’s a big jump from the less than $5 million that the F-4 Phantom in its heyday.