Sweden SAAB Future Combat Air System (FCAS)

Are air forces ready for 9+gee fighter CCAs?

Is the autonomy programming ready for 9+gee fighter CCAs?

Because I'm not convinced the command and control is there yet.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Are air forces ready for 9+gee fighter CCAs?

Is the autonomy programming ready for 9+gee fighter CCAs?

Because I'm not convinced the command and control is there yet.
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remotely piloted seems like a more realistic initial goal as opposed to a fully autonomous CCA.
 
TomcatViP said:
I completely disagree with your analysis. Yes, the Gripen A/C hadn´t had much success where directly competing against larger airframe or Stealth aircraft. This was certainly aggravated by the long promised Gripen NG that made Saab competing with papers against hard billet of aluminum, something that larger company have failed to do before them as well.

Where Saab offered the Gripen where a larger airframe was ill-suited, and with an agile bidding process, Saab was successful. You have mentioned the numerous lend-lease agreements signed with various countries, including European or NATO members. That's really something for a non-NATO country at the time with such a small population.
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There is also the fact of American hegemony boosting F-16 and F-35 sales. With that gone there is considerably more room (especially for a non-ITAR export controlled platform). With the collapse of Franco-German cooperation on FCAS, and the Anglo-Japanese-Italian FCAS being relatively large, there may be room for a smaller optionally manned design (i.e. providing a loyal wingman to FCAS and manned control node for smaller countries which want more tech transfer or can't afford one of the larger fighters). So the opportunities might actually be greater now - it is hard to say of course. A lot is determined by how much we pull back from militarisation.
 
Having superior products that meet larger successes isn't usually called an hegemony but having reached market dominance. Fact matters in rigorous RFP.
 
Surprised at the image of the A2 demonstrator Raptor82, if they are at this stage of the build then the first test flight could well be sometime early next year if all goes well during construction.
 
It will be interesting to see when this goes into production and if by that time, the market isn't already saturated with options from the United States, Turkey, the UK, France, Germany and Korea (broadly speaking about the western oriented market here). While Saab found (admittedly extremely limited and excruciatingly slow) sales for their advanced Gripen models, based on presume lower running costs, will this sales argument even exist in the realm of unmanned systems that shape up to operate around comparable parameters? Certainly a high end, high speed drone seems the most promising, as there aren't any such systems outside of China right now. But how attractive is it to the average, arms purchase adverse, European and Euro-aligned customer? When GA, Kratos, Anduril, Northrop, Dassault or BAE can offer less capable but also cheaper drones? Not to mention that for many, buying American will be the default option "because we always bought American" some might say, and because the west at large either bought into the Anglo-(majority)American ecosystem of weapons or the French ecosystem, with Turkey and Korea now trying to built up their own ecosystem of weapons and supplies centered around their indigenous systems. Unfortunately for Saab, they and their products have always been dependent on Five Eyes equipment. And when you have to buy American missiles, bombs, engines of avionics anyway, why not just go with what the Americans will procure in the several hundreds of airframes (as opposed to being the launch customer of like a dozen Saab aircraft).

I'm intrigued, I really am, but I'm not optimistic in the long term.
 
A fighter sized, supersonic, uncrewed aircraft sounds like it's likely to be more expensive than Gripen E i.e. >$100m UPC. It's a very different point than almost all other Western CCAs. Unclear what the market is for this outside Sweden. But I can see the route if its Sweden only as an evolution from existing Gripen and there's a need to sustain Saab's design skills by doing something.
 
red admiral said:
A fighter sized, supersonic, uncrewed aircraft sounds like it's likely to be more expensive than Gripen E i.e. >$100m UPC. It's a very different point than almost all other Western CCAs.
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The engine might be the same but won't the CCA be built much simpler (i.e. both structurally and with fewer redundant systems), and with fewer sensors than a manned fighter like Gripen E?
 
H_K said:
The engine might be the same but won't the CCA be built much simpler (i.e. both structurally and with fewer redundant systems), and with fewer sensors than a manned fighter like Gripen E?
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I don't see why it would be a simpler airframe. As per Saab comments it's designed to fly in European airspace in peacetime hence needs similar airworthiness to Gripen. Definitely looks like a similar build with machines metal frames and rivets. Including an internal payload bay and LO will actually make it more complex.

Might have fewer sensors, but it needs some to be credible? Definitely already looks like wingtip EW pods, there's a forward fuselage frame for a radar etc. I'd be surprised if there wasn't an IRST.

But we don't really know yet from what has been published
 
An IRST would be a necesity for instance the Gripen never had one until the Gripen E which I think was a mistake to begin with. I would think that Sabb would have to design the new fighter with IRST from the start.
 
red admiral said:
A fighter sized, supersonic, uncrewed aircraft sounds like it's likely to be more expensive than Gripen E i.e. >$100m UPC. It's a very different point than almost all other Western CCAs. Unclear what the market is for this outside Sweden. But I can see the route if its Sweden only as an evolution from existing Gripen and there's a need to sustain Saab's design skills by doing something.
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The Gripen is already relatively cheap in terms of life-cycle costs. Using as many components as possible lowers development risk and speeds up the timeline. They're also proposing a subsonic air-to-ground oriented CCA that will likely be considerably cheaper.

I suspect that it'll be much cheaper than FCAS even if it is Gripen priced, so it'd still have export potential as the 'med' element in a high-med-low mix.
 
red admiral said:
Might have fewer sensors, but it needs some to be credible? Definitely already looks like wingtip EW pods, there's a forward fuselage frame for a radar etc. I'd be surprised if there wasn't an IRST.
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It per current comments apparently to have full arexis (in a form appropriate to stealth aircraft) and EODAS.

That's not fewer sensors, that's an all round better gripen E. At this point one can't help but wonder if it would be smarter to directly add an optional cockpit like on su-75.
FighterJock said:
An IRST would be a necesity for instance the Gripen never had one until the Gripen E which I think was a mistake to begin with.
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Vanilla gripen, unlike E, costs like a light fighter though, without long passage lines for total cost of ownership before taxes, micro transactions and subscription options.
One way of doing this is certainly keeping the fit down to whatever's necessary.
 
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Ainen said:
Vanilla gripen, unlike E, costs like a light fighter though, without long passage lines for total cost of ownership before taxes, micro transactions and subscription options.
One way of doing this is certainly keeping the fit down to whatever's necessary.
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EOTS and IRST are basically required equipment for an aircraft these days. DAS may be required as well (I'm assuming that the DAS doesn't have enough aperture diameter to act as a decent IRST).

And radars, likely.

Which is not cheap.
 
Not just that but hasn't SAAB been flying A1 and A2 demonstrators with the F414? This sounds much closer to a manned fighter than it is to increment 1 or 2 CCAs
 
Scott Kenny said:
EOTS and IRST are basically required equipment for an aircraft these days. DAS may be required as well (I'm assuming that the DAS doesn't have enough aperture diameter to act as a decent IRST).

And radars, likely.

Which is not cheap.
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Maybe, but accordingly:

-there's no basis for gripen e to cost less than next class of planes: it carries as much or more (imported) equipment than them. F-16V, for example.

-there's no basis for CCA to cost substantially less than comparably equipped manned fighters. If you have full independent mission computer with onboard processing on top of everything else(mostly imported), the plane will logically cost more or less like an F-35?
 
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red admiral said:
I don't see why it would be a simpler airframe. As per Saab comments it's designed to fly in European airspace in peacetime hence needs similar airworthiness to Gripen. Definitely looks like a similar build with machines metal frames and rivets. Including an internal payload bay and LO will actually make it more complex.

Might have fewer sensors, but it needs some to be credible? Definitely already looks like wingtip EW pods, there's a forward fuselage frame for a radar etc. I'd be surprised if there wasn't an IRST.

But we don't really know yet from what has been published
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Could probably decrease the exact numbers of apertures, but to remove stuff like the number of antenna systems would likely remove capabilities.
The airframe of Gripen E comprises of seven antenna systems, including fourty apertures around the airframe
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https://deepproductinterviews.substack.com/p/gripen-e-deep-technical-interview

The Warzone article has estimates of costs from Saab themselves:

If the ACP is to offer “high-end survival,” Nilsson explained, then a customer would likely be able to field two to three ACPs for each Gripen.
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When it comes to the ACP, Nilsson suggested that the life-cycle cost will be around a third that of the Gripen, although acquisition cost won’t be as low as that.
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It’s of course hedged a lot in what the customer actually decides to buy.

Reddington777 said:
Not just that but hasn't SAAB been flying A1 and A2 demonstrators with the F414? This sounds much closer to a manned fighter than it is to increment 1 or 2 CCAs
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2027, one to one and a half years, or in 15 months has all been reported as time for the first flight for A1, but yes, they will use F414.
 

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