M/71 Bomb effectiveness

For light/unarmored area targets the m71 work pretty well imho.

I attack columns of unarmored vehicles, multi unit sam sites etc with it.

Do you find that the blast damage is effective then? That seems to be the question.

The rb75 itself is an anti tank weapon and intended to be used as one.

In the case of the Swedish Air Force during the cold war, no. Tank busting or other tactical missions was not part of the air-to-surface doctrine, the air units didn't train for that type of mission and neither the army or the air force had units that could call in and coordinate such strikes. Risking valuable air strike assets for the gain of maybe taking out a few armored vehicles (of an opponent that counted theirs in the thousands) was simply not economical.

The AJ(S) 37 squadrons were to fly either anti-ship or interdiction missions.

I would say it's effective in game within its use case.

You don't want to attack MBTs with it but anything else works well imho.

For the rb75, I am aware that it's not to be used in a cas setup.

But given the existence of the rb75 non t I'm quite sure it's intended to be used against not only ships or static targets.

The RB75T hade a mine warhead for use against ships according to the blogger/twitter "Wiseman" who's an actual Gripen pilot so he should know.

The Warhead was developed in Sweden for that purpose.

This isn't the first time Sweden modifies weapons it buys. When it bought the Hellfire for the coastal artillery as a man portable light anti ship missile they changed the warheads on those missiles too. The system is called the RBS 17 in Sweden.

The Lansen era bombs where old 1940's designs for the most part, i think the illumination bombs where the only carryovers.

The reason I've read is that the Viggen was so expensive to develop there where never enough money to give it a well rounded armament.

For instance a heavy smart weapon was on the wishlist for it's entire career but never materialized (called TSA in swedish "Tungt Styrt Attackvapen").

But since so few Strike Viggens could be afforded this partially solved itself as the requirement to support the army in northern Sweden was stricken because of the low numbers. There where only enough Viggens to defend against a naval invasion.

As a stop gap a light attack variant of the SAAB 105 trainer called SK60B or C was procured and they inherited some of the Lansen's weapons chiefly the rockets. The Sk60 had weak engines and didn't like asymmetric loads otherwise it would definitely have gotten the RB-05 missile, and i suspect some of the Lansen's old bombs as these aircraft would operate in northern Sweden.

FYI: The A32A Lansen's 500kg m/56 bomb is a regular British 1000lb bomb btw, i haven't seen specifics on what version it was but i think it was the ww2 1000lb MC which was extremely common in ww2.