polish AF discussion..

Dont see much use of keep marketing the F-16, its getting long in the tooth. It only makes sense in the point of view of countering older russian aircraft under Mig-35 and Su-30MKI that are still abundant, but this could change pretty quick.

 

My country Flies F-16MLU's and now suddenly our north african neighbors are replacing their Mirage and Mig camel riders for Rafales and Su-30's. It will be a challenge to train with those in mind. :)

 

I sure hope for replacements in 15 years or something.

Lucky for you Spanish eurofighters will hold off the Su-30’s from Africa.

We in Belgium are completely protected by neighbor countries armed with Rafales, Eurofighters and a lot of other dangerous stuff thus we have nothing to fear :D .

That sounds nice in theory, but does the czech airforce even has ASMs as a landlocked country ? :D How do you get away with that from your voters :)

In my country you can easy get away with fact of colaboration with comunistic regime, so few "darts" would be no problem. Aaand we have sea for excuse:doh: :)

And what about thrust to weight ratio?

I think it is one of the most important parameters for estimating dogfight performance.

 

Grippen T/W=8500*9,81/(80,5*10^3)=9,7

F-16b52+ T/W=28,984/26,463=1,1

 

It's significant difference. I hope the data are correct...

Both aircraft in "figter configuration". Note that typical F-16's fighter configuration MAY include more external fuel tanks. It was not specified in detail.

I guess you have meant 0.7 for the Gripen. According to your numbers it would make it a ballistic missile. ;)

Other important factor is wing loading. More your wings have to carry (weight of the airplane), less power you have for maneuvering. There are more parameters, but right now I can't figure out correct terms in English. Would anybody help? :)

That sounds nice in theory, but does the czech airforce even has ASMs as a landlocked country ? How do you get away with that from your voters

No, we don't have. But if we had some spare money to buy some Anti-ship missiles, it would be a different story. My point here is that Gripen is capable of Anti-shipping mission, but not SEAD. On the other hand, Polish F-16 is a formidable SEAD platform, but it cannot carry AShMs.

Polish Viper pics:

http://www.plastikowe.pl/galerie/lotnictwo/lockheed-martin-f-16c-jastrzab

http://www.31blot.com/galeria.php?galeria=aktual/2007/01-15

http://www.31blot.com/galeria.php?galeria=aktual/2007/01-10_2

I guess you have meant 0.7 for the Gripen. According to your numbers it would make it a ballistic missile. ;)

I was only checking out if you're paying atention;)

I ment:

Gr_T/W=0,97

F-16_T/w=1,1

Well our Vipers can carry Penguin and Harpoon missiles, but we will not use them for ASW role, and there was no missiles bought for them to perform that role. Well not yet anyway, the number of roles we need them for is already pretty big, for a 48 aircrafts we will have. Polish Anti Ship doctrine will base only on ship and shore-launched RBS-15 missiles.

If there's anybody interested in seeing Czech Gripens in action, look here:

http://211.airspace.cz/fotogalerie.html

All text is in Czech but I guess the pictures speak for themselves.

Huhh, just read he whole thread, it contains many useful infos.

For Jurinko:

"I have no idea about the unit price/maintenance and operational cost for F-16/JAS though"

The Vipers cost three times more to maintain as I heared.

Bimbac! If I get it correct from your profile, you maintain Gripens. I'd like to ask you some questions; which weaponry do you have for the Gripen? I guess they're in QRA already. I hope our Gripens and yours will have an excersice together soon!

The Eurofighter: I don't think is is combat ready in Europe, and there is lack of pilots and training too. And weapons are under delivery. Our MiGs happened to engage them in BVR and WVR and as for surprise we had successes in both. In dogfight, MiGs owned. However the Typhoon has better t/w ratio. Experiment. It was Long Step '06 Italy.

The Gripen in dogfight? Well, as our pilots said, the biggest problem is that if you pick your eyes down for just a second from them, they're get cloaked and you're busted :) Really small aircrafts and hard to keep visual with it. The more is about the pilot. In any (correct) aircrat type.

About the polish Vipers: Do anyone knows the delivery date of the last one and combat readiness dates of them?

Bimbac! If I get it correct from your profile, you maintain Gripens. I'd like to ask you some questions; which weaponry do you have for the Gripen? I guess they're in QRA already. I hope our Gripens and yours will have an excersice together soon!

Finally some ally :)

I hope so too. I have actually met some Hungarian pilots who fly Gripen. Very nice guys, by the way.

Correct ;) Right now Czech Gripens in QRA are armed with Cannon and AIM-9M only, but AIM-120C-5 AMRAAM will be delivered soon. In QRA you need to visually identify the bogey, so the lack of BVR weapons is not so important.

Regards!

As promised: http://www.canit.se/~griffon/aviation/gripen/

...

:thumbup: nice link. impressive to see it is 9G capable, really it does look to be a great lightweight fighter..

i agree the gripen is a beautiful plane, especially the czech version (like in the pic i posted)..all-grey including country insignia looks great.

..im glad i started this thread! so many interesting info and links! :D

wow, looks like there will be some interesting exercises in the next few years, hopefully we will get to see how these aircraft fare against eachother in air-to-air engagements..

bimbac, have you seen the new gripens in the skies over czech republic yet? i guess they are quieter than the old mig21s, will you be missing that beautiful tumanskii thunder?!

bimbac, have you seen the new gripens in the skies over czech republic yet? i guess they are quieter than the old mig21s, will you be missing that beautiful tumanskii thunder?!

Yeah, definitely :) You know, I actually see Gripens almost every day, because it's part of my job, if you get my meaning ;) I see them even more often than my own wife :(

Its noise level is about the same but what I really like is the sound of the Gripen performing high-speed pass. On one occasion the pilot performed a low-altitude, high-speed (around M 0.95) flyover and we didn't know about it, until he was right above our heads. We almost crapped our pants :D

i agree the gripen is a beautiful plane, especially the czech version (like in the pic i posted)..all-grey including country insignia looks great.

Indeed. Pitty that we Poles haven't designed a low visibility cammo yet. It could look really nice on our vipers.

Finally some ally :)

 

I hope so too. I have actually met some Hungarian pilots who fly Gripen. Very nice guys, by the way.

 

Correct ;) Right now Czech Gripens in QRA are armed with Cannon and AIM-9M only, but AIM-120C-5 AMRAAM will be delivered soon. In QRA you need to visually identify the bogey, so the lack of BVR weapons is not so important.

 

Regards!

Yep, and I'm sure that ours won't carry 120s for QRA because of the amount of them (rumors, and pls forgive me i don't tell any about it...) but 2009 is two more years though. We'll get the AIM-9L version.

Do you remember the names of the pilots? I know some of them personally and it'd be fun to have some familiar faces :pilotfly:

Once I also seen a high speed low pass over field (and my head ~100m), but it didn't seem to be so fast (0.95 or such) just about 8-900 km/h. But the sound of the plane was "missing" 'til it got right above my head. Any ideas about that??

Do you remember the names of the pilots? I know some of them personally and it'd be fun to have some familiar faces :pilotfly:

 

Once I also seen a high speed low pass over field (and my head ~100m), but it didn't seem to be so fast (0.95 or such) just about 8-900 km/h. But the sound of the plane was "missing" 'til it got right above my head. Any ideas about that??

Of course I remember their names, but I cannot post them here for obvious reasons.

About that sound, this phenomenon occures when the airplane flies at transonic speeds. The sound waves tend to move with the same velocity, they cannot "overtake" the plane, so that's why you cannot hear it in advance, but only when it passes you. The other perfect example of this is when the aircraft descends from high altitude while accelerating. Even if the airplane doesn't fly supersonic, the actual sound arrives much later that the airplane itself.

This can be used as a tactical advantage, so if you are flying low and fast, the enemy won't notice you via sound, so you can perform a suprise attack.:thumbup:

I've witnessed myself such thing. That happened in an airshow back in april 2001 and the plane involved was the noisiest russian fighter I've ever heard- the MiG-23. The display included a series of vertical maneuvers and on the last pass I saw the pilot engaged the AB still in dive, which I think was his mistake. The MiG-23MLD accelerates very fast and is question of seconds to brake the sound barrier. He leveled off the plane and all the sound sudently disapeared. I knew what was going to happen and warned my friends to either open their mouth or cover their ears. I didn't want to miss the show and I chose option one:) It was already above our heads, the 5m long afterburner cone was clearly visible and it was still so quiet that I got worried for an instant. And at the end of this instant....BAAAAAAAAAAM!!! I felt like the earth and the sky are becoming one thing. This was the end of the display and actualy the last public display of the MiG-23 in Bulgaria, not because of this incident(half of the houses in the village near by lost their windows), they just decided to retire the 23 fleet. The pilot was grounded for a month I hard later.

But this is a once-in-a-lifetime event and will always remind me why I'm doing it not only for living.

Similar effect occurs even during subsonic TS-11 jet trainer passes. It has to fly low or descend. Then you won't hear it till it's almost above you or jump from behind of trees' line.

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grafika:TS-11.Iskra.nb.1804.6.jpg

Hey Bimbac, any chance of posting some cockpit pics?

Just do a google search there are a few highres pictures.

39C

isn't that a simulatore?

This is real JAS-39C cockpit

High res

http://img159.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cd118optimized8ft.jpg

This is real JAS-39C cockpit

 

High res

 

http://img159.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cd118optimized8ft.jpg

Thank you for your help. I cannot post any pictures here anyway. So, what do you think about the cockpit? :thumbup:

As a sweed i think it's absolutly the best i ever seen :thumbup:

Well, since I am quite familiar with it, I can tell that a few features are worth improving, but in general it's a product of ingenious mind :thumbup:

Especially the MFDs are great, but as I said there is always a place for improvement ;)

Seems like this thread has gone dead. It's a pity. :(