Czech buys JAS-39 instead of F-16

[Ooe]

Today it was announced that the Czech have made up their minds about buying airplanes. Though they received generous offers from USA about the F-16 they choosed the Swedish-British JAS-39 Gripen (Griffon).

Well, what can we say instead of: Good choice!

[trythebill]

i'm not really up to date on my euro-fighters but why is the JAS39 better than the F16?

i assume in large part this must be due to the greater avionics advancements and inherent instability in the JAS39 which allows for better maunverability.

[Jimmyjay86]

F16 seems old school and outdated.

[S4ur0n27]

Fear teh Czech!

[MurPHy]

My Great Grandfather would be proud. He is the one who brought my Czech clan to the great America back before WWI (sometime around 1900).

0 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 15:13:03 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.2 PHP/4.3.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2634 mod_ssl/2.8.16 OpenSSL/0.9.6b X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.4 Cache-Control: private, pre-check=0, post-check=0, max-age=0 Expires: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 15:13:03 GMT Last-Modified: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 15:13:03 GMT Keep-Alive: timeout=8 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html 1654

And what the hell is this? I found it in the Topic Review area. Well, it tels me that the DAC server runs Linux. Good choice of an OS!

[DJ Slamák]

F16 seems old school and outdated.

Yeah, pretty much, I guess.
To boot, the F-16s offered by the Netherlands, the US and Belgium and the FA-18s from Canada would have been used, whereas Sweden is offering brand spanking new crap for the same price.

Of course a part of the price is an unofficial promise that we'll buy fighters from Sweden when the time comes (this isn't a buy, we're just renting the fighters), but with the outright pitiful state our army's budget is in, it's mutually beneficial - the Swedes get easy $$$ (or more appropriately, €€€) and we get new toys to crash instead of used ones...

It seems the Americans kinda fucked it too, with last-minute lobbying. Seems it ticked the gov't off rather than convinced them

[RawonaM]

Of course a part of the price is an unofficial promise that we'll buy fighters from Sweden when the time comes (this isn't a buy, we're just renting the fighters), but with the outright pitiful state our army's budget is in, it's mutually beneficial - the Swedes get easy $$$ (or more appropriately, €€€) and we get new toys to crash instead of used ones...

I think they still use krona's...

[chrisbeddoes]

Basically it is not what is better by who you trust.

Because these fighters need massive maintainace if used in war time if someone stoped selling you supplies you could not use them after 48 hours.

So it comes to who you trust the most.

[Ooe]

I think they still use krona's...

Thats CROWNS for you.

[RawonaM]

Well actually they are KRUUNU's for me. But you are right that they are crowns in english. Forgive me for that, if you may

[Turan]

Interesting choice. Why not wait for the JSF to hit the market-to expensive?

[iohkus]

that looks like the mig 41.

[Menno]

Basically it is not what is better by who you trust.

Because these fighters need massive maintainace if used in war time if someone stoped selling you supplies you could not use them after 48 hours.

So it comes to who you trust the most.

I don't think that had anything to do with it in this instance, though you're right that something like what you said does play a part in it. You usually don't worry about them to stop selling supplies unless you plan on going to war with them in the near future. So I don't think trust really had nothing to do with it here.

The JAS-39 is an excellent lightweight aircraft, and compared to the F-16 is far newer (I think the first F-16 entered service in 1979). Though I hear the upgraded F-16's (Block 60?) are really good, don't know if those were offered with this contract though. The F-16 is basically the AK-47 of aircraft. I'm surprised they didn't go for the F-16 contract though, since you can get alot more F-16's (basically an entire Air Force package) than you can Gripens. The JAS-39 is perfect for their needs though, so they made a good choice.

But remember, pilots make the aircraft, not the other way around [look at the British, who are still using Harriers for both air-to-air and ground support]. So as long as the Czech's give their pilots plenty of flight time, they'll be in great shape.

[Kashluk]

Aren't the Czechs having same kind of trouble keeping their air force pilots on duty as Finns? At least here, the commercial airline companies are hiring almost directly from the air force! They get paid better and the job has nearly zero risks compared to military flights 8-o

This might become the ugly reality in your country as well, now that you've spent so much money on these new fighters. It happened here, when we got those F-18 Hornets...

[DJ Slamák]

Aren't the Czechs having same kind of trouble keeping their air force pilots on duty as Finns? At least here, the commercial airline companies are hiring almost directly from the air force! They get paid better and the job has nearly zero risks compared to military flights 8-o

I'm not sure how widespread it is, but such people exist. Add to that the L-159s, practice planes that are getting obsolete, crashing, and killing pilots. Or at least it¨s what the media capitalized on in the recent years.

Interesting choice. Why not wait for the JSF to hit the market-to expensive?

Probably. The state budget is rigged in a way that there's never enough money for anything.

I think they still use krona's...

Oops... :oops:

[Kashluk]

But you'll get to be a part of our grand grand union next spring, don't ya? REJOICE. Not sure if they'll let you join the EMU though, but it's still all rejoice.

[trythebill]

the czech president is a hardass, they need to let him in the EU just for kicks.

[Mihail]

Basically it is not what is better by who you trust.

Because these fighters need massive maintainace if used in war time if someone stoped selling you supplies you could not use them after 48 hours.

So it comes to who you trust the most.

I don't think that had anything to do with it in this instance, though you're right that something like what you said does play a part in it. You usually don't worry about them to stop selling supplies unless you plan on going to war with them in the near future. So I don't think trust really had nothing to do with it here.

The JAS-39 is an excellent lightweight aircraft, and compared to the F-16 is far newer (I think the first F-16 entered service in 1979). Though I hear the upgraded F-16's (Block 60?) are really good, don't know if those were offered with this contract though. The F-16 is basically the AK-47 of aircraft. I'm surprised they didn't go for the F-16 contract though, since you can get alot more F-16's (basically an entire Air Force package) than you can Gripens. The JAS-39 is perfect for their needs though, so they made a good choice.

But remember, pilots make the aircraft, not the other way around [look at the British, who are still using Harriers for both air-to-air and ground support]. So as long as the Czech's give their pilots plenty of flight time, they'll be in great shape.

not really the Ak of modern jets for sure is the MiG-29, considering that it's very basic but very advance meaning simple repairs, and not as dependant on computers as the F-16, also since it's only a single engine jet, flame outs can be a problem, not trying to bash the F-16 or anything mind you

[Menno]

Basically it is not what is better by who you trust.

Because these fighters need massive maintainace if used in war time if someone stoped selling you supplies you could not use them after 48 hours.

So it comes to who you trust the most.

I don't think that had anything to do with it in this instance, though you're right that something like what you said does play a part in it. You usually don't worry about them to stop selling supplies unless you plan on going to war with them in the near future. So I don't think trust really had nothing to do with it here.

The JAS-39 is an excellent lightweight aircraft, and compared to the F-16 is far newer (I think the first F-16 entered service in 1979). Though I hear the upgraded F-16's (Block 60?) are really good, don't know if those were offered with this contract though. The F-16 is basically the AK-47 of aircraft. I'm surprised they didn't go for the F-16 contract though, since you can get alot more F-16's (basically an entire Air Force package) than you can Gripens. The JAS-39 is perfect for their needs though, so they made a good choice.

But remember, pilots make the aircraft, not the other way around [look at the British, who are still using Harriers for both air-to-air and ground support]. So as long as the Czech's give their pilots plenty of flight time, they'll be in great shape.

not really the Ak of modern jets for sure is the MiG-29, considering that it's very basic but very advance meaning simple repairs, and not as dependant on computers as the F-16, also since it's only a single engine jet, flame outs can be a problem, not trying to bash the F-16 or anything mind you

You're right, my mistake. I meant to say it was basically the AK-47 of NATO.

[DJ Slamák]

the czech president is a hardass, they need to let him in the EU just for kicks.

You do mean the current one, Václav Klaus? I don't know about the "hard" part, but he sure is an ass.