Norway/Netherlands fighter competition

From ARES

Netherlands, Norway Fighter Pitches Are In

Posted by Bill Sweetman at 8/27/2008 8:00 AM CDT

Both the Joint Strike Fighter and Gripen teams have released unclassified executive summaries of firm proposals to Norway and the Netherlands - which, after several years during which they looked like safe markets for JSF, are now running competitions to replace their F-16s.

The JSF document can be found here, and the Gripen equivalent here. There are some interesting comparisons between the two.

Here's JSF's range chart:

The annotation and accompanying text make clear that the mission is maritime surveillance - pretty much the easiest mission you could want in terms of range, all-subsonic at optimum altitude - and that the 728 nm radius is with external tanks. Weapons are two 1,000-pound-class GBU-12s and two AMRAAMs.

Two very interesting points: the cruise altitude is given as 5,000 to 25,000 feet and the external tanks add only 55 nm (8 per cent) to the operating radius, even though two 425 USG tanks add 30 per cent to the jet's fuel load. It surely can't be that the JSF can't cruise subsonically above 5,000 feet when loaded with external fuel - but something's strange when you burn 30 per cent of your fuel to cover 8 per cent of the range. It says that the specific range (miles per pound of fuel) is for some reason much lower at the start of the mission - which is when you would be using the extra fuel. (Graham Warwick suggests that the "5,000 foot" number may be to drop below a cloudbase for an electro-optical target ID.) And on a radar surveillance mission, wouldn't you want to cruise higher than 25,000 feet if you could?

Now, here's the equivalent from Gripen:

This claims a 700 nm radius - but look again. It includes 30 min on station, equivalent to another 100-150 nm radius. And the weapon load of six AAMs is not far off the JSF's mission load in the example above. So the pint-sized Gripen is claiming more range than the F-35A - which, by the way, tips the scales fully loaded at the same weight as an F-15C, 68,000 pounds.

However, this one is not hard to explain. Roughly speaking, Gripen's operating empty weight is half that of the F-35 and its engine is a little more than half as powerful. But with external tanks it carries about 15,600 pounds of fuel, which is almost two-thirds of the F-35A's total fuel load including drop tanks. I canna alter the laws of physics, Captain- or the Breguet range equation, come to that.

Moreover, let's look at another airplane, one not unfamiliar in Fort Worth:

The F-16 in this case is loaded with all the fuel it can possibly carry, and the radius is 100 nm short of the advertised number for the F-35A, but look at the details. It's doing a 50 nm low-altitude ingress/egress and twice the weapon load that the JSF is carrying in the example above - four AAMs and two 2,000-pound bombs. This is also an old chart - today's F-16s carry internal jammers and would not be burdened with an ALQ-184 pod.

And, by the way, at last count the external tanks for the F-35A were an option (the US plans to certify them only for the B-model). Moreover, with external tanks the F-35A marketeers can't play their stealth trump card quite as boldly because (as their brochures emphasize) external stores compromise stealth.

Range is not a trivial matter for a fighter. It determines how much tanker support you need for a given mission, how long you can stay on a close air support station, or how long you spend searching for a maritime target at a given range. It's also related to fuel burn, a large and increasing element of operating cost.

Meanwhile, Norwegian newspapers are reporting that Eurofighter is re-entering the fray in Norway, with the encouragement of the Norwegian MoD. The European consortium bailed from Norway in a huff late in 2007, but is apparently detecting a changed climate now. The report says (thanks to Johan Boeder for translation) that state secretary for defense Barth Eide asked Eurofighter to reconsider and that the consortium could out an offer together in time for the formal evaluation this fall.