JAS 39 Gripen is growing up.... (1 Viewer)

[GTX]

So far, one F-35 downed, Gripen none....(just yanking your chain)

F-35 downed? By enemy action? Facts please.

 

[Lucky13]

An ex army colleague told me at work, something about friendly fire I think, so I know about as much as you....

 

[GTX]

An ex army colleague told me at work, something about friendly fire I think, so I know about as much as you....

Nope, no friendly fire downing of the F-35. In fact no shooting down of an F-35 at all. There was reportedly one hit over Iran but it recovered to its base. There has been a significant friendly fire incident in the current Iran war involving a Kuwaiti F/A-18 shooting down 3 USAF F-15s.

 

[Dimlee]

I'm not sure what Libreoffice lacks that the average user would need. My opinion of MSOffice is that it's a bloated piece of sh!t, but I must admit I don't use any offcice package. I'ma diehard Linux user and I use (neo)vim for almost everything, even presentations. And for converting to docx, pdf and the like, we always have pandoc.

I used to switch between MS Office and LibreOffice (OpenOffice earlier) for many years. There were only two advantages of MS Office for me: 1. a bit more "polished" interface, 2. my old habits, since I used MS Office in my corporate life. I also remember some functions, such as pivot tables, that were better implemented in Excel than in free alternatives. But it was years ago.
Once I moved completely to a freelance and own business career, I switched to Libre and didn't look back.

 

[SaparotRob]

So you don't understand that large numbers result in lower prices per unit? You haven't heard of economies of scale?

Let me try to explain how this works - and I speak to you as someone who was managing a team producing parts for platforms such as the F-35. When one quotes (and gets subsequent orders) on items it is typical to be asked for and to deliver price reductions per part as the order quantities go up. this is possible because of a number of things ranging from your input prices going down through the ability to negotiate better prices (a large order is valuable because it gives certainty) through to some fixed costs being amortised over a larger number of items through to simple efficiencies gained through doing something many times over. This is all real and should be familiar to anyone in industry.

Now turning to the case of the F-35 vs the Saab Gripen, let's look at the numbers:

• F-35: 1325+ produced to date with another 2000+ planned to be produced.
• Saab Gripen E/F (not doing earlier versions since they are out of production): ~20 delivered to date with another 85 in production/on order

The F-35 is being produced at ~150/yr. Thus just a single year's production will dwarf the total Gripen E/F demand. And if comparing yearly production numbers for both types it gets even more prominent.

As for your comment about Norway, I am not sure what you are trying to get at. Norway doesn't produce either type though it does produce parts for the F-35 so it does get an economic benefit there. Moreover, for the F-35 order (52 jets), they aren't produced in isolation for Norway. Rather the production lines are producing aircraft for all customers concurrently. Therefore it is meaningless to talk about countries individually.

BRR (before railroad) I was a production planner and scheduler.
Go Economy of Scale!

 

[SaparotRob]

So far, one F-35 downed, Gripen none....(just yanking your chain)

 

[SaparotRob]

Nope, no friendly fire downing of the F-35. In fact no shooting down of an F-35 at all. There was reportedly one hit over Iran but it recovered to its base. There has been a significant friendly fire incident in the current Iran war involving a Kuwaiti F/A-18 shooting down 3 USAF F-15s.

WTF!!!!!
Does this ruin our glorious Eagle's record?
I will rant, rave and s***post NO!
I have enough grief in my life.

 

[SaparotRob]

LibreOffice and and OpenOffice are close, but usually a generation or two behind MS Office on some key features. I think with a little funding from EU (and other) governments they could quickly catch up and surpass the competition, if you will. I used it in the past for desktop publishing and writing, but had to go back to MS. i would love to transition back to Linux 100% personally. I hate SAAS, I hate being spied on and served ads, and not being able to own what you buy, don't want to use the cloud at all and MS, Adobe etc. like most of the US big tech firms, is a great big trap in so many ways.

It's bad enough for individuals, but it's a real problem for European governments to be so dependent on this software. To have some degree of autonomy they need to develop the alternative, and I don't think it's out of reach.

I may not have understood a word of what you have said but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

 

[MiTasol]

So you don't understand that large numbers result in lower prices per unit? You haven't heard of economies of scale?

Let me try to explain how this works - and I speak to you as someone who was managing a team producing parts for platforms such as the F-35. When one quotes (and gets subsequent orders) on items it is typical to be asked for and to deliver price reductions per part as the order quantities go up. this is possible because of a number of things ranging from your input prices going down through the ability to negotiate better prices (a large order is valuable because it gives certainty) through to some fixed costs being amortised over a larger number of items through to simple efficiencies gained through doing something many times over. This is all real and should be familiar to anyone in industry.

Now turning to the case of the F-35 vs the Saab Gripen, let's look at the numbers:

• F-35: 1325+ produced to date with another 2000+ planned to be produced.
• Saab Gripen E/F (not doing earlier versions since they are out of production): ~20 delivered to date with another 85 in production/on order

The F-35 is being produced at ~150/yr. Thus just a single year's production will dwarf the total Gripen E/F demand. And if comparing yearly production numbers for both types it gets even more prominent.

As for your comment about Norway, I am not sure what you are trying to get at. Norway doesn't produce either type though it does produce parts for the F-35 so it does get an economic benefit there. Moreover, for the F-35 order (52 jets), they aren't produced in isolation for Norway. Rather the production lines are producing aircraft for all customers concurrently. Therefore it is meaningless to talk about countries individually.

Another way to look at it that some will find easier to understand is to look at two of the major costs in production. Keeping it very basic:

The first is cost is overheads - the cost of designing and prototyping the aircraft plus the cost of creating the factory plus the cost of the tooling (often far greater than the cost of the factory) plus the other fixed overheads like taxes and insurance.

• Using the Gripen as an example you need to divide that by the total number of Gripens built - some three hundred
• For the F-35 you have to divide that by some 1300 odd.

If we use a theoretical very low figure of $10,000,000 for the fixed overheads then the overhead costs of each Gripen is 10m/300 = $33,333.00 and the overheads on the F-35 are 10m/1300 or $7,692.

Second is manhours per aircraft. There are multiple threads that show that the manhours for building aircraft like the Mustang dropped dramatically during production. Again that reduces the unit cost of each aircraft.

SAAB is offering to allow countries to build the aircraft under licence like Brazil has. That complicates the calculations because now you are again starting from scratch on everything except the design costs, you are building another complete factory and a complete set of new tooling and you again have the learning curve for staff. Presumably SAABs licence fee is close to the original design costs amortised over the total hoped for production run so it will not be peanuts.

Both those cases are based on only producing one version. When SAAB moved to the latest versions (E/F) they will have needed to scrap a lot of tooling that was no longer useable due to changes in components and make a lot of new tooling. IF they costed the tooling over less than 300 aircraft they broke even or maybe even made a small "profit". If they costed the old tooling over 500 units they lost a considerable amount.

 

[Dimlee]

BRR (before railroad) I was a production planner and scheduler.
Go Economy of Scale!

Nobody cared about damned schedules before the railroad. Carts were slow, life was easy.

 

[buffnut453]

Nobody cared about damned schedules before the railroad. Carts were slow, life was easy.

To the extent that standardized time didn't exist before railways. Each region kept its own time. It was the advent of train schedules that drove the need for towns to be on the same time.

Part of me wished we could go back to that simpler period when time wasn't so important.

 

[SaparotRob]

I was not only paid to watch the clock but I was also required to look out the window.

 

[Lucky13]

View: https://youtu.be/4YDhEVxhWso?si=EbklKIQ8mY7AQnVZ

 

[buffnut453]

I was not only paid to watch the clock but I was also required to look out the window.

That's doing 2 jobs…we'll have the union reps onto you! Demarkation!!!!!

Personally, I call it multi-tasking!

 

[special ed]

I was not only paid to watch the clock but I was also required to look out the window.

The only thing better would be being paid to fly F-15s with colonel eagles on your shoulders at the O club.

 

[GTX]

View: https://youtu.be/4YDhEVxhWso?si=EbklKIQ8mY7AQnVZ

This one is accurate. I will actually be in GKNs shop in a few weeks.

 

[GTX]

I was not only paid to watch the clock but I was also required to look out the window.

Did you over perform?

 

[Lucky13]

Did you over perform?

The only time that I over perform, is on my breaks!

 

[Lucky13]

I don't know how reliable this one is....

Saab seeks partnership with Canada on next-generation fighter development

 

[Steamed_Banana]

I don't know how reliable this one is....

Saab seeks partnership with Canada on next-generation fighter development

I think this angle is a big part of why they have been emphasizing their deal with Brazil...