{"id":180397,"date":"2017-04-30T20:59:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T01:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/04\/30\/the-little-fighter-that-could\/"},"modified":"2017-04-30T20:59:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T01:59:00","slug":"the-little-fighter-that-could","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/04\/30\/the-little-fighter-that-could\/","title":{"rendered":"The Little Fighter that Could"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bulgaria has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.janes.com\/article\/69855\/bulgaria-opts-for-gripen\">selected the Gripen to replace its MiG-29&#8217;s<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Bulgaria has selected the Saab Gripen as its new future fighter aircraft, the country&#8217;s interim deputy prime minister reportedly announced on 26 April.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Stefan Yanev said talks will now take place with Sweden to acquire eight aircraft to replace its Warsaw Pact-era MiG-29 &#8216;Fulcrum&#8217; fighters, the Reuters news agency reported, adding that a special commission into the procurement will be set up within a week.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">While not specified in the Reuters report, Saab had offered Bulgaria the C\/D-variant of the Gripen, and had offered to restart the production line which had recently transitioned over the E model (some Gripen C\/D work has continued as Saab prepares for an expected Slovakia contract) .<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">In apparently securing selection, the Gripen beat-off competition from the Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon, which Portugal was offering second-hand, and from the Eurofighter Typhoon, surplus models of which were being offered by Italy.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I gotta think that the lower direct operating cost, on the order of \u00bd that of the Typhoon, and about \u2153 less than the F-16, had a lot to do with this decision.<\/p>\n<p>I also think that there may have been a preference for new, rather than 2<sup>nd<\/sup> hand fighters for all the wrong reasons.(i.e. national pride).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bulgaria has selected the Gripen to replace its MiG-29&#8217;s: Bulgaria has selected the Saab Gripen as its new future fighter aircraft, the country&#8217;s interim deputy prime minister reportedly announced on 26 April. Stefan Yanev said talks will now take place with Sweden to acquire eight aircraft to replace its Warsaw Pact-era MiG-29 &#8216;Fulcrum&#8217; fighters, the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[384,381,371],"class_list":["post-180397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-aviation","tag-defense-procurement","tag-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}