{"id":184938,"date":"2011-12-04T11:10:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-04T16:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/12\/04\/gripen-scores-another-win\/"},"modified":"2011-12-04T11:10:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-04T16:10:00","slug":"gripen-scores-another-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2011\/12\/04\/gripen-scores-another-win\/","title":{"rendered":"Gripen Scores Another Win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img833.imageshack.us\/img833\/1684\/gripenthumbthumb560x373.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"250\" \/>The Swiss Military has decided to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2011\/11\/30\/switzerland-fighters-saab-idUSL5E7MU1EN20111130\">purchase the Gripen for its air force<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>Switzerland has chosen to replace its fighter jet fleet with Swedish defence and aerospace group Saab&#8217;s JAS-39 Gripen, Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources close to the government.<\/p>\n<p>Neutral Switzerland has wrangled for the past three years over whether to replace its ageing Northrop F-5E\/F Tiger fighters, purchased in 1976 and 1981, with up to 33 new aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>Saab shares were up 8.5 percent to 117.10 Swedish crowns by 1345 GMT after the newspaper report.<\/p>\n<p>The newspaper said the cost of purchasing 22 jets would be about 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.3 billion), 1 billion less than the same number of rival models would cost.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I would also add that the Gripen is about \u00bd the weight and \u00bd direct operating costs.<\/p>\n<p>When juxtaposed with the exemplary short and austere field performance, and the generally short distances involved, it&#8217;s the best choice for the Swiss.<\/p>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s the best choice except for not getting anything.  After all, who&#8217;s going to attack them, the French, the Italians, the Germans?  I don&#8217;t think so.<\/p>\n<p>Stephen Trimble <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flightglobal.com\/blogs\/the-dewline\/2011\/11\/breaking-swiss-selection-makes.html\">confirms this<\/a>.  Both SAAB and the Swiss government have confirmed the deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Swiss Military has decided to purchase the Gripen for its air force: Switzerland has chosen to replace its fighter jet fleet with Swedish defence and aerospace group Saab&#8217;s JAS-39 Gripen, Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources close to the government. Neutral Switzerland has wrangled for the past three years over whether &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1008,984],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-defense-procurement","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184938"}],"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=184938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184938\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}