5 ms·

Interesting to contrast with Sweden, a country of 10m people, having a domestic fighter program to this day. Though at least the current Swedish fighter, the J

by jabl 6y ago

Interesting to contrast with Sweden, a country of 10m people, having a domestic fighter program to this day. Though at least the current Swedish fighter, the JAS-39 Gripen, uses a lot of 3rd party components like the engine and most of the armaments. Still, an impressive achievement from such a small country. Will be interesting to see whether they will create a follow-up to the Gripen, or will instead opt to participate in some next-generation common European thing. Also similar to the Avro Arrow story is the British TSR2.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
No disrespect to Sweden or the Gripen but the UK makes 30% of its parts(mostly electronic warfare) which is a leverage it used to ban its sale to Argentina.[1] If a foreign country owns such a major part of your domestic fighter then your fighter is on a very short leash. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen
- detritus 6y ago
  Huh, I had no idea, thanks. I guess that goes some way to explaining the announcement last year that Sweden might join UK/Italy to develop a 'sixth Generation' fighter, the so-called 'Tempest'. Not knowing any better, I simply assumed it was Brexit-related and we in the UK expected to burn bridges with our French and German industrial partners.
  - jabl 6y ago
    I think the reason is they're realizing that developing a high end next generation jet fighter is incredibly expensive, and is only getting more so. So partnering with allies (even if not formally in the sense that Sweden is not part of NATO) makes all the sense in the world. As to why there are two next generation European fighters planned (the Tempest you mention, and then there's another French/German/Spanish(?) effort), no idea. It doesn't make sense.
    - rjsw 6y ago
      > As to why there are two next generation European fighters planned (the Tempest you mention, and then there's another French/German/Spanish(?) effort), no idea. It doesn't make sense. It makes total sense. Dassault doesn't play well with the other children and Germany won't pay for aircraft that it ordered (Typhoon and Atlas).
    - mandevil 6y ago
      The UK hasn't gone it alone in a air-to-air focused fighter since before the Arrow was cancelled (The English Electric Lightening, I think). Every more recent fighter that was primarily about air-to-air has been multinational.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > No disrespect to Sweden or the Gripen but the UK makes 30% of its parts(mostly electronic warfare) which is a leverage it used to ban its sale to Argentina.[1] > American microchips, Union microchips, all made in Taiwan It is kind of ridiculous how big of it the part of defence electronics using off the shelf civilian parts these days. Even Russia who spends god knows how much money to keep its 10μm fab running just to make military electronics, is only said to make them for their strategic level ICBMs to assure absolute secrecy, and nothing else.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    They have other options soon. See [1] https://minimalfab.eu/ https://minimalfab.eu/ and notice the address. Progress! [2] https://minimalfab.eu/news/jaxa-aist-paving-pathway-minimal-fab-produced-ics-space-industry https://minimalfab.eu/news/jaxa-aist-paving-pathway-minimal-... [3] https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2019/05/20190510a.html https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2019/05/20190510a.html especially Figure 3
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      > Using a practical SOI-CMOS which was developed by National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in 2018, JAXA has designed an IC which contains around 1000 transistors (4bit shift resistor and an I/O circuit) and manufactured a prototype chip (Figure 1) whose operations has been demonstrated successfully (Figure 2). That seems a little…unimpressive?
      - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
        Maybe it's only intended as proof of concept for rad-hard ability? I see it in the context of first mention of this minimal.fab thing from a few years ago. Maybe they are not showing all they can, or have? Of course a full CPU would be more impressive! What it does prove is that this system is progressing towards finer structures, as can be seen in Figure 3 when you zoom in. edit: sorry, first mention on HN (that i can find) was 10 months ago. First blips in the media were a few years ago (which i only learned of because said mention on HN), but not much of them. edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14623812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14623812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657753
- jacobush 6y ago
  The leash is more economic than defence - the main impetus of Gripen is to defend Sweden and for that it should serve well enough. Of course, it would be nice to spread the cost around by selling to other markets, but it's a trade off. Developing all the tech in-house would enable that but procuring a domestic engine was deemed too expensive.
sbierwagen 6y ago
Small nations can occasionally do surprising things when they feel like it. Israel successfully developed nuclear weapons when they only had two million people in the country.
- sk0g 6y ago
  I don't think most small countries are as pressured towards an arms race, compared to Israel! Doesn't detract from their achievement, of course.
- sien 6y ago
  Israel's development of nuclear weapons owed a lot to France, Germany and the US. From here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-arsenal https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-... "In Dimona, French engineers poured in to help build Israel a nuclear reactor and a far more secret reprocessing plant capable of separating plutonium from spent reactor fuel. This was the real giveaway that Israel's nuclear programme was aimed at producing weapons. By the end of the 50s, there were 2,500 French citizens living in Dimona, transforming it from a village to a cosmopolitan town, complete with French lycées and streets full of Renaults, and yet the whole endeavour was conducted under a thick veil of secrecy. The American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in his book The Samson Option: "French workers at Dimona were forbidden to write directly to relatives and friends in France and elsewhere, but sent mail to a phony post-office box in Latin America." Seymour Hersh's book 'The Sampson Option' goes into more detail.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tibbydudeza 6y ago
  South Africa was in the same boat in needing a weapon of absolute last resort ... instead of Arab armies we had to contend with soviet supplied cuban troops on our border. We had 4 devices by then and developed with help of Israel an intermediate range ballistic missile based on their Jericho-2. Fortunately sanity prevailed in the end and the bombs and missile program got scrapped when a political settlement was achieved.
TMWNN 6y ago
> Interesting to contrast with Sweden, a country of 10m people, having a domestic fighter program to this day. That's mostly driven off Sweden's postwar neutrality. Were Sweden a NATO member it's hard to imagine the country deciding to pay the almost prohibitively expensive cost of maintaining an indigenous aircraft industry, instead of buying from a larger ally. The Netherlands and Italy are among those NATO members that once produced their own fighter aircraft but no longer do so, instead joining multinational alliances or buying from elsewhere.
tpmx 6y ago
On that topic (compared the Avro Arrow with the SAAB Draken, developed at the same time): http://bestfighter4canada.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-tale-of-two-fighters.html http://bestfighter4canada.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-tale-of-two... > Still, the biggest difference between the Arrow and the Draken were basic design philosophies. The Arrow was intended to "best in the world"... While the Draken was simply intended to be the "best for Sweden". > Sometimes "good enough" is more than enough, and "the best" is too damn much.
- piva00 6y ago
  That also ties to the overall Swedish culture of lagom [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom
greedo 6y ago
The issue with expecting small countries to field indigenous aircraft is that jet engines are hard. The Gripen relies upon the GE F404 engine, and this gives the US leverage in preventing exports. China has been trying for decades to build its own high performance jet engines, and hasn't succeeded. They still rely heavily upon Russian engine designs.
- jabl 6y ago
  If China really wants to, I think it's just a matter of time. Their (PPP-adjusted) GDP is 6.5 times larger than Russia, so they can afford to spend a lot of resources on it if they wish.
  - jacobush 6y ago
    Damn, I didn't know Russia was even that big.
  - greedo 6y ago
    It's not a matter of time, since Western (and Russian) engine manufacturers aren't standing still. The WS-15 has been in development for over 25 years, and still isn't ready for primetime in the J-20.
    - coopsmgoops 6y ago
      Sounds like it's a matter of a lot of time
jacobush 6y ago
No need to wonder, the new Gripen is already here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjTT6PSK2Yc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjTT6PSK2Yc
RachelF 6y ago
Yeah, the USA shot down a lot of competing aircraft projects in the 1960's. This a good summary of the TSR2 https://youtu.be/PhXcd-881xA https://youtu.be/PhXcd-881xA The F-104 is also a similar story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals

by jabl 6y ago

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

No disrespect to Sweden or the Gripen but the UK makes 30% of its parts(mostly electronic warfare) which is a leverage it used to ban its sale to Argentina.[1] If a foreign country owns such a major part of your domestic fighter then your fighter is on a very short leash. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen

detritus 6y ago
Huh, I had no idea, thanks. I guess that goes some way to explaining the announcement last year that Sweden might join UK/Italy to develop a 'sixth Generation' fighter, the so-called 'Tempest'. Not knowing any better, I simply assumed it was Brexit-related and we in the UK expected to burn bridges with our French and German industrial partners.
- jabl 6y ago
  I think the reason is they're realizing that developing a high end next generation jet fighter is incredibly expensive, and is only getting more so. So partnering with allies (even if not formally in the sense that Sweden is not part of NATO) makes all the sense in the world. As to why there are two next generation European fighters planned (the Tempest you mention, and then there's another French/German/Spanish(?) effort), no idea. It doesn't make sense.
  - rjsw 6y ago
    > As to why there are two next generation European fighters planned (the Tempest you mention, and then there's another French/German/Spanish(?) effort), no idea. It doesn't make sense. It makes total sense. Dassault doesn't play well with the other children and Germany won't pay for aircraft that it ordered (Typhoon and Atlas).
  - mandevil 6y ago
    The UK hasn't gone it alone in a air-to-air focused fighter since before the Arrow was cancelled (The English Electric Lightening, I think). Every more recent fighter that was primarily about air-to-air has been multinational.
baybal2 6y ago
> No disrespect to Sweden or the Gripen but the UK makes 30% of its parts(mostly electronic warfare) which is a leverage it used to ban its sale to Argentina.[1] > American microchips, Union microchips, all made in Taiwan It is kind of ridiculous how big of it the part of defence electronics using off the shelf civilian parts these days. Even Russia who spends god knows how much money to keep its 10μm fab running just to make military electronics, is only said to make them for their strategic level ICBMs to assure absolute secrecy, and nothing else.
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  They have other options soon. See [1] https://minimalfab.eu/ https://minimalfab.eu/ and notice the address. Progress! [2] https://minimalfab.eu/news/jaxa-aist-paving-pathway-minimal-fab-produced-ics-space-industry https://minimalfab.eu/news/jaxa-aist-paving-pathway-minimal-... [3] https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2019/05/20190510a.html https://global.jaxa.jp/press/2019/05/20190510a.html especially Figure 3
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    > Using a practical SOI-CMOS which was developed by National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in 2018, JAXA has designed an IC which contains around 1000 transistors (4bit shift resistor and an I/O circuit) and manufactured a prototype chip (Figure 1) whose operations has been demonstrated successfully (Figure 2). That seems a little…unimpressive?
    - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
      Maybe it's only intended as proof of concept for rad-hard ability? I see it in the context of first mention of this minimal.fab thing from a few years ago. Maybe they are not showing all they can, or have? Of course a full CPU would be more impressive! What it does prove is that this system is progressing towards finer structures, as can be seen in Figure 3 when you zoom in. edit: sorry, first mention on HN (that i can find) was 10 months ago. First blips in the media were a few years ago (which i only learned of because said mention on HN), but not much of them. edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14623812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14623812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20657753
jacobush 6y ago
The leash is more economic than defence - the main impetus of Gripen is to defend Sweden and for that it should serve well enough. Of course, it would be nice to spread the cost around by selling to other markets, but it's a trade off. Developing all the tech in-house would enable that but procuring a domestic engine was deemed too expensive.

sbierwagen 6y ago

Small nations can occasionally do surprising things when they feel like it. Israel successfully developed nuclear weapons when they only had two million people in the country.

sk0g 6y ago
I don't think most small countries are as pressured towards an arms race, compared to Israel! Doesn't detract from their achievement, of course.
sien 6y ago
Israel's development of nuclear weapons owed a lot to France, Germany and the US. From here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-secret-nuclear-arsenal https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/truth-israels-... "In Dimona, French engineers poured in to help build Israel a nuclear reactor and a far more secret reprocessing plant capable of separating plutonium from spent reactor fuel. This was the real giveaway that Israel's nuclear programme was aimed at producing weapons. By the end of the 50s, there were 2,500 French citizens living in Dimona, transforming it from a village to a cosmopolitan town, complete with French lycées and streets full of Renaults, and yet the whole endeavour was conducted under a thick veil of secrecy. The American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in his book The Samson Option: "French workers at Dimona were forbidden to write directly to relatives and friends in France and elsewhere, but sent mail to a phony post-office box in Latin America." Seymour Hersh's book 'The Sampson Option' goes into more detail.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tibbydudeza 6y ago
South Africa was in the same boat in needing a weapon of absolute last resort ... instead of Arab armies we had to contend with soviet supplied cuban troops on our border. We had 4 devices by then and developed with help of Israel an intermediate range ballistic missile based on their Jericho-2. Fortunately sanity prevailed in the end and the bombs and missile program got scrapped when a political settlement was achieved.

TMWNN 6y ago

> Interesting to contrast with Sweden, a country of 10m people, having a domestic fighter program to this day. That's mostly driven off Sweden's postwar neutrality. Were Sweden a NATO member it's hard to imagine the country deciding to pay the almost prohibitively expensive cost of maintaining an indigenous aircraft industry, instead of buying from a larger ally. The Netherlands and Italy are among those NATO members that once produced their own fighter aircraft but no longer do so, instead joining multinational alliances or buying from elsewhere.

tpmx 6y ago

On that topic (compared the Avro Arrow with the SAAB Draken, developed at the same time): http://bestfighter4canada.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-tale-of-two-fighters.html http://bestfighter4canada.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-tale-of-two... > Still, the biggest difference between the Arrow and the Draken were basic design philosophies. The Arrow was intended to "best in the world"... While the Draken was simply intended to be the "best for Sweden". > Sometimes "good enough" is more than enough, and "the best" is too damn much.

piva00 6y ago
That also ties to the overall Swedish culture of lagom [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom

greedo 6y ago

The issue with expecting small countries to field indigenous aircraft is that jet engines are hard. The Gripen relies upon the GE F404 engine, and this gives the US leverage in preventing exports. China has been trying for decades to build its own high performance jet engines, and hasn't succeeded. They still rely heavily upon Russian engine designs.

jabl 6y ago
If China really wants to, I think it's just a matter of time. Their (PPP-adjusted) GDP is 6.5 times larger than Russia, so they can afford to spend a lot of resources on it if they wish.
- jacobush 6y ago
  Damn, I didn't know Russia was even that big.
- greedo 6y ago
  It's not a matter of time, since Western (and Russian) engine manufacturers aren't standing still. The WS-15 has been in development for over 25 years, and still isn't ready for primetime in the J-20.
  - coopsmgoops 6y ago
    Sounds like it's a matter of a lot of time

jacobush 6y ago

No need to wonder, the new Gripen is already here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjTT6PSK2Yc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjTT6PSK2Yc

RachelF 6y ago

Yeah, the USA shot down a lot of competing aircraft projects in the 1960's. This a good summary of the TSR2 https://youtu.be/PhXcd-881xA https://youtu.be/PhXcd-881xA The F-104 is also a similar story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals