Sweden will reportedly be supplying Ukraine with Saab-built Gripen fighters.[1][2] Maybe. Apparently Sweden has been holding off on transfer of 14 Gripens while Ukraine was learning to use and service F-16s.
The Gripen has advantages for Ukraine. It's a more rugged aircraft, with lower maintenance demands and lower operating cost. It can operate from very basic airstrips and roads. Saab boasts about this.[3] Their pitch mentions that servicing an aircraft between missions requires just one trained tech assisted by five other workers. The USAF likes to operate from big, well-equipped, secure air bases, and US aircraft tend to be designed for that environment.
The US has, in the past, tried to discourage other countries from buying the Gripen, to protect US manufacturers. That sales advantage just disappeared.
Various components in the Gripen, particularly the engine which Volvo licensed from GE, are from the US and the US has a veto on them. It is currently blocking sale of Gripen to Colombia, for example.
You've got to be kidding. Reverse engineering the GE F414 for local production and maintenance is just completely impractical, or maybe impossible. It would be faster and cheaper to adapt something like the Eurojet EJ200 to fit into the Gripen.
Are you saying the Europeans or Chinese cannot reverse engineer an aerospace engine for mass production? I have no particular preference where it’s done, any sufficiently advanced country will do.
I suppose any afterburning turbofan engine will do if it fits? Again, not particularly opinionated. Just get out from under US control using the path of least resistance.
Yes, I am saying that the Europeans or Chinese cannot reverse engineer a turbine engine as sophisticated as the F414. Having some examples in hand doesn't tell you much about how it was built, nor does that give you the source code for the embedded control software and diagnostic systems.
The Chinese have been trying for years to reverse engineer older Russian turbofan engines and still can't get them quite right. And those are a level below the F414 in complexity.
You don't need the source code for the embedded control software and diagnostic systems. If you're pirating the whole engine design anyway, just copy the binary from the example you're copying.
(Then just make sure not to hook it up to any radio transmitter under the engine's direct control, so it can't call home to the American manufacturer and be disabled remotely.)
Why try to copy an engine which would enrage the US when you can simply replace it with an engine, a newer engine, that you already produce in Europe and Europe has soverign control over and can offer the Swedes the _right_ to produce etc? Just go talk to Rolls Royce in the UK or Safran in France.
After the original Rolls-Royce Ltd. went bust the British government bought up all it's assets and set up a new company in 1971. The automobile division was spun off as a separate company and sold off a few years later.
The engine company is Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc and ain't a subsidiary of anyone. It's the second largest manufacturer of aircraft engines after CFM.
BMW owns the modern car company and licenses the name and logo from the engine company.
okay, but 8 of the top 10 shareholders (and four of the top four) in Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc are American. I'm not really sure "ain't a subsidiary" is quite what you make of it. I was incorrect, but i hedged, i guessed that the aircraft engine parts wasn't owned by ford, but i was not sure.
in the context of this discussion, if all american investors pulled out of Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc because they were tasked with copying an american engine... could Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc make that engine?
This is what american isolationism means and will look like.
Rolls Royce is also responsible for building and maintaining the nuclear reactors used in Britain's missile launch submarines.
If things really got so bad that American investors began intentionally sabotaging the operations of foreign companies, it would probably be forcibly nationalised by the British Government.
What do you mean by "pull out"? If investors sell their shares then the company including all assets and employees still exist, it just has different owners. The actual obstacle to any separation from US control isn't financial but rather some level of dependence on US parts suppliers and licensed technology.
Yes, without help from the US the rest of the world is about 230 years behind in warfighting technology.. Patriot missiles were first successfully deployed against a US drone aircraft in 1965.
Patriot systems were in use to shield Kyiv et al to great success.
I know it sucks to hear this, but if the US goes isolationist, there's not much anyone can do.
During the cold war, Soviet Russia realised that NATO Air Force was becoming superior in numbers to their own, and would probably dominate the air domain in a conflict with them. So they pivoted their focus to missiles and anti-ballistic missile (ABM) shields to neutralise this western advantage. And, for a period, their missile and ABM programs did have a big lead over the west. After the USSR disintegrated, the west managed to catch up with them.
As for Ukraine, they have the S-300 ABM, the Buks and Osa-AKM for air defence. (The Russian made Buk was one of the first systems able to intercept cruise missiles and US-made Lance tactical ballistic missiles, Harm anti-radar missiles and other airborne and ground-based precision weapons). Though quite old, they are still formidable and is one of the main reasons Russian Air Force has a low key role in the current ongoing conflict. (That + the NATO AWACS).
The problem Ukraine had was that they ran out of missiles for these platform and that's why the US provided them with the Patriot system. But since America did not have enough spare Patriot missiles, East Europe and the US also modified the Buk platform to fire the radar-guided AIM-7 Sparrow and the semi-active radar-guided RIM-7 Sea Sparrow, as well as the heat-seeking AIM-9M Sidewinder air-to-air missile.
Less than eighty years ago Germany was at least on par with, or arguably ahead of, the USA in “warfighting technology”. (Werner von Braun ring a bell?) So “230 years” is mathematically impossible; even if the rest of the world had stood still since then, it couldn't be more than eighty years behind. (Which it didn't, so it's far less.)
the plane this topic is about is 50 years old. the missile defense system that was protecting ukraine is 65 years old.
We give everyone our junk after the US Marine Corps is done with it, and they get it 20+ years after the army, navy, and airforce consider them "obsolete".
Yes, two hundred and thirty years to even compete with the US. Please note, this is if the US goes full isolationist, and pulls all military forces worldwide back to the US and US territorial waters.
For example, people are talking about Rolls royce "reverse engineering" american engines, or the chinese. Another idea was using Saab planes. If saab planes are so great, why were they using american F-16s?
these aren't my numbers, but my experience with linking the sources of my data isn't great on HN.
I think the idea of free trade is that more wealth is made through comparative advantages and trade, meaning everyone contributes less "blood and backs" and gets more wealth in return [1]. Not sure how this applies to military assistance, but it seems likely Japan and EU would not have the peace dividend they've had since WW2 if US wasn't subsidizing their defense.
Rather try to get some cooperation with French industry (who already have a complete engine without US strings attached), or British Industry (which has a workings engines, but as far as I understand with some US strings attached.)
Fascinating. What's with the US approach then? In general, it seems like lean forces tend to win. Afghanistan (twice) and Vietnam, for example. The Houthis as another example.
The Taliban/Mujahideen didn’t win per se, they just survived long enough for the foreign “empires” to lose interest.
Vietnam wasn’t a conventional conflict either. If you’re willing to lose complete control of most of “your” country and sustain 10x higher casualties than your opponent you might have a chance, but that’s an extremely steep price to pay.
That’s the most interesting way to warp reality that I’ve seen.
Afghanistan won, period. It doesn’t matter how Americans would like to advertise their loss - you didn’t “lose interest”, you lost, abandoned the people who were helping you, and have left thousands of innocent civilians to fend for themselves. Afghanistan is, and should be treated as, the biggest failure of the American “empire”.
If you really think the US went all in on Afghanistan with a world war level effort to conquer the country then I don't know what to tell you. After the initial invasion period the country really was a sideshow and became increasingly less prioritized over the years. By the end of the occupation US forces had shrunk to a minuscule size compared to what an invading army would look like.
That doesn't mean that the war was handled well, it clearly wasn't. But looking at a small force and confusing that with the entire might of the US military is baffling to me. "Losing interest" is a perfectly reasonable description of what happened.
unless the entire goal is to fund various militia groups within the middle east to cause chaos and ensure the ottoman empire cannot rise again and unite under allah while you fund a war to let the oligarchs plunder the natural resources.
Politically, not militarily. Same in Afghanistan. US could and did easily win the conventional parts of both conflicts. They lost because they didn’t know what to do after that or didn’t want to escalate it into a full scale war (Vietnam).
The Gripen has advantages for Ukraine. It's a more rugged aircraft, with lower maintenance demands and lower operating cost. It can operate from very basic airstrips and roads. Saab boasts about this.[3] Their pitch mentions that servicing an aircraft between missions requires just one trained tech assisted by five other workers. The USAF likes to operate from big, well-equipped, secure air bases, and US aircraft tend to be designed for that environment.
The US has, in the past, tried to discourage other countries from buying the Gripen, to protect US manufacturers. That sales advantage just disappeared.
[1] https://min.news/en/military/a409faa4bc530b328f75ed6ccff23b7...
[2] https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/03/04/saab-ceo-pushes-for-s...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyD0liioY8E