this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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Ukraine
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It has always impressed me tremendously that a small country of only about 8 million people, has it's own fighter jet, and that it's actually good!
As a child in the 70's, I thought the Viggen was one of the coolest jet designs.
Anyways, whether it is logistically a good idea for Ukraine to get Gripen IDK, but good on Sweden to prepare for it.
They’re not cheap, but they’re WAY cheaper to fly per hour than most other modern strike fighters by a pretty large margin. Also, one of their primary design criteria was to be a QRF/frontline/austere deployment aircraft - that is, one of the requirements was “you can pull this fucker out onto a straight stretch of highway, gas it up, slap missiles on, and start fragging hostile air right away”. That’s precisely the sort of system Ukraine would seriously benefit from.
Don’t get me wrong - the Vipers they’re using now are great, extremely flexible, and genuinely the bar-none best two-circle gunfighter ever built, but they are fragile as hell, and their support footprint is WAY larger.