Sweden offers cut price fighters to Romania
Published: 16 Apr 10 07:04 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/26106/20100416/
Sweden has offered Romania 24 new Gripen fighter aircraft at a cut price to match that demanded by the United States for second-hand F-16s, officials confirmed on Wednesday.
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Romania's Supreme Council announced in March its decision to buy 24 second-hand F-16 jets for $1.3 billion dollars, a purchase which is to be submitted to parliament for approval.
Jerry Lindbergh, a Swedish government official in charge of defence exports, gave details of the offer at a news conference in Bucharest.
He said Sweden could provide 24 new "fully NATO interoperable Gripen C/D fighters, including training, support, logistics and 100 percent offset for the amount of €1 billion."
The money could be paid over 15 years with low interest rates.
Sweden's ambassador to Romania Mats Aberg said it was "Romania's sovereign right to choose the multirole jets it wanted", but to provide all information on the Swedish offer, he had sought a meeting with the parliament defence commission chairman.
Swedish group Saab said in March it was "surprised" by Romania's choice of second hand F-16 aircraft.
Bucharest is also considering buying 24 new F-16 jets and later 24 F-35 jets, the defence ministry said, stressing this was part of the Romanian-US "strategic partnership."
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Even second hand F16s crap all over the Gripen, and also allow readier access to spare parts, US training and US support personnel. Cut the Gripen price to $500mil and throw in munitions and you'd have a fair offer. That would be 50% of something. However, Romania wants 100% of something.
"why can't Swedes question the immorality in this?" Cos of the same reason why the 90% of people in the world don't question the immorality in sooo many things: We've been told once and again that that's the way it is.
Once a scientist put5 monkeys in a cage and in the middle of the cage a box with bananas. Every time 1 monkey went for the bananas, they put cold water on the other 4 monkeys. Evently everytime a monkey tried 2 go 4 the bananas, the other 4 beated the s*t outa him. They replaced one monkey and the new one tried too, but the othet 4 beated him. They replaced another and another and at the end they had 5 brand new monkeys that din't eat bananas and none of them knew why.
That's a good story. Do you know where I can buy monkeys in bulk?
Again parts and engines are all replaceable and can be updated. Avionics can be replaced easily as well.
Remember the C130. It's been around for so many years, but still does it's role well.
Now, how is it better? The only thing "Better" would be that it would earn money for Sweden. That's a very subjective position that no one else considers.
The F16 is still the US front line fighter, and still stomps on just about everything else on the planet. The Gripen is not a contender.
As to selling weapons, this is the real world. The bleats about peace have fallen on deaf ears for 5000 years.
Military posturing, and having the toys to kill others, allows politicians to eat at the high table with the other warmongers.
Why is a neutral country like Sweden even in the arms business? Smacks of immorality. Turn them into plough shares and sell them to the farmers.
America will sell arms to anyone to earn dollars to prop up its failing economy. But when US boots are on your neck you don't have a choice - you hit the nail on the head there buddy boy.
Saab should stick to cars and develop hydrogen cars to save the planet. This would be an export earner. Better than exporting death. Leave that to the imperialists.
You do realize that Sweden is one of the leading defence and arms exporting countries in the world, right?
Our nation(America) should be selling things that benefit the people.
Some of the posters here, as in other places, are awash in fear and ignorance, a prevalent problem with our "tea baggers".
If so, bravo.
I understand you don t know which are the enemies of Romania.
I ll help you. ALL the countries around Romania are in cold war-you know, Balkans (read about it, you can find some info on wiki) Ukraine, Hungary...
So many frozen conflicts in the same place. If don t know nothing about it, please, at least, say nothing on this topic. It is a complex one...
Used Gripens........scrap metal.
It's kind of like paying the same price for a used PS3 or a new Wii.
Take the extreme case of comparing five fully equiped JAS-39NG versus One, only one JTF or F-35, which keeps on going up in price and down on take-off payload and has yet to take off from the Air Foce Academy near high altitude Denver. Why, do you think this has not been even attempted? Because they know the results?
Remember, the second engine Congress adds and the Administration rejects? (Or,viceversa?) The project is so far behind and over budget, an old rule adopted to prevent such extreme failures came, again, into play and "they" were deprived of a "300+ Million" reward for their failures.
Yet, they want to buy that airplane that could be shot down by one long range rifle, instead of five JAS-39NG for the same cost. This, does not pass an smell test!
Have they even verified the minimum altitude and speed the pilot could even detect a tank, truck or gun site? All they need is a simulator, or rent the one in Linkoping to find out. Something is rotten in, what was the name of the country? I forget.
As to why Sweden has a disproportionately large arms industry, you have to look at history. For a long time Sweden was a neutral country, and as such was not able to depend on alliances to help defend its territory. It had to be prepared to defend itself with weapons that it could manufacture and maintain on its own. So it did.
One way of keeping the costs down is to be very good at building weapons so that they are in demand by other nations so that you can generate export sales. Another way of keeping costs down is to have a rationalized planning and procurement strategy so that your aviation industry, for example, can do the long term research and development to bring weapons systems on line in a timely manner for a reasonable cost. The arms industry in USA, Britain, and Canada, for example are rife with overbudget, late pork barrel projects due to the ever present political interference in the competition and tendering processes.