Saab Jas 39E Gripen is a low cost single engine Swedish built plane. It uses a GE F414G engine (same as the Super Hornet’s) capable of supercruise and modular packages make for easy updating and compatibility.
This plane falls into the multirole fighter catagory, light, fast and agile with canards. It can strap on just about any weapons package including the stand-off meteor missile.
It is made to survive, starting with short take off and landing and designed for arctic air bases. Saab uses electronic warfare for jamming, Active Electronically Scanned Array radar for greater field of view and range. Also uses infra-red search and track for passive targeting. Because of its’ modular design it meets NATO, our Five Eyes intelligence alliance and Two Eyes requirements of NORAD.
If Canada decided to go with the Gripen the spin off industries would be huge. The Gripen would be assembled here and Gripen would open a research facility in Canada. This could well be the stepping stone Canada needs to start catching up in our aerospace industry.
Drones are Canada’s future as far as defense goes. We have a very small military to cover a huge area. Canada needs drones (made in Canada at some point) for coastal and arctic sovereignty issues, as well as search and rescue.
image sources
- saab_gripen_top_view: airwolfhound | CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic