"Bjørnar Bolsøy" writes:
Flug Revue 12/2002 had some additional information:
"The small, single-engined jet with delta wings and canards
excels above all else in its easy handling, high reliability
(7.5 flying hours between failures), low maintenance
requirements (less than 10 man-hours per flying hour) and
low operating costs ($2,500 per flying hour)."
I do not know if the $2500/h is correct but Saab has a long history of
developing aircraft that are field servicable, easy to service and
unexpensive to run. The royal swedish airforce has had it as a real
requirement for a long time. We can simply not afford nearly unlimited
expenses for maintainance as the US airforce can seen from a swedish
point of view.
Saab has also a 50 year tradition of building fighters with a fairly
small design team that has kept its knowledge due to constant orders
during the cold war and the near impossibility of quickly enlarging
the team or for the team members to find another aircraft
manufacturer. Thus they do not forget for instance Drakens problems
with the mechanics needing 1,5 m long four jointed arms to do some
service work.
Has any US jet design workshop been kept together during more then 50
years and five generations of jet fighters?
I find it reasonable that this tradition plus the reliability of
modern electronics and a modern engine gives low service costs.
This also means that you must be willing to give up the last 5%
of performance in for instance your radars output. The US tradition is
as far as I know to allways get those last 5% even if thet get very
expensive.
We try to make up for that with systems thinking. As far as I know we
were among the first with a tactical fighter to fighter data-link,
automatic tracking and aiming of the gun, affordable "awacs" radar,
and we are currently concentrating on computer network based battle
(should insert buzwords. ).
I guess our superiors might be the israelis who has had to work with
limited budgets and a constant threat of being attacked while having a
highly educated and skilled population as the best resource.
Best regards,
--
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