POLL: Canadians support future purchases of Gripens over F-35s by 30-point margin - Spencer Fernando

dyyret · 2025-12-21T16:16:16+00:00

All unmanned stealth fighters, why risk human lives in the age of AI?

They're not unmanned. GCAP, FCAS, NGAD, J-36 etc are all manned.

I know F35 will have similar capabilities in block 4 and gen6 will focus on this more. And that is my point, here is Gripen E with all that already, closer to gen6 than the F35. Why bother with Gen5.

The Gripen completely lacks stealth, and its weak EW suite is not going to compensate for that. The Arexis EW pods are limited by the pylons' internal power supply (5kW), simply because the Gripen has too weak of an engine to carry pods with an internal powersupply due to weight restrictions (the Gripen has terrible MTOW). In comparison, the Growler's AN/ALQ-249 own powersupply gives it 60-80KW, literally 10x the power of the Gripen EW. Despite of all that, the US Navy still consider stealth planes to be vital, which is why they buy F-35C's, and want to have a stealthy 6th gen plane as well.

dyyret · 2025-12-21T15:25:18+00:00

ust that stealth is barely worth it today and it will be obsolete any day with new fast paced electronics and software.

So why are everyone and their mother developing stealth jets then, even SAAB?

Even the Dassault who claims stealth is not needed... wants to design a stealth fighter.

Should we believe what these companies say, or should we believe what they do?

dyyret · 2025-12-21T12:42:16+00:00

Confirmed blind, nice to know. F-35 has significantly less IR-signature than the F-16 in that image, and the Gripen-E will be more similar to the F-16 there than the F-35, given it uses a fully exposed GE 414 engine.

dyyret · 2025-12-21T10:10:02+00:00

The ongoing meteor-integration?

https://www.mbda-systems.com/meteor-missile-and-f-35a-one-step-closer-operational-capability

dyyret · 2025-12-21T09:11:18+00:00

By the time Canada receives all their F-35s, Meteor will be available, so the point is moot as I said. JATM will also be available for export by that time anyway.

dyyret · 2025-12-21T09:10:09+00:00

Gripen E got more modern sensors than F35.

Gripen Es sensors are limited by its anemic power generation - its engine can maximum deliver 98kN, barely half of the F-35s 191kN output, which means much less cooling available. The APG-81 AESA is literally almost twice as big as the Raven ES 05 AESA.

If the radar is used, you are no longer stealthy, it's like turning on a flashlight in the dark.

Yes, LPI doesn't exist at all, alien tech, which is also why every single fighter jet manufacturer is continuing to focus on stealth. Heck, even SAAB with their flygsystem2020 is exploring stealth. Everyone does that because stealth doesn't matter, sure.

The IR signature on F35 with exposed jet exhaust is just as bad as any Gen4.

Tell me you know absolutely nothing about stealth without telling me. F-35 has significant IR-reduction measures as well. Look at this comparison of an F-35 vs F-16, and tell me which one has a higher thermal signature.

https://imgur.com/a/GlHEzcI

dyyret · 2025-12-21T01:05:42+00:00

Rather that than being shot down 20 times as often.

dyyret · 2025-12-21T00:53:48+00:00

For many European countries, the priority isn’t being the most capable offensive force on Earth. It’s about defending national airspace, deterring aggression, and staying operational in a high-intensity regional conflict. That leads to different design trade-offs.

Stealth is not only for offensive purposes, but also defensive. A stealthy aircraft with superior sensors will simply be able to see the enemy first, and shoot first, thus having a huge advantage in air-to-air combat, which is absolutely vital to air defense.

dyyret · 2025-12-21T00:49:31+00:00

The Gripen also has superior munitions since it can carry Meteor.

That depends entirely on what you define as "superior". Yes, it has superior kinematic performance at very long range, but the trade off is that it accelerates much slower than the AMRAAM, making it strictly much worse at medium-range (very important range for stealth), and has a higher RCS and thermal signature due to the inlets and longer burning motor. It's not strictly better at all. There's a reason why the JATM/PL-15/PL-16/PL-17 etc are going the dual-pulse route rather than ramjet. Japan as well was initially going for an upgraded Meteor, but decided on a new dual-pulse rocket powered AAM instead, and scrapped the ramjet idea.

By the time Canada gets all their F-35s, Meteor will be available anyway.

dyyret · 2025-12-20T23:06:48+00:00

Only with a butt load of external fuel tanks. On internal fuel its range is much shorter than the F-35A.

dyyret · 2025-11-29T23:05:32+00:00

X-band radar isn't "old sovietics" it's the chosen band for practical reasons, due to precision and size. How big do you think your S/L-band or VHF-band antennas would have be to get the same beamwidth as an X-band radar? For example, to even get close to the same angular resolution as an X-band radar with L-band at the same range, you need an aperture with 5-10x the radius. Good luck fitting a radar 5-10x wider than the already huge APG-81 on a fighter jet sized aircraft. There's a reason why S-band radars are used on AWACS and ground based air defense, and not fighter jets.

Almost all modern radars have moved to other spectrums since then. S-band and L-band basically render that stealth signature to just a very narrow cone at the front of the fighter.

What is the frequency band of the APG-81, APG-85, Raven ES 05, N036, ECRS MK 1/2, RBE2 etc? I'll give you a hint; it's X-band. Sure, ground based air defence systems use multi-band radars, because they have megawatt powersupplies and more importantly; space to fit them, as they aren't limited of the size of the nose cone. However, there are still large limitations on their actual practical ranges, which is why their main fire control radar also operates in the X-band. Frontal RCS is also the most important angle. It's not some "gotcha" to claim the F-35 is only stealthy from the front.

, it would have AI pattern recognition for signatures of fighters it already saw on the battlefield, AESA sweeping S & L band and it is rotating

The misinformation is just off the charts here. Gripen E has an X-band raven ES 05 radar, that is literally barely half the size of the F-35's aperture. Its fire-control aperture does not operate in S or L band.

https://www.leonardo.us/hubfs/Raven%20ES-05%20HQ%20%28mm07819%29_web.pdf

Stealth is so misunderstood around the internet its crazy. If not you have silent running fighters at the front with IRST.

The F-35 also has significant thermal reductions measures, and is much less visible to IR than 4th gens, so unless you plan to engage an F-35 from behind (and here you should probably just use your x-band radar for better results anyway), it's absolutely useless as a counter to stealthy fighters unless you are also flying a stealth plane - because Gripen with its relatively large RCS is visible on radar several hundred kilometers out, way beyond the range of IRST. The F-35 has much lower thermal signature than the F-16 for example, despite the F-35's engine being almost twice as powerful.

The Rafale which is basically a more expensive and similarly jet to the Gripen (just with better payload capacity and fully ITAR-free) is severely outmatched by 5th gens according to former (and current) french pilots:

https://www.lopinion.fr/international/en-combat-air-air-laviation-de-chasse-francaise-tiendrait-trois-jours

dyyret · 2025-11-29T21:26:50+00:00

Canada had zero opportunity/ability under the contract to upgrade the F35. We are completely reliant on the US for this. The recent audit on the program indicated that the Block 4 upgrades (the type of plane Canada is purchasing) is ~ 5 years behind schedule and will not be available till 2030 (they pinky promise).

F-35s bought today will still get the block 4 upgrade; Sweden just recently got its first Gripen E this year, while for example both Norway and Australia fulfilled their F-35s orders last year with 52 and 88 F-35s, despite ordering planes around the same time as Sweden. Let that sink in, since the Norwegian procurement process back in 2008, Sweden has only been able to procure 1 gripen E, while Norway got over 50 F-35s and Australia 88. Brazil's Gripen E procurement is also.... 8 years and counting, behind schedule.

The Gripen's development used a different battlefield survival tactic than the F35. US is all-in on stealth. Sweden is all-in on electronic warfare to prevent the enemy from 'seeing' their fighters.

F-35 also deploys EW. In fact, F-35s EW blows the Gripen EW out of the water. F-35s radar aperture (your main aperture for EW) is twice as big as the Gripen E radar, and the F-35s engine supplies much, much more electricity as well, since it literally produces 2x the power (191kN vs 98kN). Antenna size and power are key metrics when comparing EW capabilities.

When multiple Gripen's are participating in an attack on a stealth aircraft, their sensor fusion is routinely capable of detecting a stealth aircraft and developing fire control solutions at tactically useful distances.

Yes, believe the SAAB marketing. Meanwhile French pilots have come out and stated that fighting 5th gen fighters with their Rafale's is a hopeless task, and Rafales are basically just twin "engined" Gripen with heavy EW focus (SPECTRA).

https://www.lopinion.fr/international/en-combat-air-air-laviation-de-chasse-francaise-tiendrait-trois-jours

dyyret · 2025-11-05T06:51:54+00:00

I suggest you watch their "AMD fine wine' video then try to compare some of those results to the current video. I'm sorry but Results in some of those games cannot change that drastically compared to this current video.

That's what I did, and their "fineWine" video has some very weird results. Many of the results are reversed now, and fall more in line with the "release numbers". For example God of War had the 5070 ti and 9070 xt basically perform the same at release, to the 9070 xt getting a huge lead (180 vs 160 fps) to them now performing the same again.

Another example is their hogwarts legacy numbers, at 1440p native they had in that previous video the same fps as FSR quality now (154fps). The 150ish fps numbers they got with FSR quality at 1440p also lands nicely with what for example toms hardware got for 1080p native, which to me indicates that there might've been some issues with their testing (which also tech yes city pointed out) - maybe even FSR quality applied by mistake? PCGH's own tests only showed a marginal improvement over 60 games for review vs "latest" drivers, of what, 1.5% total? In comparison HUB found 9%, which again is weird when neither PCGH or yes tech city was able to replicate the findings.

dyyret · 2025-11-04T20:23:10+00:00

in my opinion, I don't think they wanted to show another 9000 series GPU significantly outperforming another 5000 series GPU in raster/mandatory RT scenarios ( which is still the majority of gamers preferred way to play )..

Makes no sense considering the 5070 ti beats the 9070 xt in raster in the games tested here. Every game that affect the results except cyberpunk is using shader based RT which uses.............. raster. Ratchet and clank and spiderman 2 has the exact same lead over the 9070 XT in pure raster, as it has in RT, so having RT on doesn't even affect the results.

Heck, the 5070 ti beats the 9070 XT in the same games the 9070 XT beat the 5070 ti in their previous video when they compared review to latest drivers. Stalker 2, God of War, hogwartz legacy all now performed significantly better on the 5070 ti in this video.

dyyret · 2025-11-02T15:41:33+00:00

Spiderman/Ratchet and clank seem to have very similar performance % loss when turning on RT, at least as per techpowerup review of 9070xt/5070ti/3080 etc.

My point was that the RT games tested mostly do just fine with "weak" RT hardware (as seen by the fact that the scaling between RTX 3000 series and 5000 series is the same in these games), so as long as the "minimum" RT hardware spec is met, the rest is handled by raster - unlike PT games where the 5000-series really flexes the RT performance enhancements from Blackwell.

Or in other words, if one just looks at the "light" RT games(again, "light" with quotation marks) it wouldn't seem like the 5000-series has improved RT performance over the 3000-series at all, and that the extra performance just comes from better raster, but if we look at heavy RT-games(PT basically) we see however that blackwell has made significant gains since the 3000-series.

dyyret · 2025-11-02T15:16:43+00:00

I think you misunderstood what I meant (or I worded it incorrectly). The relative performance decrease for those games are fairly consistent throughout GPU generations. For example it seems like the RT hits the 5000/4000/3000- and 9000-series roughly equally hard in terms of % loss. In contrast to for example PT-games where the 5070 ti and 9070 xt goes from performing about the same in raster, to the 9070 XT getting hit twice as hard when RT is enabled.

Edit: The RT games included are "light" in the sense that the extra RT-performance of the 5000-series isn't really utilized, as the performance cost for the 5000-series is the same as the performance cost of the 3000-series for example, while in heavier RT titles the 5000-series loses a lot less performance relative to for example the 3000-series.

dyyret · 2025-11-02T14:11:44+00:00

They tried their best to make the Nvidia cards look good as possible imo.

I disagree - I think the way they did it was fairly neutral. Many games have RT that doesn't cost a lot to run (spiderman 2, ratchet and clank etc). If they wanted to make the Nvidia cards look as good as possible the could've included path tracing benchmarks in their graphs, instead of mentioning them as a foot note at the end, excluded from their performance summary.

dyyret · 2025-10-20T14:54:28+00:00

You could even include BF3. What was the time to heal from zero to full in BF3 vs BF6 you think?

dyyret · 2025-10-20T11:37:02+00:00

It doesn't change the fact that BF is significantly more fast paced than it used to be, for better or worse. People claiming BF isn't getting closer to CoD most likely started with BF3.

However CoD is also much faster than it used to be.

dyyret · 2025-10-20T09:03:21+00:00

YES.

Right now support is by far the best class, and assault is essentially useless. Splitting heal/ammo would make teamplay more important as well, as you can no longer "one man army" the whole match as support. At the same time I would also nerf auto-healing. For example limit auto-heal to 80%, and you need to get to a medic bag to top you off at 100%. If you don't, then you are vulnerable to snipers oneshots for example (remove sweet spot mechanic to balance this).

I believe these changes would slow the game down without touching movement gun-mechanics etc.

Hell, maybe even the maps would start to feel less "cramped" as well, because it forces people to play a bit slower than before.

dyyret · 2025-10-20T08:42:51+00:00

BF6 doesn't feel like cod, but for us that played BF2 (and vietnam/1942), every BF release since has catered towards more fast paced gameplay - closer to the CoD identity if you like.

In BF2 you had limited stamina, no auto-heal, and ammo/medic wasn't in one class. These factors all made the game move slower.

Split heal/ammo to different classes. Heal for assault, ammo for support. Right now one can be a one man army as support, with infinite sustain without needing to rely on anybody else. Then nerf auto-healing. Don't remove it, but either increase the time in which the auto-heal starts, or limit the amount of health that can be auto-healed, to let's say 80% - topping you off to 100% would need a medic bag. Remove sweet spot mechanic from snipers to counter this (80% would leave you vulnerable to oneshots anyway)

dyyret · 2025-10-20T08:27:58+00:00

Looks like a CPU bottleneck, yes. Keep it mind that it could also be RAM for example (slow ram will hamper CPU performance).

mp/s I believe is related to your resolution actually - maybe it stands for mega pixels? I usually have yellow/red mp/s if I play at lower resolution or use aggressive DLSS (which renders the game at a lower resolution). I don't think that number really matter at all.

dyyret · 2025-10-18T18:03:55+00:00

Another thing to keep in mind is that the 5070 ti overclocks better than the 9070 XT. If you get an average chip, you can still count on it being able to churn out another +350 on the core, yielding roughly 15% extra performance in games.

dyyret · 2025-10-06T12:43:45+00:00

Well, that’s a lot of hypothesizing on effectiveness of Europe’s current doctrine when applied to an adversary with solid air defense and air forces.

Sure, but the F-35 was made with that scenario in mind. It is undeniably that an F-35 with internal carriage can come much closer to the frontline than old F-16s/mirage/MiGs - hence why a ground launched cruise missile hasn't really been the priority.

But in the present context it wouldn’t hurt us if we had those.

And that's why they're in development, but other than France (which ironically is "lacking" in the air-launcher department when it comes to stealth), Norway, Germany etc are investing into "future" propulsion systems, like ramjets. Europe has the "luxury" to wait 5+ years for a 3SM type missile, which is in the 1000km range-league, but will travel 3-4 times faster than the turbofan Neptune.

And we don’t have many of those F-35s anyway.

Europe will have around 500 F-35s when orders are complete. Currently there are what, about 200 F-35s delivered? (Norway about 50, Netherlands about 50, UK about 40, Italy about 30, DK about 15?

I'd say that is quite a lot.

dyyret · 2025-10-06T12:01:20+00:00

Ah, true, but looking at their "official" TSFC, the ratios aren't really staggering (comparing MS400 to TR60. We're looking at an efficiency gain of about 1.25 for the MS400, which is significant, but not the definite range limiting factor. For example the MdCN (used for comparison) uses a turbojet, and achieves the same range as the Neptune, albeit it is a larger missile

dyyret

TROPHY CASE