I was thinking that the small update might be in order to all those non-Finnish speakers Who are following the HX-program.  First of all all proposals need to be in by next Tuesday the twenty second of November, after which the evaluation progress will continue.  I have written a couple of pieces about the airplanes that are competing in the HX program but there has been some developments afterwards.  All European competitors, Dassault, SAAB and Eurofighter, have promised at least to the planes being assembled in Finland and also partnership in the developing their respective Fighter planes.

So the sell of 60-100 fighters in Europe seems to be big deal to all involved. US competitors may be behind in “polito-economical line” but I don’t thing Boeing will have problems with assembly in Finland. That happened with F/A-18 C as well. Like before, maybe the two seaters and Growlers would be assembled in St. Luis and at least most of the Es in Finland.  Only competitor lacking in this respect seems to be Lockheed Martin’s F-35. They have not reacted, at least openly, to the proposals of the European contenders.  So other four are maybe even in this respect, but Lockheed Martin is something of a mystery. Of course there may be devious plan to have US state department and Trump force F-35 to Finland. But I do not think that this is likely.

As I have written in Finnish, sorry to say for you non-Finnish speakers, it really shows how the Aeroplanes have been optimized: Dassault Rafale is first-rate Strike Fighter with significant Air to Air capabilities, Eurofighter Typhoon is suberb air dominance machine, with air to ground capabilities and JAS Gripen is somewhere in between the marriage of roles the modern fighters have to play.F-18 Es greatest merit is that is known plane in Finnish servise and would not thus present so great change in use and technology . Obviously F-18 has been vamped up every way and offers good cababilities in bot air to air and air to ground roles. The differences between planes come largely from physics: from the Top speeds and cervice ceilings and sensor Suites.  With the eurocanards, the weaponry will be the same anyway, so differences in that respect will not be great.

One might be interested to know that there has been some discussion of maybe Getting two airplanes in HX program. One air to air optimized platform and second strike oriented platform.

 So after the proposals are in I’ll be getting back to you!