This is the last instalment of SEAD/ Air to ground scenario against Russian installations on Suursaari (Hogland) island. If you want to read about the premises of the scenario, the basis is HERE.

First three quite important things that you should take into consideration in this video and appraisal.

• Command Modern Warfare does not have SAAB GlobalEye in the database. Thus I use older iteration of same platform, Eriye as a replacement. eriye is at least ten years older technology and not based on Gallium electronics so performance with Eriye is significantly less than with GlobalEye
• Command modern warfare does not have AREXIS jammerpod in its database. Thus it is not available for this scenario.
• thirdly We have no way of knowing what kind of loadouts SAAb and SwAF and FAF are thinking for their Gripen E/F fleets, and Gripen may not be that requeted for platform, in Command that it might get loadouts late and they might not be all that accurate.

That said, Eriye really gives advantages due it’s threat library in recognizing installments like radars on Suursaari, but does not really help in picking the Air defense batteries out of the foliage. That is but a secondary thing, considering the AWACS real use of Battle space management and airborne early warning. In passive realm, there is just not that much it can do from that kind of range.

Of course, the SDB-39 glide bombs have a nice range, they are stand off weapons, and are quite handy in dispatching troublesome air defense bubbles, but they do require quite big salvoes to do the trick properly. In fact the expenditure was quite high, 48 and 45, on two latter runs of the scenario. I even had to bring in the last resort flight groups with cluster bombs and Mavericks. This is because of absence of offensive jamming on Gripens part. (I hope AREXIS comes into the CMW soon) Also the simulation is quite adept so that it doesn’t try to hit targets like radar installation with cluster munitions, but reserves them for air defense sites.

As you can see, the casualties were rather light, and came after a lot of missile fire from the VVS. This might also be contributed to absence of offensive jamming on Gripens part. AREXIS will take care of this, but as mentioned it has not been modeled into the Command modern warfare.

One more thing hard to fathom is how much inferior SAAB Gripen seems to be in Command Modern Warfare as compared to Typhoon and Rafale particularly. It picks the targets rather late from the ground (even though Litening pod should not be a slouch). This might be bias, (I don’t think so), or it might be because Gripen E is lesser known and to some extend still in production. It is after all totally new platform. So it might be downplayed a bit. I do get that the nosecone is of a smaller diameter, so the radar cannot physically have as many elements as the eg Typhoons radar have (they do come, after all, from same company, Leonardo, so difference in competence should not be there)

So Gripen does a good job on cleaning the AD bubble over southern Finland. Eriyes range is indeed impressive to see on the map. Even if Gripen is the smallest munitions carrier in HX-program it does a nice job.