Saab achieves AI milestone with Gripen E (opens in new tab)

Germany wanted to continue participating in the NATO nuclear sharing agreement so that made the F-35A the only practical option. They considered purchasing the Eurofighter Typhoon instead but found that modifying it for the nuclear strike mission and then going through the certification process would be too expensive. When you have to rely on another country for your nuclear deterrent that cuts off your options.

The Gripen is fine for what it is. But it's very small with limited thrust so performance goes to crap when you load it up with a bunch of external stores for a long range strike mission.

The F-35A is only like 40% more expensive per-unit than the Gripen and is arguably at least 40% more capable (the payload alone beats that). It's true that the development program was a boondoggle (though Saab isn't completely clean here either), but that cost isn't for the most part borne by the export customers.

Economy of scale continues to rule all, basically, and there are already 3x as many Money-Gobbling Monstrosities in the air as there are Gripens.

Gripen uses an engine subject to US export controls, so unfortunately not totally free from dependence.

> buying the very few white elephants that won't actually make a difference

There’s a lot to criticize in the f 35 program but there seems to be enough there there for it to succeed markedly in the export market - beyond Germany there is Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, Romania and UK — and that’s just in Europe. This includes several countries that did not historically equip with US kit (and excludes Turkey, which ordered it before it got sanctioned). You’re saying all those countries have made a huge mistake?

These purchases was made in another time.

However, given the current political climate mixed with nato spending that will likely go up to 5% will likely not be bad for European military suppliers (and their supply chains).

Unfortunately the Gripen also uses a lot of US parts.

Gripen is more expensive and less capable than F-35.

I'm not judging the guy, but usually [recent] Series C level companies [0] (i.e. fast-growing companies) have good leadership in place, I would think their leadership is still good.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/11/defence-ai-startup-helsing...

Bummer, I was really looking forward to that.

“Oh you are correct, it is a school, I see it now »

> and are able to do complex manouvres in the air

If there’s something pilots really don’t like, it’s when someone else does things without them knowing exactly what, when and why. There’s a reason you separate pilot flying from pilot monitoring.

Automated systems are obviously crucial but they need to be so reliable and predictable that the pilot can form a mental model of how they work. If not, even simple systems like MCAS can wreak havoc. It’s like having a silent copilot fiddling on the controls - even the ”right” decision can cause problems. This is similar in AVs - when you have L3 autonomy you end up in awkward inbetween split-brain in-between states, that can result in new failure modes.

> Maybe in the future wars will involve sending multimodal LLMs in charge of fighter jets

Probably not LLMs but yeah, it feels like this is the type of tech that belongs in a UAV without life support systems. We are probably in the last generation or two with humans in the cockpit anyway.

The risk being that your enemy cannot reasonably steal all your fighter jet airmen but the can absolute steal a transformer model.

LLMs? Sounds backwards to me. It’s not like there is a lot of text to process up there.

NEVS (who bought the assets in 2012) still built Saab branded vehicles until 2014, and there was continued hope that Saab AB would again allow NEVS a license after they revoked it at that time. But NEVS effectively dissolved in 2023. Though there's no reason why Saab AB couldn't start using the name again themselves, or issue a license to someone else.

Which has nothing to do with SAAB AB, the defence company.

SAAB Automobile was split out from SAAB AB in 1990 with General Motors (GM) taking a 51% stake, and was fully a part of GM ten years later. GM then tried to build SAABs on GM platforms which meant the quality tanked and tanked the company too. And as another posted, What was left became Nevs.

Wikipedia has a good writeup on SAAB, with its many divisions. It's a bit like Volvo. Both companies have had divisions that makes automobiles, heavy vehicles and other types of products. Volvo Cars was sold off from Volvo AB to Ford. The heavy vehicle division of SAAB (Scania) is now part of Volkswagen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_AB