Baby Gripen is growing up! :-)

Hi guys and girls,

It appears that the little baby Gripen is growing up :-)

www.defensenews.com...

I personally think that with AESA, Meteor missile and a good payload this could be very handy.

Enjoy the pics.

Rich

a reply to: RAB

Pretty neat jet...one thing that made me kinda snicker was this:

During the flight, the company pilot tested a number of systems, including the ability to raise and lower its landing gear.

Lol I should certainly hope he put the landing gear down, landing might be a tad difficult

a reply to: BlueJacket

It's actually kind of unusual to raise them on the first flight. Some companies will, but the majority of them will leave them down the entire flight.

And it's not that hard in a Gripen.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Makes sense appreciate the insight, I figured there was some SOPs with this sorta thing, but alas I was trained as a grunt

ETA and can I just say WOW belly landing a jetfighter, I had no idea that was possible

a reply to: BlueJacket

They usually start out really gently. Up to a couple hundred knots, maybe 15-20,000 feet, make some turns, really gentle maneuvers. Then with each subsequent flight they expand the envelope, until they finally bump up against their maximum performance numbers.

Flight testing now has gotten almost boring and routine. They fly hundreds of hours in the simulator, with the flight control software loaded, and practice the entire test program before they ever get off the ground.

Belly landings in fighters tend to end a lot worse than that one did. That was a great job putting it down in one piece.