Fighter shops Finland will soon buy fighter jets for ten billion euros – Among the candidates is a machine that European countries have decided to choose one after another

Homeland|Fighter shops

Fighter project the final solution looms. The exact date is not known to the public, but it is known that the government is due to decide the matter in December.

The Defense Forces and the Air Force have managed to maintain the impression of complete fairness throughout the project and have not shed light on which of the five aircraft on offer might be their favorite.

So the end result can be a surprise.

But if we look at what other countries have done in a similar selection situation, there is no doubt about pre-favorites.

It’s Lockheed Martin’s F-35, which is also the only fighter in the series to disappear, and thus can be expected to have the most decades of use ahead of it. Others represent the fourth or updated fourth generation.

Iltalehti also pointed in the direction of the F-35 on Sunday night, when it said based on its sources, that the Finnish Defense Forces would present the F-35 as Finland’s fighter choice. According to Iltalehti, the Finnish Defense Forces would justify its proposal on the basis of, among other things, performance and the known long life cycle of the F-35.

Program Director for Strategic Projects at the Department of Defense Lauri Puranen commented briefly on the information about Iltalehti on Sunday evening to HS as follows:

“We’re not going to comment on such rumors,” Puranen said.

Most recently the country was chosen by Switzerland in June as the F-35. It is going to buy 36 of them. Although the solution is not final, the whole acquisition may still end up in a referendum.

Before that, seven other European countries have come to the same model: Britain and Italy, but the smaller European countries include the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Poland. In Norway, for example, the machine model is already in operational use.

The model has thus become the choice for smaller European countries that do not have their own fighter industry to support them, such as Germany, France, Britain and Sweden.

The number of machines planned by Finland, ie 64, would be the third largest of these after the British and Italian purchases. That’s about how Lockheed Martin offers Finland for ten billion.

Other offerings include the US Boeing’s F / A-18 Super Hornet, France’s Dassault’s Rafale, the multinational Eurofighter Typhoon, and Sweden’s Saab Gripen E.

There is some knowledge of what the deal would involve in each case, but not much. Some of them have specified their future bid missiles, some have not.

Of particular note are Saab, which offers two Globaleye radar surveillance aircraft and Boeing, which offers fourteen Growler versions equipped with electronic warfare in addition to the fifty Super Hornets.

How How much does Finland look towards its European counterparts? Obviously not much, although the interests are much in common.

“We do not take any position on the decisions of other countries, but we focus on finding the best solution for Finland,” says Puranen, Project Manager at the Ministry of Defense.

He admits that, of course, projects in other countries are being monitored, but from public sources.

“The choice of other countries does not affect our choice in any way. Our choice is based entirely on our own needs, the requirements of our operating environment and the guidance given to us by the state management during the project, ”says Puranen.

“We have exchanged information with Switzerland about our process and schedules, but we have not exchanged any confidential information.”

SamaA In the earlier autumn, the aviation trade magazine Siivet, which compared project candidates down.

The bottom line was that the F-35A survived when the magazine compared thirteen features. These included speed, weapons, electronic warfare capability, defeat capabilities, cost, and future potential.

The magazine believes that there are only excellent alternatives involved in the competition.

“However, the differences between the machine types are small in many respects and in some cases even non-existent. Each HX candidate won at least one feature in the comparison, ”the magazine notes.

“However, it is good to remember that only the Finnish Defense Forces can assess the actual military performance of the systems and their suitability for the overall Finnish defense system,” said the author, journalist and non-fiction writer. Pentti Perttula.

He also recalled that Wings magazine or any party outside the HX project could not make such a comparison.

“The probability of being hit right is 20 percent, but it’s much better than winning the lottery, for example.”