2-niner

Yeah I see what you're saying that according to the Swedish plan about how things were supposed to unfold the Viggen didn't really need to have a very fancy RWR, or hardly any RWR at all. So I understand that I respect that - I really do. There's just a part of me that wonders if that really is the best strategy... I'm sort of playing devils advocate here now since I actually think Swedens defense strategy during the cold war was really sound, but one could surely argue that in war things doesn't usually go to plan, and so if you have equipment made for a specific plan and that plan goes out the window, what do you do? It's of course a risk that Sweden decided to take and I think it was the right choice. But STILL :) it just seems so obvious to buy the cheaper/better stuff rather than the more expensive/worse stuff. But yeah it probably was in order to invest in Swedish industry, which makes sense in a way.

You're probably right. It just seems silly to spend what must have been a lot of money on developing your own RWR when you could have just bought something which is both far better and probably far cheaper. But it's of course possible that they saw it as an investment in the future of Swedish flight/weapons industry like you say. If that is true then it makes you wonder what other components could have been bought instead of developed at home, and in what way that would have made the aircraft different. I mean, I'm happy that so much of it was developed in Sweden because it makes it so much more unique, but it's also interesting to just wonder what if this or that american component would have been used instead...

Does anyone know about the history of the RWR in the Viggen? I'm mainly interested in why Sweden didn't buy an RWR from the US since it seems like the AN/ALR-46 was available at the time (although I could be wrong about that) and that is far more capable than the RWR the Viggen ended up with. So how come they decide to develop their own (inferior) RWR when they could have bought something better off the shelf, so to speak? I'm probably being super ignorant here, there was probably a good reason for this, but hey that's why I'm asking :)