DCS: AJS-37 Viggen Discussion

[JaNk0]

" I volunteer! "

Count me in as well, not much work to do at university, and love reading SweAF stories from cold war era.

[qmaster312]

Pretty excited for this one, I'm very interested in how it will perform in DCS multiplayer against 15's 27's and 29's

[QuiGon]

Pretty excited for this one, I'm very interested in how it will perform in DCS multiplayer against 15's 27's and 29's

 

Not so well. It's a strike aircraft, not a fighter. In a fighter role it would be comparable to a 3rd gen fighter like the MiG-21.

I'm talking about the AJ-37 of course. The JA-37 is a differenty story but that's not what we will get.

[Brisse]

Pretty excited for this one, I'm very interested in how it will perform in DCS multiplayer against 15's 27's and 29's

 

You need to do a reality check. Going up against these with the AJS is suicide. Try MiG-21bis, F-5E, F-4 etc... Those are going to be somewhat balanced encounters for the AJS-37.

[mattebubben]

Well first we are getting the Strike variant.

 

so its not a Air-Air Fighter so its not supposed to fight 15s,27s and 29s.

 

its a strike aircraft so like all strikers it should try to avoid getting into fights with fighters.

 

The Figther Variant would preform well and be comparable with F-15s Su-27s and Mig-29s but the Striker variant will not since thats not what its supposed to do.

 

the Striker variant will do things the F-15C, Su27S and Mig-29S cant since its a mach 2 capable aircraft with guided munitions like AGM-65s anti ship missiles and a number of other air-ground munitions including guided and unguided weapons.

 

And while it can do air-air combat thats only a secondary role and its not supposed to go head to head with modern fighter jets

and its only capable of using IR guided Aim-9s.

 

It will be capable to defend itself but you should not go chasing enemy fighters with it.

 

Sure if ur going with an Air-Air loadout you would have a decent advantage over a Mig-21 but since ur limited to just short range IR weapons you dont want to tangle with modern fighters.

 

But thats why you are Mach 2 capable and only slightly slower then a F-15 or Su-27 at sealevel (top speed is only 100 / 50 km/H slower then those 2)

 

So when on a strike mission and you get engaged youre best bet (and what you are supposed to do) is go low alt and go full AB and you will be as hard to catch as any fighter.

 

And with 2 Aim-9s you can also take advantage of any fighters you manage to jump but make no mistakes the AJ-37 (AJS-37) is NOT a dedicated fighter and as such combat against other fighter aircraft is only a last resort when you cant avoid it.

[SPIKEN]

AJS-37 Viggen thread readers,

 

Having followed this – and the ”next aircraft speculation” thread, I have read that someone likes the Viggen, some dont, some think it is junk, some say it has not met any action and is not warhardened and several both positive and negative remarks have been passed.

Here I just want to share my knowledge with you on what went on during this Cold War era, most of it learnt when I was employed by the SAAB Aircraft company in the mid-seventies, where I met several retired fighter pilots (mostly J-35 Dragon pilots), who told me some interesting stories on their so-called Incident missions.Most of the things happening in the air over the Swedish and The Soviet Union borders never met the public eye. For good reasons both parties wanted to keep it as secret as possible. One Viggen pilot, however, decided a few years ago to go public with his story on an Incident re-con mission, which went badly wrong. At the end of this post I will give you a summary of his related story. After having read it, you can start-up your DCS module of choice and try to outperform the IRL Viggen performance. The source is Kapten Göran Larsson story ”Dödligt drama över Östersjön” as printed in Flygrevyn 8/2010. If you want the whole story – google ”Viggen incidents”. It´s in Swedish though.

 

During the Cold War era the Swedish Airforce had what was called an Incident alertness group – mostly fighters but also re-con aircrafts. These groups were active on a 24/7 basis, often parked on the taxiway close to the runway, fully armed and tanked and pilot in cockpit – ready to take off on a very short notice.

The missions flown were somewhat strange (to my mind). The preconditions were: No preparation possible – Just up and away. The only thing the pilot knew was that he was going to fly eastwards- going to have a close encounter with a fully armed Soviet Union aircraft(s), with no knowledge of its or their intent and on top of that – any failure in the pilots assessment of the varying conditions during the encounter, could actually start a war.--(meaning ”Never ever go for the trigger”). This ”Cold War rule of engagement” was kept by both parties, as you can see in the IRL-story below. These Incident missions were flown frequently during the entire cold war era.

 

One of the ex- J-35 pilots told me the following: ”We flew these Incident missions very often and up in the border skies we often met the same Soviet Union pilots and since we flew wing tip to wingtip we often greeted one another through the cockpit. We even managed to send hand wawing messages to each other, which both understood as ”Lets have a friendly dogfighting exercise””

 

So some good - unlikely- ”Top Gun” excersises have also been flown over the Baltic Sea area.

 

Far from all Incidents were executed in that friendly manner, but most of them ended peacefully, some went wrong and a fraction of them went badly wrong, as the re-con mission mentioned abv. And here is a summary of the story told by the SH-37(recon version) pilot:

 

”In the summer of 1985, I was on a mission to document a Soviet Union naval excercise, taking place in the south east corner of the Baltic Sea. Being, unarmed, at work over international water, I was joined by 2 SU 15 Flagon F, fully armed with 2 radar- and 2 IR missiles. One of them stayed at a distance, one joined my wingtip.Having a fully armed foreign aircraft at your wingtip is a somewhat disturbing experience, so I started to ”dance” (Pilot slang for trying to get rid of the enemy by advanced maneuvers) with him, while still trying to do my job. After having ”danced” a while, it was time to fly home to refuel” So the first part of his mission ended without any real problems. It should also be mentioned that his operation was all the time watched over by a group of interceptor Viggens, flying around the southern part of the island of Gotland.

Starting his 2nd part of his mission he decided to do his best not to be met by the SU 15s again – so low flying ,radios and radar off. Still just after a few minutes at work he was again met by the same 2 SU 15s – same behaviour – one staying at a distance – one joining his wingtip.

”After having again tried to get rid of the SU 15 at my wingtip I decided to really shake him off. I flew straight at 550-700 km/h at 500 meters(1500 ft) above sea level when I initiated a Split S maneuvre, coming out of it at 100 meters and then, to my surprise saw in my rear mirror that the SU 15 pilot still was trying to follow me and he had completely lost his ability to fly, belly crashing into the sea followed by a large fire-ball, probably due to the four missiles he carried.”

The Viggen pilot then decided to end his mission, hurried back home. Initially he also discovered he was followed by the 2nd SU15 but this was also discovered by the interceptor Viggens at stand by over Gotland , who hurried to help him out and the SU 15 finally broke off.

 

Note 1: The SU 15 pilot could have easily destroyed the Viggen by firing a missile – He never did so, obeying the ”Cold War rule of engagement”

 

Note 2: Kapten Göran Larsson – The Viggen pilot – was a very experienced Viggen pilot and obviously felt comfortable by executing the split S, believing it was well within the envelope of the Viggen, whereas it was equally obvious and sadly enough outside of the SU 15 Flagon F envelope.

 

My conclusion over the Cold War era in the air: It fostered some very cool pilots on both sides.

 

Now I look forward to a day 1 DCS-AJS-37 Viggen buy!

[RaXha]

Thanks Spiken that was a very interesting read! :-)

[El Hadji]

Great info Spiken! Rep inbound!

 

EDIT: I might add that most of the info I share here, unless quoted from other sources, comes from three main sources: the first is a friend of mine who was a Viggen pilot (JA37) during the Cold War. Secondly I did my military service 1990/91 on the northern part of the Swedish Baltic coast (not Airforce though but we saw/heard quite a lot...). The third source is from when I worked for Volvo Aero Corporation (formerly Svenska Flygmotor and Volvo Flygmotor. Today the company name is GKN Aerospace) who made the RM8 engines for SAAB. One of my collegues there had vast experience of Viggen operations during the 70's and 80's. When I worked there, RM12 was in production but they still did some overhauls etc on the RM8. The plant has a pretty unique facility to conduct simulated high altitude jet engine tests (one of the, if not THE, first test facilities of this kind in the world).

Edited December 15, 2015 by El Hadji

[Mjau]

I'm from Sweden so this makes me very giddy and excited! :)

 

I understand people from other corners of the earth are not as thrilled about an obscure Swedish aircraft that never saw real combat or played any significant role in the grand scheme of things. But my suggestion is that try to be open-minded and learn a bit about this aircraft and it's peculiar saab traits and design solutions and I think anyone who is a fan of military aviation and technology can relate to some of the reasons why this bird is actually interesting and deserves to be in DCS!

[mattebubben]

This is a link to the article Spiken mentioned.

 

And thanks alot for mentioning it =)

 

[ame]http://www.flygtorget.se/illustrationer/fil_20110110093819.pdf[/ame]

 

Raxha what do you say? you translate Page one and il translate page 2 ? ^^

 

Im off to bed now but il translate the pages tomorrow for everyone not blessed with the knowledge of swedish ^^

[CoBlue]

600 Swedish pilots died during the Cold War :(

Here's a Swedish short documentary about Viggen : http://www.svtplay.se/video/3167141/kalla-krigets-fordon/kalla-krigets-fordon-sasong-2-avsnitt-6?start=auto

Edited December 15, 2015 by CoBlue

[repsol]

Rodd...

 

Excellent movie ! Describes the Viggen very well (to bad it is not translated though)

 

600 ! killed pilots...Thats even more then i would have thought

 

Close to 2 pilots every months payed the ultimate price to preserve our neutrality...

 

 

Respect to thoose guys !

[Brisse]

And here I thought the MiG-21 had a bad track record of lethal accidents. If this number "600" is true, then the Viggen is much worse.

 

But then again, how could it be true? There were only 329 Viggens built. Did every airframe kill two pilots during it's service life? I highly doubt that.

[Corrigan]

That number is, as I recall, for the entire 20th century.

[renhanxue]

And here I thought the MiG-21 had a bad track record of lethal accidents. If this number "600" is true, then the Viggen is much worse.

 

But then again, how could it be true? There were only 329 Viggens built. Did every airframe kill two pilots during it's service life? I highly doubt that.

J 29 Tunnan was one of the big culprits after WW2. Poorly understood flight characteristics early on paired with a very well entrenched culture of blatant disregard for safety regulations led to a shocking number of crashes. Out of 661 J 29's that served in the Swedish air force, 242 were written off as a result of crashes or other accidents, and 99 pilots were killed. Lansen and Draken were both pretty bad as well, but over the entire service life of the Viggen, "only" about 30 or so were lost in accidents. The problem seems to finally be mostly under control today with the Gripen, which has had only five hull losses in 20 years (all air forces operating it as well as prototypes included), and no dead pilots.

 

http://www.svfplhist.com has some more on this if you're interested.

Edited December 16, 2015 by renhanxue

[Brisse]

Thanks for clearing that up. First I thought the number was for the Viggen only, which for obvious reasons sounded crazy. If it's the entire SweAF during the 20th century (almost their entire history) then it makes sense.

[RaXha]

This is a link to the article Spiken mentioned.

 

And thanks alot for mentioning it =)

 

http://www.flygtorget.se/illustrationer/fil_20110110093819.pdf

 

Raxha what do you say? you translate Page one and il translate page 2 ? ^^

 

Im off to bed now but il translate the pages tomorrow for everyone not blessed with the knowledge of swedish ^^

 

 

I'll just see what my workload is like, if it's like yesterday I'll have plenty of spare time to translate :P

[QuiGon]

I wonder how many of those accidents where CFIT-accidents.

[WinterH]

I'd like to thank you all the Swedes in this thread for being pretty much awesome with all the information and translations you provide for us not-so-northern folk :).

[Sporg]

 

http://www.svfplhist.com has some more on this if you're interested.

 

Thanks for this link.

 

Some quite creepy accidents described there. :(

(Page is in Swedish)

[mattebubben]

Thanks for clearing that up. First I thought the number was for the Viggen only, which for obvious reasons sounded crazy. If it's the entire SweAF during the 20th century (almost their entire history) then it makes sense.

 

yea and most of those accidents is due to the way swedish pilots trained.

 

They did ALOT of very low altitude flying even in bad weather.

 

and while that made them great pilots the degree of danger resulted in a higher number of accidents then many other nations who did not practice tree top flying as much.

 

Edit: Ps im working on the Translation of the text i linked yesterday (the full story that Spiken told about)

I should be done later today.

Edited December 16, 2015 by mattebubben

[RaXha]

That number is, as I recall, for the entire 20th century.

 

Yes, it is for the entire WWII (in Sweden known as the readiness age) and cold war period. :-)

[RaXha]

I'd like to thank you all the Swedes in this thread for being pretty much awesome with all the information and translations you provide for us not-so-northern folk :).

 

Well you know, It's more or less our sworn duty to spread our love for SAAB across the globe now! :music_whistling:

[Skjold]

Cool archive photos for you guys.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BaconSarnie]

Well you know, It's more or less our sworn duty to spread our love for SAAB across the globe now! :music_whistling:

 

Many of us already have a love for their aircraft, their cars on the other hand.......