Finnish Military news megathread.

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
So I thought to start this megathread. It may not interest that many people, but it's still a fun addition to me.


Finland is renewing its aging Hornet fleet in a project known as HX Project (HX-hanke), and we're sending customized RFPs for the countries and companies making them. The candidates are F-35, Super Hornet + Growler, Saab Gripen E/F + Global Eye AWACS, Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon.

We received answers to our initial RFPs a year ago and received answers at the start of this year and based on those answers we've gone through the first round of negotiations with the manufacturers and governments to come up with a more specific tailored to Finland package and later this autumn we're sending our second and final RFPs after which another final round of negotiations along with test flights and simulations to verify claims will be held in 2020. Based on these our military will make a decision for the new fighter jet system and other systems included in 2021 and recommend it to the government who then either accepts the proposal or can override it and go for a different proposal. The jets will arrive in 2025-2030.

The amount sought by the military is 62-66, and our current government has stated in their government programme that the capacity of our Horners will be replaced in full which has been interpreted to mean an acquisition of 64 new fighters which is the size of the original Hornet acquisition.

The cost for the initial acquisition is estimated to be between 7-10 billion euros which will be funded from outside the regular military budget and instead funded via a loan because our current budget (2.7 bn € a year with something like 700 mn. € for acquisitions) by itself does not make it possible to fund a project of this scale.

Also we're nearing the signing of the deal which will provide our navy four new Pohjanmaa class corvettes to replace seven ships we're retiring.
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
So the government has taken stance on the budget of the HX Project. The previous estimate was 7-10 billion and the government has given full support for a 10 billion euro budget and now it's apparently possible that if it fits the acquisition budget, even more than just the ~64 fighter jets can be acquired.
Tärkeitä päätöksiä

This is the sort of a thing that I feel like asking if I should be going to liquor store to get something to celebrate this with. But it's only Tuesday...
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!

More news.

Finnish Army has received all 100 Leo2a6 it ordered from Netherlands in 2014. The deliveries happened on 20 per year basis due to payments being done for 20 per year.

This leaves us with a tank fleet of 100 Leo2a4 and 100 Leo2a6. Quite respectable considering our largest tank fleet in history was like 160-170 T72M and then like 70-80 T-55.

200 Leopard 2s has a much higher performance.
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!

The test flights are approaching as they start on January.

The schedule has been revealed.

The first one to be flown is Eurofighter Typhoon on January 10th with the strength of 2-3 aircraft we'll test. The tests will last 9 days for each aircraft.

The second one is Dassault Rafale on January 21st. The next one on January 30th is Saab JAS 39 Gripen E. The 10th day of February will be the F-35's turn with four F-35 and finally on 19th of February it will be Super Hornet's turn. Boeing will bring in two Super Hornets and one Growler.

The main purpose of the test flight process will include verifying manufacturers' claims of the aircraft. The flights will be performed on night time as well along with high altitude, low altitude and aircraft are given land and sea targets.

All active and passive sensor abilities are not able to be shown to us due to information security reasons because we don't want them to be compromised to Russians. This is why for instance, Finnish officers will travel to US to test some Growler abilities on US soil.

By the end of the month, Finland will send the second more detailed RFQs to all the manufacturers and governments. One of the largest deciding factors in this competition is also a very large scale simulated war game which we will use to assess the performance of the new fighter jets and how well they'll work for us.

Also during the upcoming test flights, each manufacturer will be given a day where they are given a chance to present their fighter jet to Finnish media and news.

-----

It'll be quite exciting to see how this will go. I am heavily in favour of F-35, but I do hope it'll perform well in our tests. Its availability issues have been worrying me, and whether or not those availability issues can be properly fixed on time for when we make our decision and when we take the HX in use between the years of 2025-2030.
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
Translation:

Finland sent the specified RFQs for the new fighter jets: ''The amount of aircraft will sooner shrink than grow.''

All jet manufacturers will bring their fighters to Pirkkala early on during next year.
ee9012c51817439197fb49bd4a48b366.jpg


The Defense Forces has sent a specified RFQ about the fighter jet acquisition which is meant to replace the performance of the Hornets.

The recipient of the RFQ are the five multi role fighter jet manufacturers with their armaments and systems: Boeing F/A-18 E/F + EA-18G from USA, Lockheed Martin F-35 from USA, Saab JAS Gripen 39 E/F + Global Eye from Sweden, Dassault Rafale from France and Eurofighter Typhoon from Britain.

The specified tenders are expected to be received by the end of January next year. After this during fall of 2020 the final offers are asked from the companies involved. The Finnish Government makes the final acquisition decision in 2021.

At the beginning of October the Finnish government set the budget limit at 10 billion euros. With this sum, the performance of the Hornets is expected to be replaced in full.

The amount of aircraft could deviate from previously discussed 64.

The program director of the HX project Lauri Puranen from the Defense Ministry says that based on the RFQ, all manufacturers have challenges in staying in 10 billion euros.

''The amount of fighter jets will sooner shrink than grow. It's based on the answers we've received.'' Puranen says.

With 10 billion euros the offerers must be able to offer asides from the fighter jets themselves the needed armament, maintenance of the system, testing equipment and needed support functions. The price of the jets is just one part of the greater whole.

The project will be funded with separate funding, and payments for the project will be paid for a decade on a yearly basis. The use of the fighter jets is to be funded from within the Defense Forces' budget.

More information is expected to be acquired about the candidate fighter jets next year when the fighter jets are coming to Finland for testing. HX Challenge will be held in Pirkkala. Here we are just testing to verify whether the information the manufacturers gave us about the jets is accurate.

Based on current knowledge, all manufacturers are going to participate.

''If one of the candidates isn't coming, then it is likely that said candidate is considering their own participation in the HX Project's competition. Such indications do not exist currently.'' Puranen says.

The new fighter jets are supposed to be taken into use in phases between 2025 and 2030, and we're intending to use them for 30 years.

-----------------------------------

I will be very happy based on this information that if we manage to get 64 F-35. But as people here in this thread have noted, it is likely that the end result may be a bit smaller amount of aircraft, and apparently that won't be such a bad situation as I've feared. Because based on these statements, 64 is not the bare minimum of fighter jets that are absolutely needed to defend the entire airspace of Finland without abandoning parts of the country from protection and that small deviation downwards will not change the big picture by that much.

And the 64 has been argued by this.
Guc2rSQ.jpg

64 jets of which a quarter is in maintenance. The rest of the 48 are divided in half between the northern half of the country and southern half of the country. Out of the 24 per half of the country, half are in readiness for preparing to deploy to missions, half are in missions currently. Out of the 12 in missions, four are in mission, four are returning and four are going to the mission.

But as I've heard that peace time availability rate is different from wartime and we could get many more jets from maintenance to action because usually in peace time even smaller faults lead to fighter jet being grounded even if it doesn't exactly affect combat capabilities or flight safety.

Like if I recall correctly, US fighter squadrons that are in US for no-combat tasks usually have lower abailability ratings at around 70% and the ones in theater in actual war routinely have availability in 90% range.

So even if the end result of the HX Project was like 58 F-35, it'd still be an acceptable solution.
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
F-35s are stupid expensive compared to other fighters, though.
F-35 cost just dropped below 80 million dollars so it's actually now as affordable as 4th gen candidates like Rafale and Super Hornet and much cheaper than the Typhoon. And we don't know a thing about Gripen E's price.
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!

An excellent piece of writing pointing out how much of our artillery pieces is going to be obsolete and removed in the next ten years.

Over 500 howitzers will be obsolete and removed from service. Leaving us with only over 200 howitzers. With our defense budget tied up in acquisition of our new corvettes and fighter jets, it won't leave money available to replace these asides from maybe exercising our option of 48 more K9 howitzers in our K9 howitzer deal.

The good news is that our current artillery count is scaled for a wartime army strength of the 90s which was quite a lot higher than it is this day, so we can make do with the artillery we'll be left.
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!

The test flights of the new fighter jet candidates have now started with Eurofighter Typhoon being the first followed up by Rafale, Gripen, F-35 and Super Hornet.

The purpose of these flights is to test manufacturers' claims on capabilities of the aircraft. Meanwhile Finland is waiting for answers to the specified RFQs till the end of January. After that we will begin the new round of negotiations that will last till autumn when best and final offers are received, and our militaty brings the best performing system as an acqusition proposal to the government next year.

In the specified RFQ the number of fighter jets offered by each candidate is no longer 64 as all manufacturers have had problems fitting 64 into 10 billion euro cap. And in the conditions of RFQ, manufacturers are not allowed to disclose number of fighter jets in their offer. This is probably to avoid public discourse getting fixated on number of aircraft instead of the weapon system performance as a whole.

And one thing that may reduce the acquisition from 64 aircraft to a lower number is that the operating costs of the new fighter jet can't exceed that of the Hornet fleet at 250 million a year for 9000 flight hours for 62 airframes.

-----

This being said, I expect the number of acquired aircraft to drop between 50-60 aircraft. With all manufacturers being in trouble to fit the 64 aircraft to 10 billion euros and all new fighter jets being more expensive to operate than the Hornet, I see a moderate decrease in number of aircraft acquired.
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
Lockheed Martin has gotten itself into quite the stir here. The recent news reveal that they have hired Suomalainen Kenraalikonsultointi Oy (in English Finnish General [the rank of general not the other meaning for general that is a synonym to commonplace] Consulting ltd) as a consultant in their bid to offer the F-35 to Finland. Said consulting firm is headed by Jarmo Lindberg who is the recently retired Finnish Defense Forces commander and prior to that the Air Force Commander. He has been a very important figure in HX Project negotiations and is suspected to have tons of information on the other four candidates' fighter jet systems as he's been flying all of them, been involved in receiving offers with technical data, etc... so now pretty much everyone from the press to the President, Parliament and Defense Ministry have gotten angry at this turn of events. It's viewed as unethical conduct by Lindberg to go work for LM as consultant when he has inside knowledge of other candidate's tenders to Finland. A year ago he was sitting on the buyer's seat as the Commander and now he is sitting behind one of the seller's seats. This whole situation has proved to be quite the clusterfuck.


I am hoping this doesn't encourage the politicians to override the Defense Forces' proposal for acquiring the F-35 if the F-35 proves to be the best performing system in the war-gaming simulations next year.

----

And Eurofighter improves their offer to Finland. We are now invited to become a full member of Eurofighter consortium.


Eurofighter has offered Finland the chance to join Europe's largest combat aircraft programme in an updated proposal to the HX fighter acquisition programme.

...

The proposal has been submitted by the UK Government with the support of the Governments of Germany, Italy and Spain, the nations which are represented in the Eurofighter industry consortium.

It offers Finland sovereign control of its defence capability and security of supply as well as a combat proven, swing-role aircraft which will form the backbone of European defence for decades to come.[/QUOTE]
I'll have to say that Eurofighter consortium has done quite a good offer based from publicly shared info. They said that they offer the widest range of different armament including air-to-air, air-to-ground and air-to-sea as well as great local industry participation by allowing us to do assembly of the aircraft here along with giving lots of opportunities and freedom to local industry to develop and upgrade the Typhoon without needing authorization from abroad. Now with this we could also be looking at some parts production for the Typhoon here. Given also the heavy emphasis by Typhoon on air-to-air (which for Finland matters the most), quick QRA capabilities in fast climb rate and high operating altitude along with over 80% readiness, Typhoon seems like a very potent solution. Also security of supply of armament for Typhoon is much better than Rafale because Typhoon can accept AMRAAM as well as the Meteor, so in crisis one would not be solely reliant on one nation.

After the F-35, I place Typhoon as the second best choice.

Edit: And considering that Finland is seeking 60-64 aircraft and we are a small nation of 5,5 million, our acquisition is simply titanic in scale for us and for Eurofighter consortium as well when one considers the largest operator UK with 65 million people has 160, the second largest operator with 80 million people, Germany, with 140, the third largest operator Italy with 65 million people has over 90, the fourth largest operator Spain with 47 million people has a bit over 70, the fifth largest operator Saudi-Arabia with its massive oil money has also a bit over 70, Qatar and Kuwait with their fat loads of oil as well and being roughly in the same class as Finland in population have 24 and 28 respectively, Austria with 9 million inhabitants has 15 Typhoons and finally Oman with 4.8 million has a dozen.

So considering how significant our acquisition is in absolute terms for Eurofighter, and how titanic it is in relative to our population and economy, it's due for us to receive membership of the EF-consortium and some parts manufacturing if we end up acquiring Typhoon.
 
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PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
Lockheed Martin has gotten itself into quite the stir here. The recent news reveal that they have hired Suomalainen Kenraalikonsultointi Oy (in English Finnish General [the rank of general not the other meaning for general that is a synonym to commonplace] Consulting ltd) as a consultant in their bid to offer the F-35 to Finland. Said consulting firm is headed by Jarmo Lindberg who is the recently retired Finnish Defense Forces commander and prior to that the Air Force Commander.

Quite common tactic for them, in USA involvement in any procurement process practically guarantees well paid advisor position after retirement.
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
Quite common tactic for them, in USA involvement in any procurement process practically guarantees well paid advisor position after retirement.
And our former Commander of Armed Forces probably cares less of a fuck after he was unjustly sacked from his position due to some of his subordinates verbally abusing reservists in an exercise and he was blamed for not intervening in timely manner after hearing from said abuse. But some months after he was sacked from the position and his second term denied, the courts found him not guilty.

So I guess at that kind of a position, one can give less of a fuck about optics.
 

Tyzuris

Primarch to your glory& the glory of him on Earth!
So the Coronavirus situation has caused some delays in the final round of negotiations for HX project. Originally they were supposed to be ready by summer and we would have had final offers by autumn, but now with less traveling restrictions, they are scheduled for September-November along with final performance evaluations. Most of performance evaluation was already held at HX Challenge event in Pirkkala Air Base in Satakunta Air Command.

There will be roughly a week per candidate reserved for negotiations.

And also the HX project will increase the defense budget for next year by 1.7 billion euros which is an increase of 54 percent as suggested by the Ministry of Defense. The 10 billion euro acquisition will be paid between the years of 2021-2031. The order authorization for the hardware is 9.4 billion out of the 10 billion euros. Then there is roughly 600 million euros outside the order authorization reserved for construction of infrastructure, hiring temporary workforce for the project, project management, purchase of expert services from domestic companies and organizations.


The budget for Finnish Defense Forces will be 4.87 billion euros next year and as such also pass over the 2% GDP (well we're not in NATO, so kinda moot point) IIRC for the first time since WW2.

And here is the cost structure of the entire HX project:
HX-hankkeen-elinkaaren-aikaisten-kustannusten-arvioitu-jakautuminen-vuosina-2021%E2%80%932060-768x362.jpg

Hankinnan tilausvaltuus = The order authorization of the acquisition

Hankinnan muu rahoitus= Other funding of the project

Käyttö ja ylläpito = Operations - and maintenance costs

Elinkaaripäivitys = Mid-life upgrade

And these are in the value of € in the year 2020.

Edit: and the decision for what fighter jet system and at which quantities will be bought will be done next year.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
Is there an estimation on the cost per flight hour for the Jets in comparison to the 9000 per flight hour with the current Finnish Hornet fleet?
 

ATP

Well-known member
Good.And you still get more nodern fighters,then my country /Poland/.Lucky you.
P.S Only Gripen could operate from roads - maybe take them for that reason ?
 

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