Fighter jets for the Air Corps?

Get well soon Banie lad

Thanks lads, the good wishes are much appreciated.

It's nothing life threatening but hopefully it will lead to a much improved quality of life for me.
I had a spinal cord stimulator implanted, to try and get on top of long term Ilioinguinal and genitofemoral neuropathy and nerve pain.

I now have a battery mounted in my arse, wired into my spine and controlled by an app 👀

Overwhelming and debilitating pain?
There's an app for that! (I hope)

The auld opioids are no joke. A good pal of mine had intensive cancer treatment on his head over the summer, and was on various opioids to cope with the worst of the damage. The treatment went really well, but he never felt worse as having to come off the painkillers once he was home recovering

Should probably add I wasn't trying to deal drugs here😂 Back to the Jets and realistically is the Gripen the only viable option?

I agree with pretty much all of that, I've pointed out repeatedly that our combination of "couldn't be bothered" morphing to "slow and sure we'll do something" attitude especially post 2022 has left us in the worst of all worlds, and will continue to bit us on the arse for years to come even if somehow the various departments actually started to engage with Reality.

In terms of production runs, if the French do push up to 48-50 a year then while they will have a backlog it's not horrifically bad yet, also they and the Italians are big fans of selling off hardware from the military to replace it with newer models, as such I think that 61 order includes replacements for sold aircraft, attritional losses and keeping the line hot, not sure whether there's actually a total increase in the numbers for the French Air Force? In which case, sure we might be able to get a deal like they gave Croatia for second hand Rafale's which wouldn't be the worst if it was on the table, lot fewer hours than some of the older 4th gen fighters.

I have seen comments that even if Canada doesn't jump their way the order from Ukraine pretty much means a second line in Sweden for Gripen, but again either we're at the back of the line for new build or a G2G from the Swedish stocks, though as you point out the "stored" ones could be already gone, and I doubt they would be thrilled for the moment to sell any in service aircraft.

The best time for all this would have been post 9/11, second worst was post 2014 Crimea, third worst would have been as soon as the full invasion happened in 2022, but god bless the DOD et al, they have got us to the absolute worst point short of a world war to be looking for large capital buys and new capability generation.

lease of who? The man European users need every airframe they have.

Nah, it's more they have made plenty of absolute balls up of their procurement time after time, remember our Department is modelled on their MOD after all, the all crunching Budget issues (particularly whenever their CASD is facing its generational investment) and of course interservice Bull.

The Nimrod rebuild was an attempt to use modern computing machined parts to mate to 1960's aircraft, only to find out that they were all basically hand crafted with variances between each airframe, it shouldn't have surprised anyone that it didn't work, given it was well known since the V bombers had the same issues. The Project should never have been started in the first place, and losing an entire aircraft and crew over Afghanistan did nothing to help the idea.

Harriers were just the fact that the only user was the RN and if it comes to what the RAF has to sacrifice when faced with budget issues it's always going to be the RN, hence the nonsense of chopping 35B order to get 35A's just to be able to have tactical nuclear bombing with US warheads, while conveniently crippling the billions of investment into the RN by leaving the Carrier wings short critical mass, so win all around for the RAF, screw everyone else.

The choice on the T1's is that they are not economically viable for upgrades and limited to air to air mostly, so the economic value of sustaining them is dropping which is what the other partners are faced with as well, but they are rebuilding/replacing with Typhoons, and the same argument has been made by the USAF over the first few dozen F22's and likely will be an issue for the first iterations of the various F35's for all the first users. The not ordering new ones by the UK is again just down to budget, the UK can fund its part in Tempest (maybe) or it can buy new 35's/Typhoons, it can't afford both. So "gap it and hope", just like their disaster of a RN fleet replenishment plan is, or whatever the hell the British Army is getting up to for their procurement plans.

But the UK has no interest in bring any T4 or T5's into service in the RAF at all, or being stuck holding the bag if the next Irish Government is SF et al, and would prefer nice Russians visiting rather than nasty NATO, or if nobody else comes forward to buy a handful of planes that may or may not fit in with whatever else they are using.

It might make "cute hoor" sense to us to try a game like that, but it really doesn't to the nations actually supplying the arms. The UK Supply chains have the other users of Typhoon and now new Gripen orders and some F35 part supply chains, along with the planned upgrades for the existing RAF fleet. For the UK that really doesn't have the spare millions in the defence budget at the moment, it just doesn't make sense.

Again though, that might benefit us, it doesn't for the UK.

Sounds like some SAAB Gripens is what the Irish air force needs specifically these ones,

Low maintenence can land anywhere cheap to fly sound perfect for the Irish air Force.