Chilean Air Force from June 28 to July 12 this year in country's north will conduct Salitre 2026 multinational exercises, in which besides F-16 Block 50 fighters and American fifth-generation F-35 fighters, Brazilian F-39 Gripen E fighters will also participate, supported by Embraer KC-390 multirole aircraft.
Brazilian Air Force Commander Brigadier General Marcelo Kanitz Damasceno confirmed participation in these regionally important exercises to Infodefensa. Recall that in March this year, first Gripen fighter assembled directly in Brazil was presented.
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As publication emphasizes, this will be first time Swedish Gripen confronts fifth-generation F-35 fighter in exercises. Here it is quite appropriate to recall that typically during such exercises American aircraft does not operate in stealth mode, but in any case it will be interesting to learn combat results between these two aircraft, even during training battles.
Moreover, worth mentioning Gripen and F-16 already previously met during joint exercises in this region, specifically at Cruzex 2024 in Brazil, where F-15s were also represented. For first time in practice, Swedish Gripen could be compared with American F-16 in context specifically that these two fighters sometimes are also rivals in various tenders.
Returning to this year's exercises, it is known that if Chilean and American fighters will use AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, Brazilian aircraft will use longer-range Meteor, which will have range restrictions.
In any case, these exercises can become not only interesting given option to compare three different fighters' capabilities (especially in context of indirect Gripen vs F-35 confrontation), but will also have practical benefit for Chile, which must determine where to move next in developing its combat aircraft fleet.
Namely decide main question whether to implement mixed fighter fleet together with fifth-generation F-35 aircraft, or focus on F-16 including modernization to Block 70 level.
Well, Gripen vs F-35 confrontation is interesting even by the fact that, for example, Saab recently quite boldly stated specifically their aircraft is ideal candidate for confrontation with russia, in context of promoting this fighter for Portugal, which today appears not to reject option of still purchasing American fifth-generation fighter, despite current U.S. President Donald Trumps unstable policy.
Moreover, naturally main victory candidate in Chile exercises should be F-35, especially since there is already history when this fighter literally crushed Gripen in battle for Canadian contract, where they now ponder whether to abandon further American aircraft procurement in favor of Swedish.
Previously, Defense Express reported that despite russia war threat, they are not planning to accelerate 200km weapon integration on F-35, with U.S. to blame.
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