There may be a flyable future ahead as Heartblur announces the Saab 35 Draken for DCS. This mach capable fighter was developed for and flown by the Royal Swedish Air Force for many years and exported to Finland, Denmark and Austria.
The Dragon is AI (for now)
Heatblur announced this new content project today on their Facebook page. The announcement is very much one for an AI aircraft being added to the series. Though its clearly to be a companion for the AJS-37 Viggen module that they developed, the Draken is going to be made available for free to all DCS users.
Our draken (sic) will include authentic weaponry and will span across various eras and variants of the aircraft. As an AI aircraft, it will be a perfect addition to missions and campaigns, and serve as an immersive escort or authentic opponent for Heatblur and community mission content. Once it is complete, it will be available across all maps and versions of DCS as part of the base DCS World game regardless of whether you own the AJS 37 or not!
That’s not all that came with this announcement either. The other nugget here is the final part of Heatblur’s statement for today. Though fully intended to be an AI aircraft for now, apparently they intend for it to sometime later become a full fidelity module.
A backgrounder on the DrakenFor now, the inclusion of the Draken is limited to an AI aircraft; but we have always considered the Draken to be a prime addition to our high fidelity roadmap, and hope to make it a reality at some point!
SAAB built 644 of these aircraft with its first flight in 1955 and seeing operation service starting in 1960. The last of these were removed from active service by the RSAF in 1999 with Austria retiring theirs in 2005 and the National Test Pilot School based in the United States retired their small fleet in 2009. That’s an incredible length of time for an aircraft like this to operate.
They were at first primarily armed with two 30mm ADEN cannons and later modified to carry a single cannon and equipment for air to air missiles. Those missile included Swedish license builds of the AIM-4 Falcon and AIM-9 Sidewinder missile.
Similar to the Viggen, the Draken was designed from the outside to be operated from fortified roadways. In the event of a military confrontation, Swedish airforce assets would be distributed around the country on roadways making them harder to find and destroy.
Find out more about Heatblur’s announcement on their Facebook page.
Image Source: Heatblur Facebook page
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