You’re looking at max takeoff weight not full fuel. Full fuel is 0.82 vs 1.19
You’re also ignoring the thrust curve of the F-16, it picks up a lot faster.
Currently the Gripen’s high end thrust appears to be significantly overperforming as well.
A better comparison is the Mirage 2000 which has both a higher T/W, and a lower wing loading across the board.
F-16ADF:
F-16C:
Mirage 2000C-S5:
Gripen:
As you can see…
It is worth mentioning the 200 knots airspeed test for the Gripen was on 100% throttle, without afterburner. It accelerates beyond 225 knots when in full afterburner on 30 minutes fuel load.
The rest speaks for itself, it easily out-rates two equivalent fighters with a higher T/W ratio… one with a higher wing loading and the other with lesser.
Wing Sweep Angle / Wing Loading with 30 minutes fuel / Thrust-to-weight at 30 minutes fuel
JAS 39A Gripen - 52 degrees / – 301 kg/m2 / 0.83
F-16ADF - 40 degrees / – 400 kg/m2 / 0.8:1
F-16C - 40 degrees / – 406 kg/m2 / 1.01:1
Mirage 2000 - 58 degrees / – 256 kg/m2 / 0.92
IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THE THRUST TO WEIGHT IS A DYNAMIC NUMBER THAT INCREASES WITH SPEED.
Of the three, all have negative static stability margins. The Mirage 2000 gains no additional lift from a lifting surface such as a canard or tailplane, instead benefits solely from the natural pitching moment of the nose especially at low speeds which can be seen in the sustained turn rate chart. The want for the nose to pitch up naturally means that it need only counter the upward motion with some small downward deflection of the elevators. This eliminates the issue of pitch trim drag from the Delta.
The F-16 benefits from having an elevator that can provide lift, as well as reduce the aforementioned trim drag. It is forced to pitch the nose down, contributing more to the overall lift of the design and improving sustained turn rates… although the F-16 opted to reduce the overall size of the wings in favor of taking more advantage of the additional lift, which later they adjusted to increase stability with an increased area horizontal tail (IAHT).
The Gripen gets the static instability not from the basic wing design - but from the canard. When the canard is in a somewhat neutral setting it provides additional lift forward of the center of gravity. This causes the aircraft to go from neutral or stable to negative static stability. The reasoning for this design is simple, they do not suffer from deep stalls or recovery issues as the F-16 type would where the elevator doesn’t contribute much to the static stability… take it out of the equation and the F-16 would be MORE unstable, not less.
The Gripen, due to the canards is able to have a very high instantaneous turn rate. The aircraft becomes statically neutral or even stable when the canard is deflected at high angles. This allows the aircraft to maintain a high angle of attack without concern for departure or deep stalls. The energy loss during high angle of attack maneuvers (whether at low speed, or at high speed) is not seen in-game currently. Sustained turns should be high, but only in regions where the canard has little deflection. This is why the sustained turn appears to be wrong for the Gripen - it should have a steeper slope up to around 20 deg/s when low on fuel (the Mirage 2000 currently has ~19 deg/s when low on fuel).
Additionally, it should plateau early because the thrust SHOULD drop off after 0.8 - 0.9 mach just like all other F404 variations (there is little difference between the engine models, they all have similar thrust curves and the in-game model is nowhere close).
Y’all are welcome to critique me, I’m not obliged to care or respond to the criticism.