The Gripen: Sweden's Fighter Jet Masterpiece

Across the entire world, few nations treat their fighter aircraft with the deadly seriousness of Sweden. It’s a place with less than one one-hundredth of the defense budget of the United States, just one person for every 134 people in China, none of the military-industrial autocracy of Russia, and little to no involvement in the fighter jet initiatives of the European Union. Yet from the revolutionary Draken to the groundbreaking Viggen, little Sweden has proven that it’s a natural talent at building fighter aircraft that can stand alongside the best on Earth.

And in all the storied history of Swedish fighter aircraft, there is only one plane that can be rightfully regarded as its masterwork: the JAS 39 Gripen. Fast, nimble, and armed to the teeth, the Gripen stands alongside some of the very best aircraft of the modern day, with a near-spotless track record in operation and a price tag that few aircraft of its quality can even hope to match. Coming up on three decades of continuous service, the Gripen is getting better and better, with a rapidly strengthening claim as the best non-stealth fighter jet on Earth.

Today, we’ll look under the hood, check out the fire and brimstone carried on its pylons, and explore the past, present, and very bright future of the masterpiece of Swedish engineering.

A Nation That Designs Its Own Defense

To find the genesis of the aircraft known as the Gripen, we have to turn the clock back to the late 1970s, to a world that’s very different from the one we know today. At that time, Sweden was sworn to a military policy upheld by two central pillars: strict and total military neutrality, and the principle of so-called “total defense.”

Despite the Cold War around them, Sweden would not align itself with either side — not by joining NATO, not by becoming part of the Soviet Union, and not by maintaining other formalized alliances with Washington or Moscow. But nor would they sit by and simply allow war to happen to them, if either side wished. In the interest of maintaining their neutrality by force, especially against the nearer and more diplomatically unfriendly Soviet Union, Sweden had spent the years after World War II building a very strong, technologically self-sufficient military relative to its size.

The purpose wasn’t to prevent Sweden from being defeated in a head-to-head confrontation with a Soviet war machine that would undoubtedly wipe it out in the end. Instead, the goal was to make an invasion of Sweden so obviously costly for an attacker that it would be deemed not worth the trouble.

To that end, Sweden took it upon itself not just to purchase, but to design and manufacture a broad range of warfighting tools — and especially combat aircraft. After a pair of early models, the Tunnan and the Lansen, brought Stockholm into the jet age, Sweden came out with its first really impressive fighter, the Draken.

We reference the Draken not just to give a little history lesson, but to explain just how early Sweden began setting the standard for cutting-edge fighter design. When it went into service in 1960, the Draken was the first so-called double-delta combat aircraft to go operational anywhere in the world, the first combat aircraft to perform the Cobra maneuver, and the first fully supersonic aircraft to ever be deployed to western Europe. Its successor, the Viggen, was introduced in 1971 and became both the first mass-produced aircraft of any kind to use front winglets, called canards, and the first ever to carry a digital central computer — making it quite possibly the world’s most advanced warplane at that time.

One Shot to Get It Right

At the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s, new aircraft like America’s F-16 and the Soviet MiG-29 entered service. As a result, it became abundantly clear to the Swedish Air Force that it would need a new fighter of its own if it was going to keep up with the rapid technological advancement of the era.

And if Sweden was going to endeavor to build a new fighter at all, then whatever it came up with wouldn’t just have to be flyable. It would have to keep up the legacy of technological advancement, high performance, and clear fighting utility that the Swedish Air Force was so known for — and it would have to do that not solely for reasons of national pride.

For Sweden, developing such advanced, even groundbreaking equipment came with a catch: every time the country embarked on such an endeavor, it had one shot to get it right. Funding its projects all alone, Sweden could handle the staggering expenditures required to develop and indigenously produce a fighter jet — but not that often, and not more than once at a time. And if Sweden’s new fighter didn’t do the job like it was supposed to, then the country would be left practically undefended against cutting-edge adversary technology until a new fighter could be funded, designed, and mass-produced from scratch.

The vision Sweden’s leaders put forth was for an aircraft that would put it on par with the best modern jets of that era. They wanted a Mach-2-capable fighter optimized to carry modern weaponry, plus the newest onboard technologies — from fly-by-wire controls to radar tracking and battlefield awareness, to new aerodynamic design principles and building materials.

It would have to satisfy a range of demanding requirements to pull its weight as Sweden’s one and only modern fighter, including the ability to serve in a truly multirole capacity and the ability to leverage a less-costly single-engine design without losing power. Finally, it would have to be optimized to fight the sorts of battles Sweden planned to engage in. That meant being able to take off and land using short stretches of Swedish freeway meant to function as remote landing strips and temporary bases in a time of crisis.

The aircraft would also have to be easy to train young conscripts to work with, easy to maintain for inexperienced mechanics, and quick to turn around from one combat mission to the next. After all, these were aircraft meant to deploy across the nation at short notice and defend areas in small, self-sufficient groups, in what could very well become a last-ditch defense of Swedish territory.

Choosing the JAS 39

The nation considered several design proposals from the Saab company, including an attack aircraft called the Saab 38 and a significantly upgraded Viggen called the A-20, as well as competing offers from abroad. The Americans offered the F-16, the F/A-18, and the upgraded F-20 Tigershark, while the French offered the Mirage 2000.

In the end, the Swedes went with a design called the JAS 39 — a single-seater with front canards, little winglets below and behind the cockpit, and a frame that was intentionally made to be aerodynamically unstable, something a pilot could address with the aid of fly-by-wire technology. It got its name via public competition in Sweden: the Gripen, the Swedish name for the mythical half-lion, half-eagle beast, the gryphon.

The first Gripen prototype rolled out in 1987, less than five years after the design and development program began. It wouldn’t fly until eighteen months later, as its builders worked out issues with its flight controls, but on the ninth of December 1988, test pilot Stig Holmström blasted Sweden’s new fighter into the sky for the first time.

The flight-testing sequence wasn’t easy by any means. A prototype crash injured another test pilot, requiring over a year of delays, and a couple of years later an airframe was destroyed during an aerial display for the public in Sweden. Luckily, that pilot survived as well. Flight testing wouldn’t conclude until the mid-1990s, and it took even longer for Sweden to decide on how to arm the thing.

But despite the setbacks, Sweden had decided that the Gripen was the way of the future. All its flight issues seemed as if they could be worked out, and in the time it took to get the aircraft into production, Saab had already put together a successor variant — the C and D versions — to replace the A and B versions Sweden started with. Known as the Turbo Gripen, the C and D integrated in-flight refueling, onboard oxygen regeneration, modern avionics, and much more.

The Gripen hadn’t been an easy project; its delays, cost overruns, and early crashes had made it seem as if the plane might be dead on arrival, while a bribery scandal led to major public-relations problems back home. But by the late 1990s, the ranks of the Swedish Air Force were swelling with their first batch of Gripens — and nothing short of excellence would follow.

Specs and Capabilities

Like most modern combat aircraft, the Gripen has gone through a number of design revisions over time, culminating in three key iterations: the A/B, the C/D, and the E/F. Simple enough. We’ll skip the details on the A/B, as those have mostly been upgraded, and instead examine the stats for the C/D, the Gripen currently in broadest use across the world.

The Gripen registers an overall length of 14.9 meters tip to tail — just under 49 feet for the single-seater C variant. The two-seater D is just a hair longer. Its wingspan stretches out at 8.4 meters, 27 and a half feet, giving it a slightly smaller profile than America’s F-16 or China’s J-10, and a far smaller frame than the F-15 or Russia’s Su-27.

Sitting empty, it weighs in at just barely less than fifteen thousand pounds — 6,800 kilograms — with a maximum takeoff weight a bit over double that, 14,000 kilograms or about 31,000 pounds. Of that weight, the Gripen can carry up to 5,300 kilograms or 11,700 pounds of payload, depending on how much fuel it’s carrying. It’s a single-engine fighter, relying on a Volvo turbofan engine with afterburners that produces 18,100 pound-thrust of force at maximum strength.

Slicing through the air, the Gripen can hit a top speed of twice the speed of sound at altitude — 2,100 kilometers per hour, or 1,300 miles per hour. Flying through thicker air at sea level, it caps out at Mach 1.2, 1,470 kilometers per hour or 913 miles per hour. The Gripen pushes a substantial combat range of 800 kilometers or 500 miles, uncommon for a fighter of its size, while it can manage a journey of 3,200 kilometers or 2,000 miles on a non-combat flight with full fuel. It tops out at a service ceiling of 15,240 meters or fifty thousand feet, and it’s capable of withstanding nine times the force of gravity during tight maneuvers, on par with the very best fighters on Earth.

Of all the Gripen’s performance stats, however, the most impressive is its ability to take off and land on exceptionally short runways. To land, the Gripen needs a straightaway of just half a kilometer — 500 meters, or 1,640 feet. To take off, it needs even less: four hundred meters, or barely 1,300 feet. It can perform those takeoffs from all manner of austere runways, including strips of automobile freeway built for that very purpose, and can even take off and land with a layer of snow on the ground.

Fire and Brimstone on the Pylons

In terms of armament, the Gripen poses a formidable challenge for even the best adversary fighters. On a respectable set of eight hardpoints, the C/D can carry up to six short-range air-to-air missiles — including the European IRIS-T, the American Sidewinder, and the joint South African and Brazilian A-Darter. It can carry up to four Meteor or AMRAAM missiles to engage air targets beyond visual range, along with a selection of air-to-ground and air-to-ship missiles, or a variety of precision-guided and unguided bombs.

For reconnaissance, the Gripen can graft on a range of external sensor pods made in Sweden, France, and elsewhere. For electronic warfare, it became the first aircraft to operate an expendable radio-frequency jammer developed by the Italian company Leonardo, known as the BriteCloud. Behind the stick, Gripen pilots can rely on a head-up display and other modern tech, while for close-range engagements the aircraft’s 27-millimeter revolver cannon will get the job done.

The aircraft is renowned for its ease of maintenance, ease of training relative to its capabilities in flight, and its ability to be combat-ready at the drop of a hat. A Gripen returning from an air-to-air engagement can land, be refueled, rearmed, and serviced by a team of five conscripts and a technician, and take off again to re-enter the fight, in a span of just ten minutes.

The Gripen E/F: A Generation Ahead

As impressive as the C/D already is, we’ve got to talk about the sheer power and performance of the latest Gripen variant, the E/F. The new-generation aircraft first flew in 2017 and was only delivered to its first global air forces in 2021, meaning it integrates all the bells and whistles 21st-century technology can provide.

The new aircraft is just a bit longer and wider, with the latest copies expected to feature new trapezoidal wings to enhance carrying capacity. The E/F is about 1,200 kilograms or 2,600 pounds heavier while sitting empty, and can fly weighing 2,500 kilograms or 5,500 pounds more than the C/D at maximum. Those changes come courtesy of its new engine, a new iteration of the General Electric F414, which can push the jet to a higher service ceiling while providing better range — owed to greater fuel efficiency combined with a higher fuel capacity than before.

But the real improvements on the E/F are in its armament and onboard technologies. Not only does it feature ten hardpoints rather than its predecessor’s eight, but its avionics are upgraded to a standard similar to that of fifth-generation fighters like the American F-35A. Those avionics now include a top-of-the-line radar — the first of its kind able to swivel and increase its field of view leftward or rightward rather than being fixed in place. Among other things, that allows the Gripen to fire radar-guided missiles like the Meteor and guide the missile through an adversary aircraft’s radar blind spots, while still maintaining a radar fix of its own.

The new Gripen offers advanced electronic warfare capabilities, 360-degree spherical battlefield awareness, onboard artificial intelligence, and advanced tools to heighten the cockpit awareness of its pilot. It can integrate with smart weapons to change targets after they’re fired, verify hits on target, and more, while its onboard systems are entirely NATO-interoperable.

One of the E/F’s more under-the-radar but very important attributes is its so-called decoupled architecture, in which all of its software and hardware technologies run separate from one another. As a result, the aircraft’s critical functions are practically immune from being impacted by bugs or problems elsewhere within its onboard systems, and all its applications can be swapped in and out for new, advanced alternatives as they become available. To hear Saab tell it, the goal is to provide avionics and tech so adaptable that a pilot can go out and fight the first day of an air war, use the data it collects, and swap out and optimize its systems to give it a massive advantage by the time it returns to the fight on day two.

Most impressive of all on the Gripen E/F are its stealthy attributes. While the aircraft does not classify as a stealth aircraft, it uses a digital cloak to present the smallest radar cross-section of any Western non-stealth fighter, and certainly any within the current NATO arsenal — although it may be surpassed by the upcoming Korean-made KF-21 Boramae if that jet is introduced to Polish service as expected. The E/F doesn’t just employ stealthy features, either; its onboard algorithms can identify items with a tiny radar return and figure out whether they’re fifth-generation adversaries, with a far greater degree of precision than was possible some years ago.

The Gripen in Operation

In its operational role, the Gripen forms the cornerstone of the Swedish Air Force, serving as its one and only combat aircraft. Sweden flies over seventy C-variants for front-line, multirole service, twenty-three D-variant trainer models, and it’ll eventually pick up a minimum of sixty E- and F-variants — if not more — for an eventual operational force of at least 120 Gripens.

In Swedish service, the plane has, luckily, not had to take part in any of the major invasions or continent-wide conflicts for which it was intended. The Soviet Union has fallen, Sweden has joined NATO, and modern Russia won’t be equipped to square up with the European continent for at least a few more years. As a result, the Gripen hasn’t yet had to prove itself in lethal head-to-head engagements — although it’s performed quite favorably in exercises against a wide range of NATO aircraft.

During exercises in 2006 in Alaska, the Gripen scored ten kills against zero losses in simulated engagements, taking out several F-16s and a Eurofighter Typhoon. In another exercise in Sweden, a single Gripen intercepted three F-15Cs and shot down two of them, notching a substantial victory against an aircraft with a 104-0 air-to-air kill ratio. In 2011, Sweden deployed several Gripens to Libya to enforce a no-fly zone, logging 650 combat missions by October of that year. At the time of writing, however, no Gripen has logged a real air-to-air kill in combat.

Yet despite its unproven status in actual battle, the Gripen has shown itself to be an ideal fit for nations that aren’t looking to actively seek out wars — instead seeking reliable, high-performance fighters for national defense. By 2010, the Gripen had logged well over 140,000 flight hours in active service without a single instance of engine trouble, across any airframe. Although the aircraft has endured a small handful of crashes and airframe losses, only one pilot has ever died behind the stick, in a 2017 incident at a Thai air show.

Aside from that, the aircraft has a spotless record in protecting its pilots and operators. Meanwhile, its operators around the world have enjoyed the Gripen’s exceptional versatility in grafting on armaments; although the base design is intended to operate a relatively narrow selection of missiles and bombs, it’s able to mount weapons sourced from all over the globe, depending on the needs and current inventory of an international customer.

A Beloved Export — and a Renaissance

Speaking of those customers, the Gripen has quickly become a beloved addition to air forces around the world. Brazil intends to operate a total of thirty-six E/F airframes, possibly raising that number to over fifty in due time. Thailand currently flies eleven with the intent to operate as many as twenty-five, while South Africa flies twenty-six. The Czech Republic and Hungary each operate a squadron of the planes, and the United Kingdom operates trainer versions to teach its test pilots.

Everywhere it goes, the Gripen is lauded for its safety record, ease of use, high performance, and versatility. Even more impressive, Saab has proven that no two nations’ Gripen aircraft have to be alike, doing an excellent job of modifying the design to fit the needs of individual customers as the jets are shipped around the world. Not only that, but the Gripen offers one of the lowest cost-per-flight-hour rates in the world, with Jane’s Aerospace and Defense Consulting giving it the top spot for flight-hour affordability — at rates almost fifty percent better than the next-cheapest option, one particular block model of the F-16.

At the time of writing, it appears the Gripen may be entering a bit of a renaissance over the next few years. In the past, it lost out to aircraft like the Eurofighter Typhoon, the F-16V variant, the F-35 Lightning, and the French Rafale, among others. Those contracts went elsewhere for a few reasons — sometimes relating to concerns about the C/D variants’ ability to deal with stealthy adversaries in 21st-century combat, and sometimes relating to the C/D’s projected obsolescence or slow rates of production.

But now that the E/F variant has come along, and nations like Brazil are looking to set up additional production lines of their own, the Gripen is looking more and more attractive to global clients. India is currently considering the purchase of up to 114 copies, the Philippines are likely to acquire at least a dozen, and fifteen or so other nations have expressed interest. The most notable among them is Ukraine, for whom Sweden has already allotted a handful of Gripens that it would be more than happy to donate to Ukraine’s cause.

There’s been a good deal of pushback on that idea from elsewhere in Europe, with defense experts on the continent pointing out that Ukraine is having a hard enough time mastering the F-16 and supplying enough pilots. But the Gripen’s proponents have emphasized that the Swedish plane might simply be a better alternative — quicker to learn, easier to fly, far easier to maintain, and easier to operate in a war zone against a peer or more powerful adversary. The Gripen arguably should have been the plane Ukraine went to first, before the F-16 was ever in consideration. Hindsight, however, can’t change the game now.

A Bright Future

As Sweden continues to roll out more and more copies of its prized Gripen, it’ll do so with an eye to the future. The country already has a purported sixth-generation fighter in development, billed as more advanced than the American F-22 or F-35, or the Chinese J-20. When it eventually arrives, that aircraft is expected to work alongside loyal-wingman drones, integrate sophisticated AI, and boast a negligible radar cross-section.

But even after that aircraft — the so-called Flygsystem — enters production, it’ll be the Gripen that remains the cornerstone of Swedish air defense in the years that follow, and the Gripen that more and more nations are likely to add to their arsenals. How long the Gripen can stand up against the rigors of 21st-century combat will be up to that aircraft and its pilots to demonstrate. But if its performance thus far is any indication, Sweden’s masterpiece of a fighter jet has got many more decades left in it.

Key Takeaways

• The JAS 39 Gripen was born from Sweden’s Cold War doctrine of armed neutrality and “total defense” — a fighter designed to make invasion too costly to be worth it, built entirely with the nation’s own resources.
• Sweden had one shot to get it right: funding a single indigenous fighter program at a time, with national defense riding on the result.
• The Gripen is engineered for austere operations — it can take off in roughly 400 meters, land in 500, fly from highway strips and snow, and be turned around for combat in ten minutes by five conscripts and a technician.
• The latest E/F variant brings ten hardpoints, F-35A-class avionics, a swiveling radar, AI, NATO interoperability, and a “decoupled architecture” that keeps critical functions isolated and software endlessly upgradeable.
• With a spotless safety record, 140,000-plus engine-trouble-free flight hours by 2010, and the lowest cost-per-flight-hour in its class, the Gripen has won export customers from Brazil to Thailand to South Africa.
• After losing past contracts to rivals, the E/F has the Gripen entering a renaissance, with India, the Philippines, Ukraine, and others expressing interest.

Sources

• Original MegaProjects video: The Gripen: Sweden’s Fighter Jet Masterpiece

• Saab — Gripen E series

• Airforce Technology — Gripen Multirole Fighter Aircraft

• Military Factory — Saab JAS 39 Gripen

• Hero image source by Airwolfhound / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.