JAS 39 Gripen: How Sweden Built The World's Best Non Stealth Fighter Jet

The JAS-39 Gripen is an excellent low-cost fourth-generation fighter. Originally developed in Sweden the 1980s—part of the that nation’s efforts at maintaining a neutral foreign policy stance—the Nordic machine is designed to be relatively cheap, easy to maintain and fight off any potential aggressor. The JAS-39 Gripen emerged after the proliferation of the great fourth-generation fighters (F-14, F-15, F-16, F/A-18, MiG-29, Su-27) and could apply lessons learned from the development and procurement of those airframes. Sweden deliberately eschewed stealth because of concerns over costs, and focused on building an aircraft that modest-budgeted customers could afford.

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[FastNBulbous]

I took a tour of a Swedish military museum when we visited, and the guide told me something fascinating. He said the Swedes build their military around one basic strategy- inflict the maximum amount of damage on your enemy while accepting that you will lose. Sweden knows that if Russia wanted to kick down their door they could easily do it, but Sweden has designed their military to essentially wreck whatever offensive gets thrown at them by sheer attrition. Soldiers behind every tree with recoiless rifles. Attack planes landing and rearming on highways. Marines lobbing anti ship missiles from remote islands. They give their enemies a choice- yes, you can invade us anytime you want. But are you willing to pay the price? As an American veteran who was trained with ideas like “overmatch” and “superiority” it was a sobering lesson. Because the other amazing thing is that when you’re not fighting to win you can build some amazing weaponry for not a lot of money.

[feg]

Thank you Sweden for providing us your jets to my country the Philippines. 🇵🇭🤝🇸🇪

[marhzinc]

My dad has been working at SAAB building the JAS 39 Gripen for over 20 years.
I remember him bringing me to work when I was a kid, such a fun experience it was!

[bennyhansen]

JAS is an abbreviation of the Swedish words “Jakt” (hunt or intercept), “attack” (attack) and “spanning” (reconnaissance). So the multi roles of the JAS39 is interceptor, attack and reconnaissance. Bear in mind Swedish is a very small country, 10 mill people, the ability to design and produce something like the JAS39 with that little resource speak volumes of the Swedes natural capability as engineers.

[davidmiller]

Gripen is best fighter on the planet for cost effectiveness.

[EvrytForReal]

Fun fact: Brazil chose the Gripen over the F-16 because of the technology transfer and since it's cheap to upgrade (and just cheap overall), there other factors of course but it's surprising they got a jet from so far away.

[YaMomsOyster]

Best little single engine fighter on the planet. The rugged conditions it can operate, short runways, aerodynamics and versatility of weapons it can use makes it a hands down winner.

[peterwhyte-venables]

Only an American could pronounce 'Viggen' as 'V eye gen'

[viktorstrand]

The thing that seperates the Gripen from other fighters is its low operational cost aswell as how easy it is to maintain. Saab has developed mobile maintanence packages which can be deployed along long stretches of road. It is basically a camouflaged tent with all the necessary eqiupment to operate the aircraft.

[petervdveenmuis]

I fell in love with the Saab Draken in 1970 when two black painted Danish Drakens flew above Sonderborg in Denmark. It was awesome.

[Yin_Yang_]

Gripen is probably the best bang-for-the-buck fighter aircraft in the world.

[daviddunne]

Excellent, well done Sweden . Europe has 3 very good fighters Typhoon, Dassault Rafale and JAS -39 GRIPEN (GRIFFIN) a very nice TRIO .

[AtrociousAK]

I first heard of the gripen from ace combat 7, where it appears as the "E" variant, replaceing "C" variant from previous games, and has become one of my favorite aircraft to fly, due to it's superb speed and handling characteristics, excellent weapon selection that makes it well suited for both ground attack and air to air focused missions, and excellent cockpit visability for when you want the extra challenge of beating your favorite missions on hard or ace difficulty while never leaving cockpit pov view.

[drbendover]

The best thing is that the gripen fighter is small enough to land on roads for refueling and reaming:)

[nian]

As much as I love Gripen, it's a crime that F-20 Tiger Shark wasn't purchased by any air force

[fiskeflax]

Thinking about the old version Gripen C scored about 20 to 1 wins over F-16 every time they met in real life tests, as the Red Flag exercises. Same with most other aircraft to. Sorry that US never let the F-35 try it on. Maybe it would not have been good for marketing the F-35. And the current Gripen E is a major upgrade from that.
It is wrong to call Gripen non stealth. It hasnt passive stealth lika F-22 or F-35 but it has active stealth. Just like noice cancelling headphones. That means it can adapt to new threats and make new tricks which would require a whole new plane to be designed with the passive technology. It's also modular so it can be updated with new capabilities in only days. Such updates take other planes months to get checked with every other system oboard. Once new software is available, every plane can be updated immediately, even when airborne.

[bosse]

The mentioned SAAB 38 or B3LA was a project cooperation with the Italians, It lived on and resulted in the AMX International AMX and is called A-1 in Brazil, and in the Italian air force A-11 Ghibli.

[craig]

Much better looking and faster than the F-35! Gripen is a much more capable aircraft then the F-35! Gripen Rocks!

[simonsv]

As a swede myself, i’m really proud of all the aircraft that we’ve built (for example the Saab 340, Saab 2000 and the JAS 39 Gripen) and how succesfull they’ve been.

[crimsionCoder]

Love this jet. I always thought this would be an excellent plane for the US marine corps to replace the legacy hornet. If a country has the budget, this plane and the f-35 would be the best overall high-low mix. It doesn't have day-1 capability to the extent that the f35 does. However, if Ukraine and Russia have taught us anything, a less stealthy fighter with a decent EW suite can do very well, especially if it has low operation and maintenance costs/time. I would love to see Saab take the current SDB model, shrink it, and make it cheaper but with a 155mm artillery shell at the core. That way, a country just has to mass-produce the 155mm and strap kits to it that will make each round produced more accurate or use it in its original artillery capacity. That would give the Gripen the ability to carry more standoff rounds for ground targets.