Not Made in USA: The JAS 39 Gripen Is the Best Fighter You Never Heard Of

Key Points and Summary – Sweden built JAS 39 Gripen to fit its doctrine: fight from dispersed road bases, turn fast with small teams, and execute fighter/strike/recon from one airframe.

-The delta-canard design, digital flight controls, and modular avionics matured through A/B and C/D into today’s Gripen E/F with an AESA radar, IRST, modern EW, and the Meteor missile.

-Gripens have flown Libya reconnaissance, Baltic air policing, and sovereign patrols worldwide, earning a reputation for availability and low operating cost.

-Critics cite payload and range limits; supporters point to tempo and networking. In an era of contested skies and tight budgets, Gripen remains a lightweight heavy hitter.

JAS 39 Gripen: Sweden’s Lightweight Heavy Hitter

Sweden didn’t set out to build the world’s biggest or flashiest fighter. It set out to build the right fighter for Sweden—one that could survive a first strike, disperse across the country onto short highway strips, launch quickly with small ground crews, and fight air, land, and sea targets with the same jet.

That meant a light, affordable, multi-role machine with superb short-field performance and a maintenance philosophy tuned for conscripts and small teams. It also meant sovereignty: Sweden wanted a design it controlled end-to-end—software, weapons integration, electronic warfare—so it wouldn’t be hostage to foreign priorities or timelines.

The result was the JAS 39 Gripen, named for the griffin on Saab’s crest, and built around three verbs that literally form its name: Jakt (fighter), Attack (strike), and Spaning (reconnaissance).

Unlike big twin-engine designs that assume deep, vulnerable main bases, Gripen was shaped by Sweden’s dispersed basing doctrine: launch from short, rough strips; rearm and refuel in minutes; vanish again. The aircraft had to be small enough to hide, simple enough to service fast, and smart enough to plug into a national command network that could fight while moving. Cost mattered, too. A country of 10 million can’t buy airpower by the dozen of billions; it needs capability per krona and the ability to keep jets flying in a crisis without an army of contractors.

Origins And Early Development

By the late 1970s, the Swedish Air Force faced a generational handoff. Draken and Viggen—brilliant for their time—were aging.

Stockholm wanted one aircraft to do the jobs of several, with modern sensors, digital flight controls, and the agility to dominate Nordic skies. Industry formed Industrigruppen JAS, a Saab-led team with Volvo (engine work), Ericsson (radar), and others, and set to work on a delta-canard, relaxed-stability design controlled by a quadruplex fly-by-wire system.

JAS 39 Gripen over the Ocean. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

JAS 39 Gripen. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The JAS 39 Gripen’s first flight came in December 1988. Like many cutting-edge fly-by-wire programs of the era, it had teething problems—most famously a 1989 landing-phase crash traced to flight-control logic and pilot-induced oscillations.

Saab and partners fixed the software, validated changes on a surrogate testbed, and returned to flight. The type entered Swedish service in the mid-1990s and progressively matured through A/B (early national service) to C/D standards (NATO-interoperable avionics, air-to-air refueling, improved displays and defensive aids).

The Airframe Philosophy: Light, Agile, Road-Ready

Gripen looks simple because it’s built to solve specific problems.

The delta wing provides lift and volume; the close-coupled canards give authority at high angles of attack, help shorten landings, and can double as airbrakes. The intake geometry and engine placement support short-field operations, while the rugged landing gear and high sink-rate tolerance let the jet use short, narrow road strips—hundreds of meters, not thousands—with minimal ground support. Under the skin, the aircraft emphasizes modularity: quick-change line replaceable units, accessible panels, and a support concept that expects a small team to refuel, rearm, and turn the jet in minutes.

The logic is brutally practical. Disperse the force, make every stretch of straight road a potential runway, and force an attacker to spend missiles and time hunting shadows. Gripen is the flying half of that plan; Sweden’s basing system—short auxiliary runways, camouflaged hardstands, and prepositioned kits—is the other.

Avionics And Weapons: Networked By Design

Gripen’s cockpit and mission systems were designed to fuse information—radar tracks, electronic emissions, off-board data—into a clean picture so one pilot can fight the whole jet. Early Swedish aircraft carried the PS-05/A mechanically scanned radar; later standards added modern data-links, helmet-mounted cueing, and a deep bench of weapons from AIM-120/IRIS-T to Maverick and precision-guided bombs. The jet is famous for integrating Meteor, the ramjet-powered beyond-visual-range missile that expands the no-escape zone dramatically. Gripen’s mission computer and datalink architecture let the pilot share and shoot cooperatively, turning small four-ship formations into a networked hunting pack.

The newest variant, Gripen E/F, builds on that with a larger airframe and more fuel, the F414 engine, an AESA radar with a wide field of regard, a passive IRST for silent detection, and a potent electronic warfare suite. In short: same philosophy, more reach and sensing, plus the growth room to absorb new weapons and sensors over decades.

Export Journey: How A Small Fighter Went Global

The JAS 39 Gripen found early traction in Europe through pragmatic deals. Czechia and Hungary adopted the type for NATO air policing and national defense, citing low operating costs and rapid turn-around. South Africa selected Gripen as part of a broader modernization, valuing range and hot-and-high performance.

JAS 39 Gripen. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

JAS 39 Gripen Fighter from Back in 2017. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Thailand paired it with a Saab 340 AEW to create an affordable mini-system of systems and used it in combat recently against Cambodia. Most recently, Brazil co-developed and is producing Gripen E/F, bringing industrial work home while tailoring the jet to South American realities—long ranges, maritime patrol, and a mix of legacy and modern threats.

Gripen didn’t win every contest; that’s not the point. It repeatedly won on a specific value proposition: serious capability, modest size, controllable sustainment costs, plus a vendor willing to integrate national weapons and help local industry climb the technology ladder.

JAS 39 Gripen Recent Operations: Libya, Air Policing, And Real-World Grind

Gripen’s most visible combat-adjacent deployment came during NATO’s Libya campaign in 2011, when Sweden sent a detachment of JAS 39C/Ds to Sigonella, Sicily. Operating under a parliamentary mandate that emphasized non-strike roles, Swedish pilots flew reconnaissance, air patrol, and no-fly-zone enforcement—hundreds of sorties and thousands of hours—integrating cleanly into a NATO command system despite Sweden’s non-allied status at the time. It was a practical demonstration of what the jet was built for: networked air policing and ISR over the sea at distance, with high mission-cap rates and efficient turnaround.

Since then, leased and purchased Gripens have done the unglamorous but vital work of NATO air policing and QRA scrambles—particularly over the Baltic region—intercepting and identifying aircraft that wander near allied airspace or fly dark.

Those aren’t headline-grabbing “kills,” but they’re the real coin of modern air defense: professionalism under pressure, interoperability on demand, and a fighter that can sit alert, launch, identify, and recover again and again without melting the maintenance schedule. Outside Europe, South African and Thai Gripens have flown sovereignty and patrol missions, with South Africa deploying the type operationally to central Africa (arriving too late to engage) and Thailand using it as the core of a small, maritime-savvy air arm. Gripen’s “combat record” is therefore more about reliability and presence than about dropping bombs—a function of the missions its users have chosen, not the jet’s inability to carry them out.

JAS 39 Gripen Taking Off. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

More about its Thailand service. While all the details aren’t clear at present, we do know Bangkok did use the Gripen in its brief conflict this year with Cambodia. There were concerns that Sweden would not greenlight more sales of the fighter that were in the works; however, such worries were quickly dashed.

How It Fights: The Small-Team Advantage

Ask JAS 39 Gripen crews what they love and you’ll hear a theme: tempo.

The aircraft is optimized for quick turn-arounds with small teams, a handful of munitions per station, and intuitive access to everything that breaks or wears. Combined with short-strip operations, that means a squadron can split, hide, and keep generating sorties even under pressure.

Pair that with robust datalinks, and a dispersed force still fights as one, sharing tracks and assignments without relying on a single vulnerable node. In an era of cheap drones, long-range missiles, and contested electronic spectrum, that kind of distributed resilience is a weapon in itself.

Limitations (And How Sweden Addressed Them)

A lightweight single-engine fighter will never match a big twin on payload and persistence. There’s also the heated single-engine over water debate—more philosophical than statistical these days, but real in planning cultures shaped by long maritime patrols. And while Gripen’s operating costs are low by fighter standards, small air forces still face the burden of training, spares, and upgrades over decades.

The E/F model tackles much of this: more fuel for range and time on station, more electrical and cooling capacity for future sensors and jammers, a bigger radar and IRST to find quiet targets, and an electronic attack edge that lets a small force punch well above its weight. It’s not trying to be a stealth bomb truck. It’s trying to be the most survivable, connected, and repeatable non-stealth fighter in the sky—and a particularly dangerous Meteor shooter in the beyond-visual-range fight.

JAS 39 Gripen: A Short History, Properly Told

Concept (late 1970s–early 1980s): Replace Draken/Viggen with one aircraft that does fighter/attack/recon, optimized for dispersed basing and low life-cycle cost.

Design & Prototyping (1980s): Delta-canard, relaxed stability, digital FBW; first flight in 1988; early crash leads to control-law fixes and a safer, more mature test program.

Service Entry (1990s): Gripen A/B joins the Swedish Air Force; later C/D adds refueling, NATO radios, and more sophisticated countermeasures—opening the door to international operations and partnerships.

Exports (2000s): Czechia and Hungary adopt Gripen for air policing; South Africa and Thailand buy; Sweden continues to upgrade national jets.

Combat-Adjacent Ops (2010s): Libya deployment validates reconnaissance/air-policing roles in a real coalition air war; Baltic and other policing rotations rack up QRA scrambles.

Gripen E/F Era (2020s): Wider-aperture AESA, IRST, modern EW, and a higher-thrust engine arrive with E/F, alongside deeper Meteor and precision-strike integration. Sweden, now a NATO member, positions Gripen to operate more routinely with allies while retaining the dispersed-basing DNA that makes the type so Swedish.

Why Some Air Forces Prefer It

Not every country needs a stealth fleet or can pay the penalty that comes with it. Many need credible air defense, some strike, maritime utility, and NATO/coalition interoperability at a price they can actually sustain—without tethering their jets to vulnerable megabases. Gripen’s selling points—short-strip ops, rapid turn-arounds, strong BVR game with Meteor, good EW, sane costs—match that profile. It’s also flexible in weapons integration, willing to talk national missiles and pods rather than forcing a closed menu.

If you’re a smaller air force trying to cover a lot of sky and coastline, or a medium power that wants to spread risk across multiple bases and still fight as a network, JAS 39 Gripen is attractive. It’s the pragmatist’s fighter—less sizzle than the flagship fifth-gens, more thought put into what actually keeps jets flying when the lights flicker.

JAS 39 Gripen. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The Reputation It Earned

Gripen has spent three decades proving three things. First, availability matters; a fighter you can launch five times a day from a road is better than a hangar queen. Second, networks win, and Gripen was built to swim in them from the start. Third, cost per effect is destiny for small and medium air forces. That’s not romantic, but it is real. The jet’s champions point to Libya reconnaissance rates, Baltic policing reliabilities, and the way a dispersed Swedish squadron can play shell games with any adversary’s targeting cycle. Its critics note limited growth room in earlier variants and the inevitable payload-range tradeoffs of a compact, single-engine design. Both are right—which is why the E/F doubles down on sensors, endurance, and electronic punch without abandoning the road-strip DNA.

The Road Ahead

With Sweden inside the NATO tent and European air policing expanding in tempo and visibility, Gripen will likely spend the coming years doing what it does best: reliable sovereignty missions close to home, coalition roles abroad when politics align, and steady tech refreshes that keep its sensors and jammers current. Brazil’s line ensures industrial depth and a wider user community; ongoing upgrades in Sweden keep the C/D fleet relevant while E ramps.

In the background, Gripen will keep teaching a quiet lesson: resilience beats mass when mass is unaffordable. A fighter that hides well, launches often, and fights as part of a network is a serious problem for any adversary—especially in the cluttered, contested littorals and forested interiors of Northern Europe where a road can be a runway and a highway median, a flightline.

Verdict

JAS 39 Gripen is exactly what it set out to be: a lightweight heavy hitter, engineered for Sweden’s geography, doctrine, and budget—and consequently well-suited to other nations with similar constraints.

It trades brute force for tempo, networking, and survivability by dispersion, and it turns small teams and short strips into a strategy. In Libya, in the Baltic skies, on the roadways of Sweden and waging war for Thailand, it has done the unglamorous work that prevents bigger wars from starting and smaller crises from spiraling out of control.

The future Gripen isn’t trying to be a stealth bomber. It’s trying to make sure that in the mess of modern air combat—drones, decoys, long-range shots, and electronic feints—a compact, affordable fighter can still be there, see first, and shoot well. That’s not a consolation prize.

It’s a design philosophy—and a good one.

About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis

Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He is the former Executive Editor of the National Interest and the Diplomat. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.

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