Ukraine’s antiquated air force might soon receive fighter jets from an unlikely source: Sweden.
Sweden, NATO’s newest member, is looking into transferring a few of its home-built Gripen fighters as a part of an effort to expand the capabilities of Ukraine’s military. The lesser-known jet is certainly one of the few inbuilt Europe and out of doors NATO, and is designed to defend the country single-handedly from enemy attack.
A Donation Discrepancy
In response to Reuters, Sweden’s government will soon direct its military to research how handing over Gripen fighters would impact the country’s ability to defend itself, and the way quickly it could receive replacements. The news could point to a reversal in the federal government’s opinion on donating the fighters; just last month Stockholm stated it might not hand over the fighters since it needed them for its own defense.
Sweden, a Scandinavian country, doesn’t share a land border with Russia, but each countries face the Baltic Sea. Russian fighters, bombers, and electronic warfare aircraft have repeatedly flown near Sweden from over the Baltic Sea, and in May 2022, two Russian Su-27 Flanker fighters and two Su-24 Fencer strike jets violated Swedish airspace.
This was interpreted by some as a warning to Sweden not to hitch NATO, after it had publicly announced its intention to achieve this. Sweden, together with Finland, applied to hitch NATO in 2022. Finland is now a member, but Sweden’s membership is being held up by Turkey and Hungary for political reasons.
Sweden announced in June that it might start training Ukrainian fighter pilots to fly Gripens, and Ukraine reportedly would really like between 14 and 16 of the jets. The discrepancy of coaching fighter pilots to fly planes it later announced it might not provide was never explained. A possible issue is that, as a NATO member, Sweden can count on NATO allies to offer backup air power if essential. Until it’s officially a member, it lacks the protection that membership within the alliance guarantees.
Sweden is within the strategy of replacing a lot of its older Gripen C (single seater) and D (two seater) models with latest Gripen E and F aircraft. While Sweden won’t replace all the older Gripens, it could pass on a few of those it would retire to Ukraine. Sweden also apparently bought 14 airframes just to maintain the production line humming while it transitioned from constructing older to newer jets. Those planes, effectively latest, may additionally be candidates for transfer depending on their condition.
The Swedish Griffin: a Dark Horse?
Named after the mythological griffin, the Gripen is the newest in a protracted line of Swedish designed and built fighters. As a neutral country, Sweden has traditionally avoided buying many major weapons systems from america, NATO, and the old Soviet bloc. This has necessitated constructing its own fighters, which also means opportunities to export those fighters abroad.
Gripen is a single-seat, single-engine fighter jet optimized expressly for Sweden. It has a slender profile, delta-shaped wings, and enormous canards slightly below the cockpit. The older Gripen C, which is the model most definitely to go to Ukraine, uses the Volvo RM12 afterburning turbofan engine, reducing dependence on foreign suppliers.
Overall the Gripen may be very just like an American F-16C Fighting Falcon fighter. Each are 49 feet long, have the identical 500-mile combat radius, same Mach 2 top speed, and same 50,000-foot service ceiling. By way of performance, the Gripen is like an F-16 with a rather lighter weapons load.
The 2 aircraft have similar weapons sets, with each able to carrying the AIM-120 AMRAAM medium-range air-to-air missile, the Sidewinder short-range air-to-air missile, the JDAM GPS-guided bomb, the Paveway laser-guided bomb, and AGM-65 Maverick air-to-ground missiles.
A significant plus within the Gripen’s favor is that it could carry the Meteor ramjet-powered air-to-air missile, which is taken into account faster, more advanced, and has a greater range than the American AMRAAM.
The Gripen is certainly one of the few fighter planes which have gone to battle against Mother Nature. In 2018, a pair of Swedish Gripens dropped laser-guided bombs on a forest fire, in an try and starve it of oxygen.
One major advantage for the Gripen is that it is reasonable to fly. A Gripen C jet costs a mean of $9,922 an hour to fly (adjusted for inflation), which is much cheaper than other western jets. The F-16C, by comparison, costs $26,927 an hour, while the F-35 costs $41,986 an hour.
While this might appear to be an inconsequential number in comparison with a plane’s unit cost, it adds up, and over a long time the fee per flight-hour can far exceed the fee of the plane itself. Over 8,000 hours of flight—the estimated life cycle of each planes—a Gripen will cost an extra $79.2 million, while the F-35 will cost a staggering $335 million. This can be a major consideration for countries with smaller budgets like Ukraine.
The Takeaway
The Gripen is a superb fighter that will help rebuild the Ukrainian air force along NATO lines. A high-performance fighter with access to most of NATO’s weapons, it’s easy on the pocketbook and has some tricks up its sleeve, reminiscent of the Meteor missile, that not even the F-16 can boast.
The one issue with them is that Ukraine really could, at best, expect to receive just 14 to 16 aircraft—that’s, if Sweden follows through.