Key Points and Summary: Sweden’s JAS 39 Gripen fighter is a remarkably cost-effective and versatile combat aircraft, boasting low operating costs, adaptability to various weapon systems, and unique capabilities like operating from highway airstrips.
-Despite these advantages, the JAS 39 Gripen has struggled to secure international sales, often losing out to US-made jets like the F-35 and F-16.
-Industry insiders suggest that US political and industrial interests heavily influence these procurement decisions, prioritizing American aircraft even when the Gripen might be a better fit.
-While the Gripen has found success with nations seeking non-alignment, like Brazil and Thailand, its full market potential remains unrealized due to these geopolitical factors.
JAS 39 Gripen vs. F-35: The David and Goliath Battle for the Skies
On the surface, Sweden’s JAS 39 Gripen fighter aircraft should be beating the pants off its opposition. As a combat platform, it is probably the best value for money of any fighter in the market today.
It has the lowest cost-per-flight hour of any other combat aircraft in service with any NATO air force. It is the only fighter in the world designed for and capable of dispersing off main air bases and conducting operations from highway airstrips, which reduces vulnerability in wartime.
It is capable of launching any weapon system in use or built by any nation friendly to or allied with Sweden: the US, France, the UK, Germany, Israel, Brazil, and South Africa.
Due to the versatility built into its original design, the JAS 39 Gripen has been able to advance from the A/B to the C/D and now to the E/F generation with relative ease.
In doing so, it has been able to dramatically increase the capability of the aircraft without causing a spike in its price. Saab has expended minimal funding to develop these successive models of the fighter.
As an example, the JAS-39E/F design paradoxically has smaller wings than the A/B and C/D models, but the aircraft has more wing area than those previous versions. This extra wing area was accomplished by “stretching” the center wingbox section so it forms part of the wing area that the wings are attached to.
More wing area means lower wing loading and the ability to carry more weight, which is why the E/F models have two additional hardpoints.
Why the JAS 39 Gripen Doesn’t Sell More? Ask America
It became clear to people within Saab, said one company official who spoke to 19FortyFive, that “decisions on where the Gripen wins or loses a competition in any given country depends on decisions made in Washington.”
“If the US and Lockheed Martin decide that they need a given country to buy an F-35 or the [latest model] F-16V in order to keep an assembly line ‘warm’ or fulfill a foreign policy objective then they will all swing into action to kill a Gripen sale—no matter how much better it might be for the nation in question,” he continued.
One of the early examples of this was when, in 2008, Norway was put under tremendous pressure to backpedal on what seemed like an impending decision to procure the JAS-39E and almost overnight moved instead to an F-35 procurement.
There have since been numerous other examples. Poland selected the F-16 over the JAS-39 even though the Swedish jet had a much more generous offset package. The Finns picked the F-35 even though the Saab offer of JAS-39 plus GlobalEye was a better fit for their requirement.
The Czech Republic selected the F-35 even though they were already operating the previous JAS-39C/D aircraft under lease, and taking on the F-35 would double the number of personnel they would need to support the US aircraft.
Industrial Base Factors
The pattern that seems to be the rule now is that if a country feels it needs to be closer to Washington to buy some insurance against an increasingly belligerent Russia and a perennially aggressive PRC—it will buy an F-35.
This impulse has been behind several of the lost competitions the Gripen has suffered in Europe.

Saab JAS 39 Gripen E fighter. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Where the JAS-39 does well is in countries that want to be in the non-aligned camp or—as in the case of Thailand—want to have a combat aircraft, an AEW&C (airborne early warning and control) platform, and ground-based control assets that are all not made in the US in order enhance their autonomy.
That same argument was what also won the aircraft its first big export sale to South Africa.
The most important win for the Swedish jet was Brazil’s 2014 selection of the JAS-39. The nation’s aerospace powerhouse, Embraer, is the symbol of Brazilian prowess in technology and industry and a tribute to its independence and avoidance of being joined at the hip with one of the major superpowers.
The JAS 39 Gripen offered the most benefits to Embraer in Brazil, as it was able to design the two-seat F version of the aircraft and had a production line in Brazil.
Gripen will likely go down in history as an ingenious design that had enormous potential in the international market that it never achieved.

JAS 39 Gripen. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
In the meantime, the aircraft continues to grow in capability and never ceases to impress customers who have been able to procure and take advantage of its unique aspects.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
