One thing that was mentioned but not really explained. It can land and take off from paved roadways and rearm and refuel in like 15 minutes by 5 guys in a truck, (4 conscripts and 1 trained tech). It's really designed for distributed defense warfare.
Indeed. The thinking was pretty much that if Sweden got invaded by an aggressor (i.e. Russia) the first thing that will happen is that every major airfield will be destroyed by long range weapons. Which is why the Gripen can land on rough roads in the woods and rearmed in ten minutes by a tech and a few conscripts. All the stuff needed to rearm the plane are stored in pods mounted on a couple of flatbed trucks. There is a fun story about a wargame where a Gripen pilot had some time on his hands and decided to rearm and refuel his plane by himself. He could do it in 20 minutes.
@Johmpa Yeah, but a land invasion of Sweden is really unlikely. You have to assume they'll be fighting in the Baltic and in Finland, maybe Northern Norway, but the logistics would be shit for any invading army up there.
@@lordAvatarUnlikely, yes. But not unlikely that airbases and airports would be hammered with long distance missiles every now and then, makkng them very difficult or impossible to use for the air force. Landing and taking off on dispersed runways (a long enough stretch of highway) is just a small aspect of the doctrine-not that unique. Having everything needed for re-arming, refueling and crucial maintnance, including personell in a truck that can move around, the key. An F35, F16 or Eurofighter needs a lot more pampering and a much larger apparatus to fly mission after mission.
SAAB didn't start with cars, it's a airplane manufacturer that started to make cars in 1947 after the WWII. Svenska Aeroplan Aktie Bolaget, SAAB. Swedish airplane corporation. The cars are gone since 2011.
??? General Motors bought SAAB Automobile in the year 2000 and didn’t get permission by SAAB technology to use the griffin or the name SAAB. So the cars have been gone since 2000. Check your info.
@@Kiren129 GM produced saab cars with the name saab. G-M was interested in Saabs IP after they actively made it hard for the brand to survive. There were buyers afterwards but G-M refused to sell for many years.
@@Kiren129 Technically, the SAAB cars were still in production until 2014. They were manufactured as an EV brand with the Saab name. It was purchased by NEVS (National Electric Vehicle Sweden) who manufactured the electric Saab 9-3. However, they lost a trademark dispute with the weapons and fighter jet manufacturer portion of SAAB and had to change the name and had to manufacturing Saab cars under the brand "NEVS". In 2014, it was sold to the now infamous Evergrande Group (the chinese company that had to liquidate everything in 2021, resulting in its founder going from a net worth of $45+ billion to losing his billionaire status in just 6 years).
@@WolfHeathen Agree. But the car story might not end here. The factory in Sweden is still alive, and has a car ready for production, the Emily. The new owner is a Canadian company, EV Electra. The cars will not be using the SAAB name, though. Because they don't own the name. A clarification perhaps. SAAB is the mother company, making fighter aircraft since 1937. They also made cars from after WW2 to 2000, when they sold off the car manufacturing business to General Motors. But General Motors were allowed to market the cars under the SAAB name, even if SAAB no longer had anything to do with those cars that GM built. Well, it was still the same factory in Trollhättan, Sweden, that built the cars. But that was no longer a SAAB facility, it was GM owned. And when GM in 2011(ish) sold off the SAAB car manufacturing business to the next in line (complicated story), the agreement between SAAB and GM about GM being allowed using the SAAB name on cars, didn't mean GM had the right to sell the name to anyone else. Basically, when GM sold off that car brand, the right to use the name SAAB for the cars ended. So "a trademark dispute" is not really correct. The trademark was never GM's to sell, so they didn't sell it, and it stays with the original company, SAAB, which has kept building aircraft, and lots of other defence stuff, all the time. Like submarines, combat boats, radars, anti-tank rifles (Carl Gustaf, and AT4), and whatnot. And since the channel is run by a Royal Marine, he most likely have trained using laserdome-like training equipment made by SAAB. SAAB is one of the larger defence companies in Europe. The cars were always just a side show.
Looks like Eurofighter, what you should say is that Eurofighter looks like Gripen :) Gripen was first shown 1987 and Eurofighter 1994. I guess you could also argue that both are similar to Viggen, first flown 1968. The main characteristic would be the delta wing, borrowed from Draken, 1955 :)
Interesting fact: it was the Draken that created the infamous "Cobra maneuver" seen in the Top Gun movies where they tilt the airplane almost 90 degrees up in order to brake super quick and end up behind the enemy.
I've heard a rumor that apparently the reason why cars have heated seats is because saab first created them for their pilots so they didn't have freeze their butts off during winter flight exercises.
Sweden does not need stealth..... "One Gripen pilot knocked down five F-16 block 50+ during close air combat in Red Flag" " 3 F-15C’s from the USAF were intercepted by a Gripen acting as an aggressor. The result was 2 F-15’s shot down and one managed to escape due to better thrust/weight."
@kiptanoi4422 "Sweden does not need stealth...." Interesting then how the Swedes (and everyone else) are pursuing stealth fighters these days. And stealth drones, stealth ships (for instance Sweden's Visby class corvettes), and so on..
Anyone who has ever fired a Carl Gustaf can attest to that. It will positively obliterate whatever you point it at. The only downsides are that everyone in the same post code will know your position.... and you should not fire it on a too full stomach if you want to keep your calories where you need them.
@@swedishgooner6339 I'd imagine. But anyone whos combat plan is "we'll just play hide and seek with them until they drown themselves" will have their day ruined by 88 millimeters of "The sprit of Mjölner" in fairly short order.
I think the F35 cost $44,000 per fligh hour. F16 costs $22,000 per flight hour and the Gripen about $4,700. It was a major requirement for development and allows for much more training.
@@lordAvatar yeah true. The E model is on par with F35 in avionics and EW capabilities and would almost be considered 5th gen if it was stealth as well. And thus it has a 5th gen pricetag. But these operating costs is a huge benefit for a small nation. Means you can train a pilot for 10 hours at the same cost as one hour in a F35. And when looking at the russian air force you can clearly see what happens when you have a nice plane but can´t afford to let your pilots train in it.
@JonGretarB yeah, I mean just to be complete, the price is an economy of scale issue. So many orders for F35s have allowed them to ram up production and bring the unit price down. So I imagine if the scaling was similar, the F35 would be much more expensive.
@@lordAvatar yeah and that is not going to change. Even if everyone wanted Gripens then Saab has no way of ramping up and matching the manufacturing capabilities of a US air defence manufacturers.
It's much more of a defensive system than the F35s, it's range isn't great, and its ground attack capability isn't amazing (I hear). Any NATO partners may be required to join NATO OPs, which may be offensive in nature, which makes the F35 more attractive... granted, if your country gets invaded by Russia, I'd love a main fleet of Gripens. Through a few F35s in there, it would be nice as well.
This video was decent on going through the basics of the Gripen, but I think it went off of a template of things that other jets have and compared them mainly on those points. Because of that it missed a few of the more unique features of the Gripen that make it stand out more. To mention a few: - The ability to land and take off from straight stretches of normal road anywhere in Sweden. This is a core design decision behind Swedish jets as it's assumed that the Russians would rapidly take out all airfields to try to ground the Swedish airforce otherwise. - Its turnaround rate from landing until they can take off for another mission is only 10 to 20min depending on the type of mission. - It can be served by a ground crew of just 5 or 6 people and a resupply truck, where only one of them need to be a qualified tech engineer. - It's a very low-cost jet to run. The actual acquisition price might not be all that impressive. The brand-new E/F version costs slightly more than an F35. Probably much because of the industry of scale that Saab doesn't have with it's much lower number of produced jets. However, the initial cost pales in comparison to the cost of running a fleet of combat aircraft for 10-20 years. The per hour flight cost of the Gripen is reportedly about $4,700, the F35 costs almost ten times more and even the "budget-friendly" F16 costs considerably more to run. - It's by design very modular, making repeated upgrades to the system throughout its years of service very easy to do. This is the main reason why the mentioned "Meteor" missile was first fitted on the Gripens of all jets. Obviously this relative ease of upgrades also helps with the cost of those upgrades. - Saab decided to forego stealth on the new E/F version of the Gripen, mainly because of the prohibitive cost hike that would've come with it. However, as was mentioned in the video briefly, the Gripen is equipped with probably the most advanced EW suite currently in use. The full capabilities of it is ofc a closely guarded secret and it's Swedish airforce policy to not set the EW module to "War Mode" even in training exercises with external participants , in order to keep its full capabilities secret. However, it's reported that it can isolate the frequency of enemy radar systems (missiles and planes alike) and jam them, and spoof radar shadows of planes that are not actually there to confuse the enemy. - The radar module that came with the new Gripen E/F can also rotate in order to turn in a certain direction without showing it's hand by turning the nose of the plane towards it. This also means the radar system can continue feeding radar info to outgoing missiles even after turning away from the target. I believe it's the only jet that currently has this radar capability. As to your surprise about the size of the Swedish airforce, a more accurate number of the Gripens currently in service is about 100. Some more are currently out of service but can be fixed up pretty quickly, and an additional couple of planes are being rented out to other countries. This is nothing though, and at the height of Swedish military capabilities during the Cold War they had upwards of 1,000 planes in service, making it the 4th largest airforce in the world at the time. The reason being that, with the Soviets as the only plausible big threat in the region, if you look at the map it becomes obvious how the Baltic Sea acted as a huge moat between Sweden and the USSR. Getting the much larger Soviet military on to Swedish territory would reasonably be quite difficult in the event of a war. Therefore the Swedish military doctrine for defending itself was to make sure that the USSR couldn't get control of the Baltic Sea. Sweden at the time spent a lot on it's navy, it had big artillery pieces along much of the Swedish Baltic coast and Gotland island, and most of all it invested in a ferocious airforce that would make the Soviets think twice before trying it.
Yeah i got that feeling aswell as this video pretty mutch just scimmed over the basics of the aircraft without really going into anything that makes it stick out from the rest.
Saab doesn't just make aircraft, they also make a bunch of things that go boom and are very commonplace; the NLAW, AT-4 and Carl Gustaf are all Saab products. They also make smart artillery shells and collaborate in a bunch of missile systems (IRIS, Meteor, Taurus, GLSDB)
In the 50's we had the fourth largest air force in the world. Granted, we also killed about 600 pilots every year because of our design work so we paid a heavy price for the technology we developed. Per 100,000 flight hours, our pilot death rate was six times higher than that of the US air force.
as a Canadian, we (meaning our government) decided to go with the F35 instead. it did come down to the Gripen and the F35 after eliminating the Super Hornet from the competition. I personally think we should have 2 types of fighter aircraft and have a mix of Gripens and F35's in separate roles.
I'm not sure, but since I was a kid in Sweden in the 70s I have always thought of SAAB as the company that made out fighter jets and had the cars as sort of a side business that benefitted from the R&D they did for the airplanes. So it's weird for me hearing that someone is surprised that they "also made jets", to me it's the other way around "they also made cars".
Saab actually does not make cars anymore, the business was shut down back in 2012 (missed by many). However, in addition to the JAS 39, they also manufacture civil aircraft. They also make submarines (the stealth submarine that "sunk" the USS Ronald Reagan at a 2006 war game without being detected). In addition, the Swedish stealth corvettes known as the Visby class as well as the attack and landing ship combat boat CB90. Was that all? Nope 😉 They also own the famous artillery manufacturer Bofors, so besides cannons they produce anti-tank weapons such as the "Carl Gustaf" recoilless grenade launcher, the AT-4 anti-tank weapon (both used successfully in Ukraine). In addition to all this, various high end radar-, surveillance- and battle control systems 🙂😉😁
@@matsv201Considering the fact that GM was supprised when they visited Saab and found out they had developed a new radio without GMs knowledge, saying that Saab cars are rebadged Opels is just wrong.
a lot of ex fighter pilots say this would be a better option for ukraine than the f16, these can be used on improvised runways while the f16 with its extra large intake need a clean paved runway
They are wrong. 1) Ukrainian planes are literally operating as we speak. F-16 would be no different. 2) JAS-39C is not available in any significant numbers. 3) Training for JAS-39C is limited. 4) Payload and weapons variety for JAS-39C is too limited. Not a good option except in the fantasies of people who want to seem like they have esoteric knowledge.
When they built the Eurofighter they had JAS as a model!! Jas is the best nonstealth build fighter! its cheaper and very easy maintaind plane! and doesnt need an airfield to start or land! as we have usual roadbases in Sweden! as our thinking and training is more for Defence/gerilla war!
@thomash3716 to make it clear, Scania and SAAB went in 1969 with eachother and 1974 the SAAB started using Scanias griphin. Scania known as Scania Vabis has been using the Griphin since 1901.
The Gripen is such a great aircraft. I think a lot more countries would buy them if it wasn't for already having agreements with US, which has suffered a lot of delays and extra expenses. When there are war times most countries don't want to hear that the planes they have ordered will be delayed by several years, and some countries have only received 3 planes of the 15+ they ordered. So It wouldn't surprise me if we see some of the wealthier countries start ordering Gripens as well.
In Canada we were supposed to take delivery of our f-35s almost 8 years ago our government dumped tons of cash into the program as we all know Thier still ironing out bugs we were looking at the grippen and in my opinion we should have gone for it we would have saved alot of money and got an amazing aircraft to upgrade our old f-18s
Canada just recently decided to go with F-35. Canada is towards the bottom of the F-35 delivery wait list because Canada took so long. The merge has a great episode talking about Canadian air force.
In my understanding the "non stealth" is a truth with a modification, so to speak... Because The Gripen have an ability to for ex "spoof" (I think its called) It can, make it's radar profile look like either something else than a airplane, or it can also make it look like it is a pack of Gripen..
It has a modular EW suite thanks to the EW pods that can be put on the wingtips. So yes, it can spoof and 1 plane can turn into 3. Or it can buff its current EW suite and be even harder to target. Why hide if they cant target you? Especially since you dont have to fly towards what you are locking onto thanks to the rotating radar dish, which is linked to the entire military so anything can now fire at the target while you run away xD.
SAAB is short for Svenska Aeroplan AktieBolaget which literally translates to "Swedish Aeroplane corporation". They made aircraft for the swedish airforce long before they started making cars, and if we’re honest, they were always better at making aircraft and weapons (although the cars where also great). These days they make Fighter jets, Anti Aircraft missiles, Anti Tank Weapons (the AT4 and Carl Gustaf Recoiless rifle might be familiar) and submarines.
AB is Plc and Ltd, the company consists of shares - I.e not sole trader or partnership - and offers limited liability, but even after it IPOs, it’s still an AB, there is no fancier suffix.
I think a main reason why countries may opt for say american fighters instead of the Gripen, even when the Gripen as a platform makes more sense, is that you are buying much more than just the planes. You're signing on to a long-term partnership involving supply chains and people for decades. Since tying yourself up like that is a big commitment, you might as well do with a nation that thus may be inclined to offer you other partnerships down the line. And there's the scale of production to consider as well. For instance, on paper the Gripen is by far the best plane to send to Ukraine against Russia. The Gripen was quite literally designed to be a plane for a small nation to defend itself against a Russian invasion. But since few but Sweden operate it there aren't enough Gripens to give them. By contrast, there's tons of F-16s out there.
Sure, there are alot of F16's about but in recent times the US has become a somewhat less than rock solid partner to many of its allies and with the upcoming elections being quite forboding I wouldnt be surprised if the Griphen might be on more countries radar than you think.
The problem with sending Gripen to Ukraine is that Sweden will be without total aerial defence. No other country has enough of Gripen so they could offer 20-30 something planes. And a modern highly active fighter is several times more expensive than the f16 witch was made in abundance, giving f16 to Ukraine makes much more sense, since it'll be a joint mission of many instead of Sweden giving away one third of it's entire fighter jets.
No the reason is because JAS-39 simply does not perform as advertized. SAAB:s marketing has always been disingenuous and more focused on scoring points among internet fanboys than impressing actual airforces.
Canada is most likely interested because of two things 1. Cost it has an overall low cost for just about anything including maintenance 2. Environment northern countries have a different climate and freezing on the ground is common US aircrafts need extra stuff and time to handle this, Canada is also a northern country. I have heard that the base maintenance in Alaska can be a nightmare.
The EW suite, a top radar and the networked data sharing approach makes Gripen pretty equal to the other best in the Eest. It arguably ranks in the top 3 by most if not all measures not counting passive stealth.
From an article about the JAS 39 Gripen performance: ‘Gripen first participated in Red Flag 2006 with the Gripen A,’ says Stefan Englund , former Swedish Air Force Flight Engineer on Quora. ‘It was assigned to the red team. Reduced AWACS, reduced ground support. The Gripens connected their link systems and acted themselves as AWACs, got the battlefield awareness necessary and avoided all ground defence, scored 10 kills the first day including a Typhoon. No losses they remained undetected. One Gripen pilot knocked down five F-16 block 50+ during close air combat in Red Flag Alaska. And the Gripens never lost any aerial encounter or failed their mission objectives. It was the only fighter that performed all planed starts, while others were sitting on the ground waiting for the weather to clear up. The evaluation was that Gripen capacity needed to be revaluated. ‘And no disrespect to any other fighters, including Norwegian pilots because they’re just as well trained, but during a combat exercise with the Royal Norwegain Air Force, 3 Swedish Gripens went up against 5 RNAF F-16’s. The Result was 5-0, 5-0, 5-1 after having flown 3 rounds. Englund continues: ‘During Loyal Arrow in Sweden, 3 F-15C’s from the USAF were intercepted by a Gripen acting as an aggressor. The result was 2 F-15’s shot down and one managed to escape due to better thrust/weight. To the F-15s defence it was on the Gripens back yard.
I am Swedish and I think the reason why Canada might be interested in Gripen, which is Swedish for Griffin, might be because we have similar weather being part of Scandinavian. Gripen is probably designed to handle similar weather conditions and winters to those in Canada and thus it would work there. The low cost and maintenance might just be an added bonus.
the eurofighter was in the nato exercise now with jas....the eurofighter pilots laugh at the jas....later the eurofighters was outrunned by the jas and all eurofighters was finish + a coupel of f16 and raptors.
Our Canadian government was "considering" the Gripen to replace our old cf18s. It kind of made sense considering how vast and rugged so much of our country is. But the fact that our government had already invested big money (for Canada) in the joint development of the f35, no one legitimately thought we would end up buying anything but the new American plane.
The BAE collaboration to market the plane is not current. It lasted a while, but it turned out the BAE plugged the Eurofighter hard, and not the Gripen system. So the agreement really did nothing, and then ended. It's one of these things - the Gripen has made som minor sales around the world, but missed all the big contracts it has competed for, so far. Still, that is the biggest export success of a Swedish fighter aircraft ever. It's at least comparable to the sales of its "grandad" Draken in the 50's-60's. Because its "daddy" Viggen, marketed in the 70's and 80's never sold a single airframe outside Sweden. That despite Viggen being a legendary aircraft receiving a loot of recognition - in retrospect. When it was an actual alternative, all potential sales were just crushed by the US. Which is largely the situation with Gripen as well.
SAAB (Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget) was founded 1937 by the Bofors group as a specific company for airplane manufactoring 1948 their first jetplane flew the J29 "Flygande Tunnan" (translated: Flying Barrel) 1952 Saab 32 Lansen mainly a attack/recon later on used as EW plane 1955 Saab 35 Draken fly for the first time and in 1960 it breaks as the first Swedish plane Mach 2 1967 Saab 37 Viggen is tested in air for the first time 1971 Saab 37 is delivered to the Swedish air force 1988 JAS 39 Gripen is test flown for the first time. Soon the A/B/C and D versions were delivered to the Swedish Airforce. 2017 JAS 39 Gripen E is flown the first time
Well,the Jas 39 Gripen E-F is a actually Stealth in the sense that it can jam all Enemy Radar making it invisible and lure the Radar making it believe an entire Squadron is attacking.🇸🇪
SAAB is also working on a 6th Generation Gripen,it will be interesting to see the result in a few years 2028-30 and Swedens unconventional approach to engineering.
In 1993 during the Stockholm Water Festival, they were supposed to do a flight exhibition of the new JAS airplane over Stockholm, the planes were not in service yet but still wanted to show it off. Something went wrong and the pilot had to eject from the plane and the plane crashed down on a bridge in the middle of Stockholm. Even though there were 1000s of people out, nobody was standing on that particular bridge which the plane hit, so nobody was killed or hurt.
One thing is that JAS 39 is like a flying command center for stationary weapons to. (JAS 39 was always intended for defence.) The pilot can aim at a target and the weapon/missile in that case launches from the ground so one pilot/plane can have many more weapons than just the ones onboard. Another thing, The intakes is very high up from the ground and is very resiliant against dirt and debries so if neccessary it can even take off from/and land on grass. The latest version can take off in just 400 meters, and land in 500 m! And it is one of the very few planes in the world that can make the "Cobra manouver" Why many haven´t heard of SAAB airplanes is because we did not sell them abroad until late nineties. The predesessor Viggen is the only plane that have intercepted and locked on to a SR 71 Blackbird
SAAB was from the beginning only an aircraft manufacturer and it started in 1937. It was during the final stage of the World War, 1944-1945, that Saab - Swedish Aeroplan Aktiebolaget - decided to start manufacturing cars as a complement to aircraft manufacturing. Which today no longer exists. Today, Saab produces a wide range of products that contribute to the military defense of Sweden. Everything from the well-known Gripen fighter aircraft, to the Giraffe radar system and the GlobalEye reconnaissance and guidance system, submarines and surface ships such as the Gotland class and the Visby class to name a few
One thing that sweden has that not many countries can even get close to is the radar systems. They work in tandem with the JAS-Gripen planes to basicly have a lock on a target before they even go airborne. Gripen is virtually a flying silo made to carry an insanely high payload for its size and go back to rearm and do it again and again and again if needed.
I think I heard that stealth aircraft generally have a high operational cost partly because of the radar absorbing coatings they have to apply to the aircraft. That and the designs aren’t that aerodynamic because of the nature of stealth designs.
Regarding the big proportion of fighter jets compared to the army, it has traditionally been important for Sweden to have a strong airforce in order to meet an aggressor (long-stretched country and neutrality made us vulnerable). The idea of how to fend of an invasion has always (since the beginning of the cold war) been to put up a "threshold effect" against the enemy - it was expected that the Swedish airforce would meet the enemy first and do what they could, but be completely annihilated within a week. After that, the invasion force would meet the Swedish navy, which was expected to be annihilated within a couple of weeks. After that, the coastal defences would become the next threshold, and lastly the army. The goal has always been to keep the war/invasion away from Swedish mainland as long as possible by wearing down the enemy as far out as possible, which meant that the "sledgehammer" airforce had to be dimensioned for that task.
For ppl who cares, the names: Draken, Viggen and Gripen translates to: Dragon, Thunderbolt (or Tufted Duck) and Griffin. JAS: Jakt, Attack, Spaning translates to Hunt(probably means dogfighting), Attack, Recon. enjoy.
well we have about 120 gripen in sweden , the other 80 have gone on export... but in the 50's and 60's we had about 600 jet fighers ( tunnan, lansen, draken, viggen...)..actually our air force was the 4th largest in the world..
for comparison. the gripen has a flight cost of $8.000/Hour, while the F35 costs $30.000-40.000. but the manufacturing cost is about the same if i recall correctly
About that prototype crashing. Not good, but there were some things about it that looked good. See how the aircraft is largely intact, even after hitting the ground with the left wingtip? Pretty sturdy design! And the cockpit was intact, and the pilot alive. Rumour has it, that he actually didn't get that elbow injury in the crash, but rather during the pretty no-nonsense extraction from the wreckage that the emergency rescue team performed on him. The aircraft ended up upside down, and there was fuel everywhere, so they didn't want to waste time removing him carefully. 🙂
There was an training dogfight, not that extremely long ago that want to be hushed down, with 4 F18 and 2 JAS39. The uneven amount was a demand from Sweden and the Americans thought they were joking with 4 against 2 but nope so they pretty much laughed all the way to the cockpit. They went up and the dogfight was on, within 1 minute all F18 had been "shot down" and non of the JAS39. The Americans wanted a rematch which they got and the same happened again. The JAS39 was so extremely nimble and aerodynamically unstable (it want to turn around by it self) so they could turn very quickly on a dime where the F18 where very slow to do the same so they were all shot down before they even had time turn around. The only plane today, over 40 years after the development of the JAS39, is the Eurofighter that might have a chance against it, I have little doubts about the F35. When the pilots got down on the ground they told the Swedish pilots: We want THAT plane and pointed at the JAS39. True story.
The F-20 Tigershark is a development of the P38 Talon trainer. A fast and nimble little plane. And of course you have seen it before. That is the P38. It was the planes that Maverick, Iceman and their squad shot down in TOP GUN......
The movie showed only one of the spectaclar crashes that JAS 39 Griphon did in the development state the other one was under a Stockholm Water Festivale and it crashed live in front of at least 200.000 people I think it was the same pilote both times, noone was killed either time but some of the public was badly injured the second time
The Gripen is a fantastic plane and one that makes sense for a country like Sweden to use, but to state that it's the best non-stealth fighter when the F-15EX exists is a bit of a stretch. Gripen's greatest strengths are logistically integral to the Swedish military's defense doctrines and rapid dispersion tactics needed to preserve air power in the event of a large scale invasion from the east, but all other things being equal, in aerial performance the F-15EX is both a specialized strike fighter, and an air to air juggernaut that has tremendous advantage over Gripen. Edit: also the list of "interested" countries in the Gripen included some who later made the decision to purchase F-35 like Finland and Canada. Also something to note that wasn't specified in the video: Hungary and Czechia didn't actually buy Gripen for their air forces, they opted to lease them from Sweden.
Thai Gripen is older version while Philippines FA50 is newer version with new sensors and radar likely have better fire control systems. S Korea is known to have one of the best fire control systems in the world leading electronics. Recent dog fights between Thai Gripen and Philippines FA50 in Pitch Black war exercise prove that FA50 can shoot down other bigger opponents with right pilots.
He didn't know the "Swedish Aeroplane Corporation" made airplanes, hehe. SAAB is kinda known for planes, they've made some of the best fighter planes, like the mentioned J35 Draken. :P I would argue they translated JAS wrong, the A is "Attack", so, attack. ;P
SAAB has manufactured aircraft since 1937. Since Sweden was neutral, a high-tech air force was required that could challenge both German and later Russian attempts to violate Swedish airspace. The freedom of alliance during the Cold War did not mean that Sweden was prevented from cooperating with the UK and the USA in terms of signals intelligence aimed at the Warsaw Pact, and there SAAB played a central role.
The newer versions of Gripen isn't all that cheap to buy, in large part because SAAB doesn't have the economy of scale as the US giants has, but they are substantially cheaper to fly. You can put up 3-4 Gripens for a mission for the same cost as a single F35 or 2-3 Gripens for the same cost as an F16. Over a 30 or 40 years lifespan, that does add up.
Yes you should do a video on missiles!!! Especially with the new testing on Hypersonic missiles.. hypersonic missiles could change the thought processes behind a Navy fleet and war in general..
2 things, I would love it if you did a video on the Eurofighter, plus more specially the "pirate" ir search and track system, 20 years old ish and still one of the best out there.
One of the biggest strength is Gripens ability to land on roads (dispersed airfields) so they don't have to rely on airfields that is the first things to be hit in a war.
The F-20 Tigershark was a Northrop built F-5 Tiger with the F-16's engine. It came with two little 8,000 pound thrust turbines as the F-5. It was actually a really good little plane, but no one was interested. There were 4 made, and one of them was given to Chuck Yeager at the end of the program.
It was a rival project to the F-16, but the military went for the much more expensive F-16. Not really a horrible decision, but the F-20 was close in performance to the F-16 while being much cheaper
F-20 tiger shark was an upgrade to the F-5 with bigger radar and an F-16 engine. The US didn’t buy it so they had big problems trying to sell it overseas.
The reason the Gripen doesn't sell is mainly because of 2 reasons. The first reason is that the Swedish government doesn't want to aid in the marketing of the aircraft, so SAAB are left alone to do this. The second reason is because of politics. When a country buys jets it is not because the jets they buy are good, it is because it looks good to do business with certain countries. This is why Canada chose to buy the F-35 instead of the Gripen, as you mentioned, they need to look like they have good relations with the US which leads to them buying US-made aircraft, even if they're not actually better.
The reason Gripen doesn't sell is because it performs worse than the competition, as evidenced by literally every evaluation done to date. The rest is just you coping.
About the remark on the size of the airforce, Swedens airforce was said to be the fourth largest in the world during the Cold War and the aircraft “J 35 Draken” (Dragon) was probably the best aircraft (fighter?) of it’s time. So today’s figures are the result of a continuous downsizing. J 37 Viggen had such an incredible engine power that it could, after a very short take off, go straight up as a rocket. The idèa, still in place today, behind the Swedish planes is that they could take off and land on ordinary roads, although somewhat cleared from vegetation on the side. If you drive through Sweden you regularly find yourself on long, strait and broad roads made for that purpose. Refuelling and rearming is also something done from a truck with some 4(?) conscript and 1 technician in about 15 minutes. Very hard for the Russians to detect.
Also, the Viggen was the only fighter ever to do a missile lock onto the SR-71, but didn't shoot it down 😂 SAAB fighters are, and have for a long time been awesome! US could learn from them.
Two facts about Gripen that wasn't mentioned in the video that probably are it's strongest points: 1) The electronic warfare suite. It's all hidden under a wall of secrecy but it has a pretty good record in Red Flag as mentioned in other comments, just beaten by the F22 (but just). Germany has just ordered upgrade of 15 it's Eurofighters with the SAAB EWS. There is rumour, and I emphasize rumour, that a German Eurofighter was joined by a Gripen as a wingman without beeing detected. Sounds to be to good to be true, and probably is. 2) Dispersed base doctrine. A Gripen can be based alone at a roadside, rearmed and refuelled by a crew of 5 of which 4 are conscripts and one is a qualified mechanic. RAF could do it with the Harrier way back but today noone in NATO can, with the exception of the Fins as long as maintain their F18s. Watch Ukraina and the Drone
The F-20 Tigershark was a plane that competed for US government contracts. The US never adopted it so it's been relegated to the annals of history and only 3 were ever manufactured. It is a gorgeous fighter jet, though.
If I remember correctly, there was a reporter that dropped his camera at the same time as the airplane crashed at the landing attempt 2 Feb 1989. Thus in the original audio for that footage you can here some one shouting "Helvetes jävlar" or F***king hell, in English.
One thing that was mentioned but not really explained. It can land and take off from paved roadways and rearm and refuel in like 15 minutes by 5 guys in a truck, (4 conscripts and 1 trained tech). It's really designed for distributed defense warfare.
Indeed. The thinking was pretty much that if Sweden got invaded by an aggressor (i.e. Russia) the first thing that will happen is that every major airfield will be destroyed by long range weapons.
Which is why the Gripen can land on rough roads in the woods and rearmed in ten minutes by a tech and a few conscripts. All the stuff needed to rearm the plane are stored in pods mounted on a couple of flatbed trucks.
There is a fun story about a wargame where a Gripen pilot had some time on his hands and decided to rearm and refuel his plane by himself. He could do it in 20 minutes.
@Johmpa Yeah, but a land invasion of Sweden is really unlikely. You have to assume they'll be fighting in the Baltic and in Finland, maybe Northern Norway, but the logistics would be shit for any invading army up there.
@@lordAvatarUnlikely, yes. But not unlikely that airbases and airports would be hammered with long distance missiles every now and then, makkng them very difficult or impossible to use for the air force. Landing and taking off on dispersed runways (a long enough stretch of highway) is just a small aspect of the doctrine-not that unique. Having everything needed for re-arming, refueling and crucial maintnance, including personell in a truck that can move around, the key. An F35, F16 or Eurofighter needs a lot more pampering and a much larger apparatus to fly mission after mission.
One of the most overlooked capabilities of the Gripen. This specific ability is what makes it stand out from the rest of the competition
SAAB didn't start with cars, it's a airplane manufacturer that started to make cars in 1947 after the WWII. Svenska Aeroplan Aktie Bolaget, SAAB. Swedish airplane corporation. The cars are gone since 2011.
??? General Motors bought SAAB Automobile in the year 2000 and didn’t get permission by SAAB technology to use the griffin or the name SAAB. So the cars have been gone since 2000. Check your info.
@@Kiren129 GM produced saab cars with the name saab. G-M was interested in Saabs IP after they actively made it hard for the brand to survive. There were buyers afterwards but G-M refused to sell for many years.
@@Kiren129 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_Automobile read
@@Kiren129 Technically, the SAAB cars were still in production until 2014. They were manufactured as an EV brand with the Saab name. It was purchased by NEVS (National Electric Vehicle Sweden) who manufactured the electric Saab 9-3. However, they lost a trademark dispute with the weapons and fighter jet manufacturer portion of SAAB and had to change the name and had to manufacturing Saab cars under the brand "NEVS".
In 2014, it was sold to the now infamous Evergrande Group (the chinese company that had to liquidate everything in 2021, resulting in its founder going from a net worth of $45+ billion to losing his billionaire status in just 6 years).
@@WolfHeathen Agree. But the car story might not end here. The factory in Sweden is still alive, and has a car ready for production, the Emily. The new owner is a Canadian company, EV Electra. The cars will not be using the SAAB name, though. Because they don't own the name.
A clarification perhaps. SAAB is the mother company, making fighter aircraft since 1937. They also made cars from after WW2 to 2000, when they sold off the car manufacturing business to General Motors. But General Motors were allowed to market the cars under the SAAB name, even if SAAB no longer had anything to do with those cars that GM built. Well, it was still the same factory in Trollhättan, Sweden, that built the cars. But that was no longer a SAAB facility, it was GM owned. And when GM in 2011(ish) sold off the SAAB car manufacturing business to the next in line (complicated story), the agreement between SAAB and GM about GM being allowed using the SAAB name on cars, didn't mean GM had the right to sell the name to anyone else. Basically, when GM sold off that car brand, the right to use the name SAAB for the cars ended. So "a trademark dispute" is not really correct. The trademark was never GM's to sell, so they didn't sell it, and it stays with the original company, SAAB, which has kept building aircraft, and lots of other defence stuff, all the time. Like submarines, combat boats, radars, anti-tank rifles (Carl Gustaf, and AT4), and whatnot. And since the channel is run by a Royal Marine, he most likely have trained using laserdome-like training equipment made by SAAB. SAAB is one of the larger defence companies in Europe. The cars were always just a side show.
Looks like Eurofighter, what you should say is that Eurofighter looks like Gripen :) Gripen was first shown 1987 and Eurofighter 1994. I guess you could also argue that both are similar to Viggen, first flown 1968. The main characteristic would be the delta wing, borrowed from Draken, 1955 :)
Interesting fact: it was the Draken that created the infamous "Cobra maneuver" seen in the Top Gun movies where they tilt the airplane almost 90 degrees up in order to brake super quick and end up behind the enemy.
Except that Eurofighter is a twice as heavy two engine aircraft.
@@DominikusTV Except "looks like" does not care about the weight, unless one plane is directly fat...
Except the aerodynamic prototype precursor of the Typhoon the Ba EAP was actually flying in 1986
Viggens first flight occurred in feb 1967
I've heard a rumor that apparently the reason why cars have heated seats is because saab first created them for their pilots so they didn't have freeze their butts off during winter flight exercises.
Sweden does not need stealth..... "One Gripen pilot knocked down five F-16 block 50+ during close air combat in Red Flag" " 3 F-15C’s from the USAF were intercepted by a Gripen acting as an aggressor. The result was 2 F-15’s shot down and one managed to escape due to better thrust/weight."
The Gripen E has very small radar pickup and has spoofer so it looks more like interference as I understand it?
The new model E also has new radar technology that can send out signals from the wingtips so that a plane looks like three planes in the enemy's radar
@@jarpa153 that's not radar. thats radar spoofer.
@kiptanoi4422
"Sweden does not need stealth...."
Interesting then how the Swedes (and everyone else) are pursuing stealth fighters these days. And stealth drones, stealth ships (for instance Sweden's Visby class corvettes), and so on..
Literally never happened bro. You are just regurgitating an old myth.
The euro was shaped after this and not the other way around . This plane was designed way before the euro.
that's right
As a Dane , we often enjoy some jokes and banter with and about our nordic neighbours and vice versa. But Swedish weapons! Outstanding and deadly!
Anyone who has ever fired a Carl Gustaf can attest to that. It will positively obliterate whatever you point it at. The only downsides are that everyone in the same post code will know your position.... and you should not fire it on a too full stomach if you want to keep your calories where you need them.
@@andersjjensenNot made for swimming tho. I nearly drowned crossing a wide stream carrying one of those bastards on my back and my AK4 in the front 😂😂
@@swedishgooner6339 I'd imagine. But anyone whos combat plan is "we'll just play hide and seek with them until they drown themselves" will have their day ruined by 88 millimeters of "The sprit of Mjölner" in fairly short order.
It’s like sibling rivalry between us my brother. I think we all love eachother. Med kärlek, från Sverige💪🏻
I think the F35 cost $44,000 per fligh hour. F16 costs $22,000 per flight hour and the Gripen about $4,700. It was a major requirement for development and allows for much more training.
The E model costs more than an F35A... granted the operating cost really eats that up quickly.
@@lordAvatar yeah true. The E model is on par with F35 in avionics and EW capabilities and would almost be considered 5th gen if it was stealth as well. And thus it has a 5th gen pricetag.
But these operating costs is a huge benefit for a small nation. Means you can train a pilot for 10 hours at the same cost as one hour in a F35. And when looking at the russian air force you can clearly see what happens when you have a nice plane but can´t afford to let your pilots train in it.
@JonGretarB yeah, I mean just to be complete, the price is an economy of scale issue. So many orders for F35s have allowed them to ram up production and bring the unit price down. So I imagine if the scaling was similar, the F35 would be much more expensive.
@@lordAvatar yeah and that is not going to change. Even if everyone wanted Gripens then Saab has no way of ramping up and matching the manufacturing capabilities of a US air defence manufacturers.
It's much more of a defensive system than the F35s, it's range isn't great, and its ground attack capability isn't amazing (I hear).
Any NATO partners may be required to join NATO OPs, which may be offensive in nature, which makes the F35 more attractive... granted, if your country gets invaded by Russia, I'd love a main fleet of Gripens. Through a few F35s in there, it would be nice as well.
This video was decent on going through the basics of the Gripen, but I think it went off of a template of things that other jets have and compared them mainly on those points. Because of that it missed a few of the more unique features of the Gripen that make it stand out more.
To mention a few:
- The ability to land and take off from straight stretches of normal road anywhere in Sweden. This is a core design decision behind Swedish jets as it's assumed that the Russians would rapidly take out all airfields to try to ground the Swedish airforce otherwise.
- Its turnaround rate from landing until they can take off for another mission is only 10 to 20min depending on the type of mission.
- It can be served by a ground crew of just 5 or 6 people and a resupply truck, where only one of them need to be a qualified tech engineer.
- It's a very low-cost jet to run. The actual acquisition price might not be all that impressive. The brand-new E/F version costs slightly more than an F35. Probably much because of the industry of scale that Saab doesn't have with it's much lower number of produced jets. However, the initial cost pales in comparison to the cost of running a fleet of combat aircraft for 10-20 years. The per hour flight cost of the Gripen is reportedly about $4,700, the F35 costs almost ten times more and even the "budget-friendly" F16 costs considerably more to run.
- It's by design very modular, making repeated upgrades to the system throughout its years of service very easy to do. This is the main reason why the mentioned "Meteor" missile was first fitted on the Gripens of all jets. Obviously this relative ease of upgrades also helps with the cost of those upgrades.
- Saab decided to forego stealth on the new E/F version of the Gripen, mainly because of the prohibitive cost hike that would've come with it. However, as was mentioned in the video briefly, the Gripen is equipped with probably the most advanced EW suite currently in use. The full capabilities of it is ofc a closely guarded secret and it's Swedish airforce policy to not set the EW module to "War Mode" even in training exercises with external participants , in order to keep its full capabilities secret. However, it's reported that it can isolate the frequency of enemy radar systems (missiles and planes alike) and jam them, and spoof radar shadows of planes that are not actually there to confuse the enemy.
- The radar module that came with the new Gripen E/F can also rotate in order to turn in a certain direction without showing it's hand by turning the nose of the plane towards it. This also means the radar system can continue feeding radar info to outgoing missiles even after turning away from the target. I believe it's the only jet that currently has this radar capability.
As to your surprise about the size of the Swedish airforce, a more accurate number of the Gripens currently in service is about 100. Some more are currently out of service but can be fixed up pretty quickly, and an additional couple of planes are being rented out to other countries. This is nothing though, and at the height of Swedish military capabilities during the Cold War they had upwards of 1,000 planes in service, making it the 4th largest airforce in the world at the time.
The reason being that, with the Soviets as the only plausible big threat in the region, if you look at the map it becomes obvious how the Baltic Sea acted as a huge moat between Sweden and the USSR. Getting the much larger Soviet military on to Swedish territory would reasonably be quite difficult in the event of a war. Therefore the Swedish military doctrine for defending itself was to make sure that the USSR couldn't get control of the Baltic Sea. Sweden at the time spent a lot on it's navy, it had big artillery pieces along much of the Swedish Baltic coast and Gotland island, and most of all it invested in a ferocious airforce that would make the Soviets think twice before trying it.
Yeah i got that feeling aswell as this video pretty mutch just scimmed over the basics of the aircraft without really going into anything that makes it stick out from the rest.
Saab doesn't just make aircraft, they also make a bunch of things that go boom and are very commonplace; the NLAW, AT-4 and Carl Gustaf are all Saab products. They also make smart artillery shells and collaborate in a bunch of missile systems (IRIS, Meteor, Taurus, GLSDB)
Well. Technically most of those things are made by Bofors that is s subsidery to saab
1:16 That's like hearing someone say "I thought they only sold McFlurry's, but I never knew McDonald's also made burgers" 😁
very true
204 is a lot, but during the cold war we had over 1000 aircraft in the swedish airforce. 😅
Actually you had over 3,000 in total. But that was total through out the cold war. Active is a different story
In the 50's we had the fourth largest air force in the world. Granted, we also killed about 600 pilots every year because of our design work so we paid a heavy price for the technology we developed. Per 100,000 flight hours, our pilot death rate was six times higher than that of the US air force.
@@WolfHeathen That's why they're drinking grogg in Valhall at this very moment
@@WolfHeathennot every year, Jebus.
Between 1946 and 1989, 547 people died in total.
@@WolfHeathenNo, that wasn't because of the design, it was because of the training. They flew incredibly aggressive...
as a Canadian, we (meaning our government)
decided to go with the F35 instead. it did come down to the Gripen and the F35 after eliminating the Super Hornet from the competition. I personally think we should have 2 types of fighter aircraft and have a mix of Gripens and F35's in separate roles.
Had you bought Gripen, you would have more runways than planes since it doesn’t require a dedicated runway. An 800m long freeway will work.
Saab's slogan is literally, "Born from Jets".
Yes, the name SAAB is originally an acronym for "Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget".
@@MickeSmedwhich for those interested roughly translates to "Swedish Aeroplanes Stock Company"
I'm not sure, but since I was a kid in Sweden in the 70s I have always thought of SAAB as the company that made out fighter jets and had the cars as sort of a side business that benefitted from the R&D they did for the airplanes. So it's weird for me hearing that someone is surprised that they "also made jets", to me it's the other way around "they also made cars".
Samma för mig
It's because the first saab car was made by flight engineers
Saab actually does not make cars anymore, the business was shut down back in 2012 (missed by many).
However, in addition to the JAS 39, they also manufacture civil aircraft.
They also make submarines (the stealth submarine that "sunk" the USS Ronald Reagan at a 2006 war game without being detected). In addition, the Swedish stealth corvettes known as the Visby class as well as the attack and landing ship combat boat CB90.
Was that all? Nope 😉
They also own the famous artillery manufacturer Bofors, so besides cannons they produce anti-tank weapons such as the "Carl Gustaf" recoilless grenade launcher, the AT-4 anti-tank weapon (both used successfully in Ukraine).
In addition to all this, various high end radar-, surveillance- and battle control systems 🙂😉😁
Technically saab stop producing cars in 1997, the Saabs after was Opels with saab badges and.. a bit of styling.. well.. a lot of styling.
@@matsv201Considering the fact that GM was supprised when they visited Saab and found out they had developed a new radio without GMs knowledge, saying that Saab cars are rebadged Opels is just wrong.
@@adamhlali8106 to be fair. It was a radio controll panel. Not the whole radio
Don’t forget missile systems like anti ship missiles
@@matsv201 It's rather the other way around.
a lot of ex fighter pilots say this would be a better option for ukraine than the f16, these can be used on improvised runways while the f16 with its extra large intake need a clean paved runway
They are wrong.
1) Ukrainian planes are literally operating as we speak. F-16 would be no different.
2) JAS-39C is not available in any significant numbers.
3) Training for JAS-39C is limited.
4) Payload and weapons variety for JAS-39C is too limited.
Not a good option except in the fantasies of people who want to seem like they have esoteric knowledge.
When they built the Eurofighter they had JAS as a model!! Jas is the best nonstealth build fighter! its cheaper and very easy maintaind plane! and doesnt need an airfield to start or land! as we have usual roadbases in Sweden! as our thinking and training is more for Defence/gerilla war!
I love how he says it looks like the Euro Fighter, not knowing it was based on the 39 Gripen. :P
J = Jakt = Hunt
A = Attack = Attack
S = Span = Reconnaissance
39 = Model number
Gripen = Griffin = Model Name
And the Griffin is the symbol on the logo of SAAB 😀
@@thomash3716 Well, yes and no. SAAB went into an agreement using Scanias Logo for their cars/brand as a joint thing.
@@Alsicufe And No, Griffen is the weaponshield of Malmö city.
@@henrikl1394 and Scania in Latin means "Skåne" which is exactly where they started.
@thomash3716 to make it clear, Scania and SAAB went in 1969 with eachother and 1974 the SAAB started using Scanias griphin. Scania known as Scania Vabis has been using the Griphin since 1901.
The Gripen is such a great aircraft. I think a lot more countries would buy them if it wasn't for already having agreements with US, which has suffered a lot of delays and extra expenses. When there are war times most countries don't want to hear that the planes they have ordered will be delayed by several years, and some countries have only received 3 planes of the 15+ they ordered. So It wouldn't surprise me if we see some of the wealthier countries start ordering Gripens as well.
To be fair, the number of American planes ordered by the US itself, as well as by many allies, is massive.
FYI the JAS predates Eurofighter by around 6 years (first flight), so really Eurofighter looks like the JAS, not the other way around
In Canada we were supposed to take delivery of our f-35s almost 8 years ago our government dumped tons of cash into the program as we all know Thier still ironing out bugs we were looking at the grippen and in my opinion we should have gone for it we would have saved alot of money and got an amazing aircraft to upgrade our old f-18s
Canada just recently decided to go with F-35. Canada is towards the bottom of the F-35 delivery wait list because Canada took so long. The merge has a great episode talking about Canadian air force.
In my understanding the "non stealth" is a truth with a modification, so to speak... Because The Gripen have an ability to for ex "spoof" (I think its called) It can, make it's radar profile look like either something else than a airplane, or it can also make it look like it is a pack of Gripen..
It's also becomes a little bit more stealthy than many other planes simply by being tiny and being single-engined.
-Sir, why is there a flying whale on the radar?
-Ask the Swedish airforce.
It has a modular EW suite thanks to the EW pods that can be put on the wingtips. So yes, it can spoof and 1 plane can turn into 3. Or it can buff its current EW suite and be even harder to target.
Why hide if they cant target you? Especially since you dont have to fly towards what you are locking onto thanks to the rotating radar dish, which is linked to the entire military so anything can now fire at the target while you run away xD.
SAAB is short for Svenska Aeroplan AktieBolaget which literally translates to "Swedish Aeroplane corporation". They made aircraft for the swedish airforce long before they started making cars, and if we’re honest, they were always better at making aircraft and weapons (although the cars where also great). These days they make Fighter jets, Anti Aircraft missiles, Anti Tank Weapons (the AT4 and Carl Gustaf Recoiless rifle might be familiar) and submarines.
AB is Plc and Ltd, the company consists of shares - I.e not sole trader or partnership - and offers limited liability, but even after it IPOs, it’s still an AB, there is no fancier suffix.
I think a main reason why countries may opt for say american fighters instead of the Gripen, even when the Gripen as a platform makes more sense, is that you are buying much more than just the planes. You're signing on to a long-term partnership involving supply chains and people for decades.
Since tying yourself up like that is a big commitment, you might as well do with a nation that thus may be inclined to offer you other partnerships down the line.
And there's the scale of production to consider as well. For instance, on paper the Gripen is by far the best plane to send to Ukraine against Russia. The Gripen was quite literally designed to be a plane for a small nation to defend itself against a Russian invasion. But since few but Sweden operate it there aren't enough Gripens to give them. By contrast, there's tons of F-16s out there.
Sure, there are alot of F16's about but in recent times the US has become a somewhat less than rock solid partner to many of its allies and with the upcoming elections being quite forboding I wouldnt be surprised if the Griphen might be on more countries radar than you think.
The problem with sending Gripen to Ukraine is that Sweden will be without total aerial defence. No other country has enough of Gripen so they could offer 20-30 something planes.
And a modern highly active fighter is several times more expensive than the f16 witch was made in abundance, giving f16 to Ukraine makes much more sense, since it'll be a joint mission of many instead of Sweden giving away one third of it's entire fighter jets.
No the reason is because JAS-39 simply does not perform as advertized. SAAB:s marketing has always been disingenuous and more focused on scoring points among internet fanboys than impressing actual airforces.
Canada is most likely interested because of two things 1. Cost it has an overall low cost for just about anything including maintenance 2. Environment northern countries have a different climate and freezing on the ground is common US aircrafts need extra stuff and time to handle this, Canada is also a northern country. I have heard that the base maintenance in Alaska can be a nightmare.
The EW suite, a top radar and the networked data sharing approach makes Gripen pretty equal to the other best in the Eest. It arguably ranks in the top 3 by most if not all measures not counting passive stealth.
From an article about the JAS 39 Gripen performance:
‘Gripen first participated in Red Flag 2006 with the Gripen A,’ says Stefan Englund , former Swedish Air Force Flight Engineer on Quora. ‘It was assigned to the red team. Reduced AWACS, reduced ground support. The Gripens connected their link systems and acted themselves as AWACs, got the battlefield awareness necessary and avoided all ground defence, scored 10 kills the first day including a Typhoon. No losses they remained undetected. One Gripen pilot knocked down five F-16 block 50+ during close air combat in Red Flag Alaska. And the Gripens never lost any aerial encounter or failed their mission objectives. It was the only fighter that performed all planed starts, while others were sitting on the ground waiting for the weather to clear up. The evaluation was that Gripen capacity needed to be revaluated.
‘And no disrespect to any other fighters, including Norwegian pilots because they’re just as well trained, but during a combat exercise with the Royal Norwegain Air Force, 3 Swedish Gripens went up against 5 RNAF F-16’s. The Result was 5-0, 5-0, 5-1 after having flown 3 rounds.
Englund continues: ‘During Loyal Arrow in Sweden, 3 F-15C’s from the USAF were intercepted by a Gripen acting as an aggressor. The result was 2 F-15’s shot down and one managed to escape due to better thrust/weight. To the F-15s defence it was on the Gripens back yard.
I am Swedish and I think the reason why Canada might be interested in Gripen, which is Swedish for Griffin, might be because we have similar weather being part of Scandinavian. Gripen is probably designed to handle similar weather conditions and winters to those in Canada and thus it would work there. The low cost and maintenance might just be an added bonus.
To the editor: How can you think you're an expert on Gripen. When you don't even know who is the manufacturer.
the eurofighter was in the nato exercise now with jas....the eurofighter pilots laugh at the jas....later the eurofighters was outrunned by the jas and all eurofighters was finish + a coupel of f16 and raptors.
It is hysterical how delusional you Gripen fanboys are. You need to separate your fantasies from reality bro.
Our Canadian government was "considering" the Gripen to replace our old cf18s. It kind of made sense considering how vast and rugged so much of our country is. But the fact that our government had already invested big money (for Canada) in the joint development of the f35, no one legitimately thought we would end up buying anything but the new American plane.
The BAE collaboration to market the plane is not current. It lasted a while, but it turned out the BAE plugged the Eurofighter hard, and not the Gripen system. So the agreement really did nothing, and then ended.
It's one of these things - the Gripen has made som minor sales around the world, but missed all the big contracts it has competed for, so far.
Still, that is the biggest export success of a Swedish fighter aircraft ever. It's at least comparable to the sales of its "grandad" Draken in the 50's-60's. Because its "daddy" Viggen, marketed in the 70's and 80's never sold a single airframe outside Sweden. That despite Viggen being a legendary aircraft receiving a loot of recognition - in retrospect. When it was an actual alternative, all potential sales were just crushed by the US. Which is largely the situation with Gripen as well.
SAAB (Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget) was founded 1937 by the Bofors group as a specific company for airplane manufactoring
1948 their first jetplane flew the J29 "Flygande Tunnan" (translated: Flying Barrel)
1952 Saab 32 Lansen mainly a attack/recon later on used as EW plane
1955 Saab 35 Draken fly for the first time and in 1960 it breaks as the first Swedish plane Mach 2
1967 Saab 37 Viggen is tested in air for the first time
1971 Saab 37 is delivered to the Swedish air force
1988 JAS 39 Gripen is test flown for the first time. Soon the A/B/C and D versions were delivered to the Swedish Airforce.
2017 JAS 39 Gripen E is flown the first time
J21R was the first jet powered aircraft from SAAB. J21 converted from prop to jet.
Well,the Jas 39 Gripen E-F is a actually Stealth in the sense that it can jam all Enemy Radar making it invisible and lure the Radar making it believe an entire Squadron is attacking.🇸🇪
SAAB is also working on a 6th Generation Gripen,it will be interesting to see the result in a few years 2028-30 and Swedens unconventional approach to engineering.
In 1993 during the Stockholm Water Festival, they were supposed to do a flight exhibition of the new JAS airplane over Stockholm, the planes were not in service yet but still wanted to show it off. Something went wrong and the pilot had to eject from the plane and the plane crashed down on a bridge in the middle of Stockholm. Even though there were 1000s of people out, nobody was standing on that particular bridge which the plane hit, so nobody was killed or hurt.
One thing is that JAS 39 is like a flying command center for stationary weapons to. (JAS 39 was always intended for defence.)
The pilot can aim at a target and the weapon/missile in that case launches from the ground so one pilot/plane can have many more weapons than just the ones onboard. Another thing, The intakes is very high up from the ground and is very resiliant against dirt and debries so if neccessary it can even take off from/and land on grass. The latest version can take off in just 400 meters, and land in 500 m!
And it is one of the very few planes in the world that can make the "Cobra manouver"
Why many haven´t heard of SAAB airplanes is because we did not sell them abroad until late nineties.
The predesessor Viggen is the only plane that have intercepted and locked on to a SR 71 Blackbird
The F/A 18 was titled F16. Really high production value on that video. You still rock, though. Keep it up!
SAAB was from the beginning only an aircraft manufacturer and it started in 1937. It was during the final stage of the World War, 1944-1945, that Saab - Swedish Aeroplan Aktiebolaget - decided to start manufacturing cars as a complement to aircraft manufacturing. Which today no longer exists.
Today, Saab produces a wide range of products that contribute to the military defense of Sweden. Everything from the well-known Gripen fighter aircraft, to the Giraffe radar system and the GlobalEye reconnaissance and guidance system, submarines and surface ships such as the Gotland class and the Visby class to name a few
JAS 39 Gripen have its history from SAAB Draken and SAAB Viggen so it’s not from Eurofighter. So Eurofighter have taken the Deltaving from SAAB
BTW: Gripen have a side looking radar. It can fire missiles to the left/right to it´s flight path.
Gripen is absolutely fantastic.
Saab has been making weapons, equipment and military vehicles for a long time and they are very good.
To point out. It is not a mix or any copy of the F16 nor the Eurofigther. They are just childrens compared. The Gripen goes way longer back.
06:05 Link-o-ping ? 🤣
One thing that sweden has that not many countries can even get close to is the radar systems.
They work in tandem with the JAS-Gripen planes to basicly have a lock on a target before they even go airborne. Gripen is virtually a flying silo made to carry an insanely high payload for its size and go back to rearm and do it again and again and again if needed.
Check out it`s precursor: The Saab JA 37 "Jaktviggen". Active in the years 1980 to 2005 if I remember it correct.
I think I heard that stealth aircraft generally have a high operational cost partly because of the radar absorbing coatings they have to apply to the aircraft. That and the designs aren’t that aerodynamic because of the nature of stealth designs.
And when developments in radar technology lets the enemy pick up your stealth fighters, the Gripen will already have updated its modular EW suite.
SAAB comes from Svenska Aeroplan AB (AB is swedish for inc.) It actually is an airplane company that started making cars :D
Saab is an abbreviation (in Swedish) for Swedish Aero Inc and they made aircrafts before they made cars
Regarding the big proportion of fighter jets compared to the army, it has traditionally been important for Sweden to have a strong airforce in order to meet an aggressor (long-stretched country and neutrality made us vulnerable).
The idea of how to fend of an invasion has always (since the beginning of the cold war) been to put up a "threshold effect" against the enemy - it was expected that the Swedish airforce would meet the enemy first and do what they could, but be completely annihilated within a week. After that, the invasion force would meet the Swedish navy, which was expected to be annihilated within a couple of weeks. After that, the coastal defences would become the next threshold, and lastly the army.
The goal has always been to keep the war/invasion away from Swedish mainland as long as possible by wearing down the enemy as far out as possible, which meant that the "sledgehammer" airforce had to be dimensioned for that task.
In fact, SAAB cars were way later developed than the planes... The USA had for Years evaluated SAAB 39.
Saab makes everything from automobiles to patrol boats to well, jet fighters! The Gripen is probably the best 4th Gen fighter flying now.
For ppl who cares, the names: Draken, Viggen and Gripen translates to: Dragon, Thunderbolt (or Tufted Duck) and Griffin. JAS: Jakt, Attack, Spaning translates to Hunt(probably means dogfighting), Attack, Recon. enjoy.
well we have about 120 gripen in sweden , the other 80 have gone on export... but in the 50's and 60's we had about 600 jet fighers ( tunnan, lansen, draken, viggen...)..actually our air force was the 4th largest in the world..
for comparison. the gripen has a flight cost of $8.000/Hour, while the F35 costs $30.000-40.000. but the manufacturing cost is about the same if i recall correctly
SAAB started out as an Aircraft company... that's why the original insignia was an airplane when it was founded in 1937
About that prototype crashing. Not good, but there were some things about it that looked good. See how the aircraft is largely intact, even after hitting the ground with the left wingtip? Pretty sturdy design! And the cockpit was intact, and the pilot alive. Rumour has it, that he actually didn't get that elbow injury in the crash, but rather during the pretty no-nonsense extraction from the wreckage that the emergency rescue team performed on him. The aircraft ended up upside down, and there was fuel everywhere, so they didn't want to waste time removing him carefully. 🙂
Several f22 prototypes also crashed as well as f35 prototypes.
There was an training dogfight, not that extremely long ago that want to be hushed down, with 4 F18 and 2 JAS39. The uneven amount was a demand from Sweden and the Americans thought they were joking with 4 against 2 but nope so they pretty much laughed all the way to the cockpit. They went up and the dogfight was on, within 1 minute all F18 had been "shot down" and non of the JAS39. The Americans wanted a rematch which they got and the same happened again. The JAS39 was so extremely nimble and aerodynamically unstable (it want to turn around by it self) so they could turn very quickly on a dime where the F18 where very slow to do the same so they were all shot down before they even had time turn around. The only plane today, over 40 years after the development of the JAS39, is the Eurofighter that might have a chance against it, I have little doubts about the F35.
When the pilots got down on the ground they told the Swedish pilots: We want THAT plane and pointed at the JAS39. True story.
The F-20 Tigershark is a development of the P38 Talon trainer. A fast and nimble little plane. And of course you have seen it before. That is the P38. It was the planes that Maverick, Iceman and their squad shot down in TOP GUN......
What you think SAAB stands for:
Saab AB (originally Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget, lit. 'The Swedish Aeroplane Corporation', acronym SAAB)
The movie showed only one of the spectaclar crashes that JAS 39 Griphon did in the development state the other one was under a Stockholm Water Festivale and it crashed live in front of at least 200.000 people I think it was the same pilote both times, noone was killed either time but some of the public was badly injured the second time
The Gripen is a fantastic plane and one that makes sense for a country like Sweden to use, but to state that it's the best non-stealth fighter when the F-15EX exists is a bit of a stretch. Gripen's greatest strengths are logistically integral to the Swedish military's defense doctrines and rapid dispersion tactics needed to preserve air power in the event of a large scale invasion from the east, but all other things being equal, in aerial performance the F-15EX is both a specialized strike fighter, and an air to air juggernaut that has tremendous advantage over Gripen.
Edit: also the list of "interested" countries in the Gripen included some who later made the decision to purchase F-35 like Finland and Canada. Also something to note that wasn't specified in the video: Hungary and Czechia didn't actually buy Gripen for their air forces, they opted to lease them from Sweden.
Thai Gripen is older version while Philippines FA50 is newer version with new sensors and radar likely have better fire control systems. S Korea is known to have one of the best fire control systems in the world leading electronics. Recent dog fights between Thai Gripen and Philippines FA50 in Pitch Black war exercise prove that FA50 can shoot down other bigger opponents with right pilots.
He didn't know the "Swedish Aeroplane Corporation" made airplanes, hehe.
SAAB is kinda known for planes, they've made some of the best fighter planes, like the mentioned J35 Draken. :P
I would argue they translated JAS wrong, the A is "Attack", so, attack. ;P
SAAB has manufactured aircraft since 1937. Since Sweden was neutral, a high-tech air force was required that could challenge both German and later Russian attempts to violate Swedish airspace. The freedom of alliance during the Cold War did not mean that Sweden was prevented from cooperating with the UK and the USA in terms of signals intelligence aimed at the Warsaw Pact, and there SAAB played a central role.
The newer versions of Gripen isn't all that cheap to buy, in large part because SAAB doesn't have the economy of scale as the US giants has, but they are substantially cheaper to fly. You can put up 3-4 Gripens for a mission for the same cost as a single F35 or 2-3 Gripens for the same cost as an F16. Over a 30 or 40 years lifespan, that does add up.
Yes you should do a video on missiles!!! Especially with the new testing on Hypersonic missiles.. hypersonic missiles could change the thought processes behind a Navy fleet and war in general..
Definitely AI voice. It's predecessor was Saab 37 Viggen and not ""Vaigen" like the voice said.
Also.. "flag" motor...
2 things, I would love it if you did a video on the Eurofighter, plus more specially the "pirate" ir search and track system, 20 years old ish and still one of the best out there.
Ther was a JAS going down under a airshow in the Stockholm.
One of the biggest strength is Gripens ability to land on roads (dispersed airfields) so they don't have to rely on airfields that is the first things to be hit in a war.
The F-20 Tigershark was a Northrop built F-5 Tiger with the F-16's engine. It came with two little 8,000 pound thrust turbines as the F-5. It was actually a really good little plane, but no one was interested. There were 4 made, and one of them was given to Chuck Yeager at the end of the program.
It was a rival project to the F-16, but the military went for the much more expensive F-16. Not really a horrible decision, but the F-20 was close in performance to the F-16 while being much cheaper
Gripen has won Red Flag several time, some planes did not see it even coming. But then again, most of the Swedish pilot might be slightly insane 😉
Check out the Saab 35 Draken - the first jet double delta wing fighter that could do the Cobra manoeuvre
F-20 tiger shark was an upgrade to the F-5 with bigger radar and an F-16 engine. The US didn’t buy it so they had big problems trying to sell it overseas.
They used Design ques from the F-5 tiger and the old jas 37 viggen.
That voice in the video sounded like Seymour Skinner (the principal in The Simpsons)!! 😀
Eurofighter came after Gripen, We (SAAB) have used delta wing before EF.
Since the mid fifties with Draken.
a good missile video to watch could be Sandboxx's 'America's race to field new air-to-air missiles'
"Hey Saab, you used to make cars, rigth buddy?" "eeehhh..... "
The reason the Gripen doesn't sell is mainly because of 2 reasons. The first reason is that the Swedish government doesn't want to aid in the marketing of the aircraft, so SAAB are left alone to do this. The second reason is because of politics. When a country buys jets it is not because the jets they buy are good, it is because it looks good to do business with certain countries. This is why Canada chose to buy the F-35 instead of the Gripen, as you mentioned, they need to look like they have good relations with the US which leads to them buying US-made aircraft, even if they're not actually better.
The reason Gripen doesn't sell is because it performs worse than the competition, as evidenced by literally every evaluation done to date. The rest is just you coping.
About the remark on the size of the airforce, Swedens airforce was said to be the fourth largest in the world during the Cold War and the aircraft “J 35 Draken” (Dragon) was probably the best aircraft (fighter?) of it’s time. So today’s figures are the result of a continuous downsizing.
J 37 Viggen had such an incredible engine power that it could, after a very short take off, go straight up as a rocket. The idèa, still in place today, behind the Swedish planes is that they could take off and land on ordinary roads, although somewhat cleared from vegetation on the side. If you drive through Sweden you regularly find yourself on long, strait and broad roads made for that purpose.
Refuelling and rearming is also something done from a truck with some 4(?) conscript and 1 technician in about 15 minutes. Very hard for the Russians to detect.
Also, the Viggen was the only fighter ever to do a missile lock onto the SR-71, but didn't shoot it down 😂
SAAB fighters are, and have for a long time been awesome!
US could learn from them.
Vaigen LOL! Prunounce it like an short e. Tigershark is the one used in first Top Gun 1986 as Mig 21:s.
I don't understand how he can pronounce it "vaigen" when there's two G's, and then he looks at Gripen and somehow gets "grippen" out of it?
Two facts about Gripen that wasn't mentioned in the video that probably are it's strongest points:
1) The electronic warfare suite. It's all hidden under a wall of secrecy but it has a pretty good record in Red Flag as mentioned in other comments, just beaten by the F22 (but just). Germany has just ordered upgrade of 15 it's Eurofighters with the SAAB EWS. There is rumour, and I emphasize rumour, that a German Eurofighter was joined by a Gripen as a wingman without beeing detected. Sounds to be to good to be true, and probably is.
2) Dispersed base doctrine. A Gripen can be based alone at a roadside, rearmed and refuelled by a crew of 5 of which 4 are conscripts and one is a qualified mechanic. RAF could do it with the Harrier way back but today noone in NATO can, with the exception of the Fins as long as maintain their F18s. Watch Ukraina and the Drone
1) EW system has no record whatsoever at Red Flag.
2) Several NATO countries to dispersed operations.
The F-20 Tigershark was a plane that competed for US government contracts. The US never adopted it so it's been relegated to the annals of history and only 3 were ever manufactured. It is a gorgeous fighter jet, though.
The cars are more of a sideproject XD
JAS = Jakt Attack Spaning = Hunting Attack Reconnaissance
Fun fact, gripen stands for griffin the mythological creature. I'm from Sweden.
I don't think that SAAB even makes cars anymore, but as for weapons, they own Bofors, so...
car part was sold, unsure if to china? and then whoever bought it, shut it down,. China does make Volvo I think
@@niklasriva7053It was sold to General Motors who did everything to destroy the brand, and then sold to a Chinese company.
If you're interested in missiles, you should start with AIM-9 Sidewinder. There's a decent video by Sideproject.
Despite the fact it isn't a stealth aircraft, Gripen (The Griffin) has a surprisingly small radar profile.
Gripen-Gryphon Draken-Dragon Viggen-Lightning Lansen-The Lance Tunnan-The Barrel 😁
If I remember correctly, there was a reporter that dropped his camera at the same time as the airplane crashed at the landing attempt 2 Feb 1989. Thus in the original audio for that footage you can here some one shouting "Helvetes jävlar" or F***king hell, in English.
Noo... The pilot was his friend.
I really miss SAAB cars. They where the best. I had a SAAB 9-5 2.3 Turbo and it was awesame.
Narrator sounds more normal on x1.25 speed, sounds like lenght of speech has been streched 20% to get longer playtime?
O Brasil comprou 40 gripens com transferência de tecnologiasendo alguns fabricados pela Embraer no Brasil .Excelente custo benefício.
Many of us here in Sweden are very proud of this plane
You need to check out some of the videos of the Mach loop . You never know who or what may be flying through !!