How Could Sweden Afford the Saab-39 Gripen Fighter Program?

The exploding cost of fighter aircraft has made programs to build domestically an up-to-date fighter decreasingly affordable for even the largest and richest countries, with even G-7 states increasingly forgoing that course. They find that given the resources at their disposal, the diseconomies of scale of producing an aircraft they alone might end up using, it just does not pay to go it alone.

Naturally I have found myself wondering how Sweden--a nation which, however affluent and technologically advanced, was still of a mere 10 million people, and did not commit a drastic proportion of its national income to defense spending during the relevant time period--managed to successfully produce a well-regarded fourth-generation fighter, the Saab-39 "Gripen," and to do that in apparently quite cost effective fashion (with Gripen Cs recently marketed for as little as $30 million).

Four factors seem to have made the difference.

1. Sweden Spent Less Than Other States, but Also Differently--Giving it Room for One Fighter Program if it Prioritzed it (and it Did)
For comparison purposes, let us use Britain. That country had a GDP six times Sweden's, and a defense budget eight times as big in 1979.1 Yet Britain had already given up on building its own current-generation fighters all by itself, relying on partnerships with other European countries to build its next generation of such planes--notably Germany and Italy in the Panavia Tornado program.

However, it has to be remembered that Britain also had numerous expenditures Sweden did not--on a nuclear arsenal and large navy it constructed domestically, and on a global network of bases and overseas garrisons (not least the big one in West Germany), all bound up with a complex array of international commitments.

Sweden did not have these expenses, instead being oriented to a fully conventional defense of its limited national territory, while it might be added that Sweden placed a very high priority on its air force. While, as noted before, Sweden was a much smaller country than Britain in the relevant ways, it operated almost as big a fleet of combat aircraft (still 400+ jets in the late Cold War, compared with the 500 or so Britain was generally operating at the time, as the RAND Facing the Future study on the Swedish air force remarked at the time).

It might also be added that even where procurement was concerned Britain insisted on an array of different combat aircraft, pursuing besides the Tornado, which was coming in fighter and strike versions, the Anglo-French Jaguar and the idiosyncratic VTOL Harrier (while operating a sizable fleet of F-4 Phantoms incorporating British engines and other components, and already thinking about what was to become the Eurofighter Typhoon). Had Britain not pursued so many types it would have had an easier time affording its own design. And that was what Sweden did, going with just the Gripen.

2. Sweden Was Content to Let Others Go First, and Settle for Less Than the Maximum Possible Capability
It is worth noting that besides going for just one fighter program instead of many such projects at once, Sweden did not strive for the ultimate. The Gripen is, as the exclusive focus on it required for justification's sake, a multirole aircraft. However, unlike the twin-engined, swing-wing Tornado with its low-level deep penetration capability and high payload, the Gripen was a single-engined, multi-role fighter of shorter range and lighter armament. To put it into U.S. Air Force terms it was more F-16 than F-15, with all that implied with regard to price.

Of course, even if the jet is more F-16 than F-15, the Gripen is still a fourth-generation jet, and again, a well-regarded one. Yet, consider the timing of its appearance. The U.S. Air Force received the delivery of its first true fourth-generation jet, the F-15, in 1974. As indicated above the Gripen program did not even begin until five years later, and the Swedish Air Force did not receive its first production copy of the aircraft until 1993, fourteen years after that--by which time the U.S. Air Force was already flight-testing the fifth-generation F-22. In a less dramatic way it is the same story with the British and their partners, who had their Tornado going into production just as the Gripen was emerging as a concept, while the Typhoon was to make its first flight as the Swedish Air Force formed its first Gripen squadrons.

In short, the Swedish government was ready to wait fifteen to twenty years longer than others to get even a light fourth-generation jet, and in the meantime make do with third-generation Saab-37 Viggens. Saving money, after all, was a necessity for even the Swedes at this stage in the history of fighter development, and walking a beaten path does that--not least because of one thing that did much to bring down costs, namely that

3. Sweden Outsourced and Licensed the Necessary Technology Where Feasible Rather Than Making Everything From Scratch
While the Gripen is Swedish-made, it is not all-Swedish, with crucial components developed jointly, or derived from other, established products, for the sake of cost (as much as a third of the aircraft sourced from the U.S. alone). The Gripen's first engine is an obvious example. While constructed by Volvo, it is a licensed derivative of the engine that General Electric made for the F-18. (It may also be worth noting that Saab had prior experience developing fighters in such a fashion, key systems on the prior Viggen being similarly sourced--and that the stress on minimizing cost can be contrasted with Japan's emphasis on developing technical know-how in the F-2 program, which produced a very advanced but also very costly F-16 derivative.)

4. Sweden Banked Big on Exports
Finally, in addition to its readiness to focus its resources on this one program, its moderation in its demands, and its willingness to use technology developed by others, Sweden counted heavily on the prospect of foreign sales did help make the Gripen project more plausible financially. Of course, in contrast with members of the globally active, NATO-affiliated, military aid-providing powers like Britain, or France, let alone the U.S.. And the Gripen's successes there are, at least thus far, a far cry from those of other fourth-gen single-engine jets like the French Mirage 2000 (almost 270 sold to eight different foreign customers) or the generation's most popular fighter, the F-16 (with nearly two thousand jets serving in some twenty-five air forces alongside the vast American fleet). Still, the fighter has already found a number of customers (Hungary, Czechia, South Africa, Thailand, Brazil, the last by itself looking to buy 108 aircraft), with as many as two dozen reportedly ongoing bids holding out the hope of still more (two of them to Canada and India, which could by themselves take another 200 aircraft, and make the Gripen a bestseller yet).

The gamble, in short, looks as if it is paying off. Still, it is worth noting that Sweden, like most countries, sat out the pursuit of a fifth generation of fighters, making do with upgraded Gripens--while in apparently taking an interest in the sixth generation it is not going it alone, joining the British-led "Tempest" program. I admit to not being bullish on that program, just as I have not been bullish on the sixth generation fighter given the technological claims made for it (initially, at least). However, it does seem safe to say that by this point the strategy that let Sweden build a fourth-generation fighter has long since run up against its limits.

1. As measured by the UN in 2015 U.S. dollars in its current National Accounts data set, Britain had a GDP of $1.33 trillion to Sweden's $232 billion, while spending a higher proportion of its GDP on defense--4.2 percent versus 3.1 percent--giving it a budget of $55 billion to Sweden's $7 billion.