Ukraine awaits Swedish Gripen fighter jets to expand its U.S. F-16 and French Mirage fleet.

Ukraine’s First Deputy Defense Minister Ivan Havryliuk told BBC News Ukrainian that Swedish JAS 39 Gripen fighters are among the Western aircraft Ukraine “expects,” alongside U.S. F-16s and French Mirages. 

Kyiv’s first clear signal that Swedish Gripen fighters are inbound came in an interview published September 29, 2025 by BBC News Ukrainian, in which First Deputy Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Ivan Havryliuk said Sweden’s JAS 39 Gripen will join Ukraine’s Western fighter mix alongside U.S. F-16s and French Mirage aircraft. Multiple Ukrainian and international outlets subsequently carried the remarks, providing the strongest on-record confirmation to date that Gripens are on the way after two years of exploratory evaluations and political hedging in Stockholm. While neither side has disclosed numbers or timelines, the statement marks a policy inflection after Sweden previously prioritized supporting the F-16 program rather than transferring its own frontline jets.
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Sweden’s JAS 39 Gripen is a multirole fighter built for dispersed operations, carrying NATO missiles and precision weapons with advanced radar and electronic warfare systems (Picture source: Saab).

Throughout 2024 and into 2025, allies agreed to sequence capability integration by standing up the F-16 enterprise first and then layering additional types once training, maintenance, munitions, and mission planning infrastructure reached a stable operating rhythm. Sweden aligned to that approach, focusing on enablers while detailed staff work progressed on airworthiness, configuration control, weapons release clearances, and third-party technology approvals inherent to the Gripen system. Introducing a second Western fighter prematurely would have risked fragmenting scarce instructor capacity, duplicating ground support equipment, and complicating software baselines, with the net effect of delaying combat power to the front.

The aircraft now in question is almost certainly the Gripen C/D, the single- and two-seat variants that form the backbone of Sweden’s current fleet and several NATO air policing detachments. The C-series is built around the RM12 engine, a Swedish-licensed derivative of GE’s F404, producing roughly 80.5 kN in afterburner. It carries eight external hardpoints, an internal 27 mm Mauser BK-27 cannon on the single-seater, and is wired for NATO weapons, including AIM-120 AMRAAM and IRIS-T. A key sensor is the PS-05/A pulse-Doppler radar, optimized for look-down/shoot-down performance and designed with low probability of intercept modes to reduce electromagnetic signature.

The Gripen fighter jet was engineered to operate from 800-meter road bases, using small ground crews and minimal equipment, with a typical air-to-air combat turnaround measured in minutes rather than hours. That logistics concept maps directly to Ukraine’s wartime reality, where Russian missile and drone attacks constantly target fixed runways, fuel farms, and hardened shelters. A fleet that can hop between pre-surveyed highway strips, refuel from trucks, and be rearmed by small teams complicates Russian targeting and compresses Ukraine’s kill chain against cruise missiles, glide-bomb carriers, and reconnaissance UAVs loitering near the line of contact.

On weapons, the Gripen C architecture gives Ukraine options. In air-to-air, the aircraft integrates short-range IRIS-T and beyond-visual-range AMRAAM, with many C-series users having fielded the MBDA Meteor ramjet missile under later software baselines. Air-to-surface, the type supports AGM-65-class precision munitions and can carry Sweden’s RBS-15 family for anti-ship roles. Coupled with Link 16 data links and Swedish-developed tactical data links, Gripen can fight as part of a networked system, receiving remote targeting from ground radars or AEW platforms and handing off tracks to shooters. The modularity is the point: Ukraine can blend Western missile stocks with extant NATO logistics and train to a single playbook already in use by several allied air forces.

By late summer, Ukraine’s F-16 cadre had achieved initial combat operations, with training pipelines in Europe producing pilots, crew chiefs, and avionics technicians at a steady clip. That base allowed planners to contemplate a second type without collapsing the fragile ecosystem of instructors, simulators, spare engines, and weapons loaders. At the same time, Sweden’s first full year inside NATO hardened Stockholm’s calculus about long-term European air defense, including forward air policing and reinforcement of the Alliance’s eastern flank. Gripen contributions to NATO missions in Poland and the Baltics further normalized the idea of Swedish fighters operating from allied bases and in multinational tasking.

Any Gripen package had to clear third-party release for U.S. and European subsystems, plus weapons like AMRAAM or IRIS-T. Training pipelines for Ukrainian pilots who had already been exposed to Gripen orientation flights since 2023 needed expansion to full conversion syllabi, including emergency procedures unique to the RM12 and Swedish cockpit ergonomics. Basing required arresting gear surveys on potential road strips, mobile power units, and winterization kits. Most importantly, Kyiv and Stockholm had to agree on sustainment: engines, spare parts, software baselines, and a realistic schedule for depot-level overhauls.

Gripen’s entrance could reshape the tactical picture over southern and eastern Ukraine. The jet’s small radar cross-section, robust electronic warfare suite, and high off-boresight IRIS-T pairing are tailored for ambush tactics against Russian Su-34 and Su-35 sorties conducting glide-bomb runs. With road-based dispersal, Ukrainian squadrons can surge short-notice CAPs near the front while minimizing vulnerability to preplanned missile salvos. If integrated with Meteor, where release is authorized, the Gripen adds a very long reach beyond AMRAAM envelopes, allowing Ukrainian controllers to pressure Russian fighters and A-50 surveillance aircraft outside many SAM threat rings. Even without Meteor, Gripen’s sensor fusion and data links make it a force multiplier inside Ukraine’s growing Western fighter ecosystem.

Sweden’s move signals that a NATO newcomer is willing to shoulder risk to accelerate Ukraine’s shift from post-Soviet legacy fleets to interoperable Western airpower. The decision also widens the industrial aperture: Saab, already supplying surveillance aircraft and other systems to Kyiv, becomes a core supplier in the reconstruction of Ukraine’s air force for the long war. Expect debates in Stockholm about backfilling Sweden’s own inventory and in Brussels about standardizing training across multiple Western types. Europe intends to build a resilient, multinational fighter fleet for Ukraine that can survive Russian strikes, contest the air over the front, and hold at risk the platforms launching daily glide-bomb and missile attacks. The sooner Gripen squadrons plug into that network, the sooner Ukraine gains another tool to deny Russian air superiority.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.