Saab JAS 39 Gripen: Highway Runways, Two Test Crashes and an AI Pilot

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Sweden began studying a replacement for its Saab 35 Draken and 37 Viggen in 1979 under the Bas 90 doctrine, which dispersed fighters to road runways 800 meters long and 17 meters wide in case main air bases were destroyed. The JAS 39 Gripen was named for three roles in one airframe: Jakt for air-to-air combat, Attack for air-to-surface and Spaning for reconnaissance. The project passed the Riksdag 176 to 167 in 1982 over Social Democratic opposition and was locked into a fixed-price contract in 1983. Saab chose a delta wing with canards and relaxed stability, making the jet inherently unstable and dependent on fly-by-wire software written in Ada.

In February 1989 test pilot Lars Rådeström crashed the first prototype while landing at Linköping because of pilot-induced oscillation, breaking his elbow, and Saab and Calspan spent 15 months reworking the software. In August 1993 Rådeström ejected during a display at the Stockholm Water Festival and the jet came down on Långholmen island, a crash traced to the software amplifying quick stick commands. Once fixed, the design met its goals: a 10-minute air-to-air turnaround by one technician and five conscripts, and 20 minutes for air-to-ground. A 2012 Jane's study put the Gripen C at about $4,700 per flight hour against $25,000 to over $38,000 for the F-35.

• The Volvo RM12 engine is a license-built derivative of the General Electric F404, and a Health and Usage Monitoring System tells technicians what to service.
• The C and D models added NATO compatibility and air refueling; the E and F models carry 40 percent more internal fuel, an F414G engine and the Raven ES-05 AESA radar.
• A 1995 marketing venture with British Aerospace was followed by bribery investigations tied to sales in South Africa, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary; only one individual, in Austria, was successfully prosecuted.
• Brazil partnered with Embraer to assemble its Gripens locally, and more than 280 have been delivered worldwide.
• In May 2025 a Gripen E flew three sorties controlled by an AI model named Centaur, demonstrating beyond visual range combat.