Sweden’s Gripen E vs. America’s F-35A: Which Single Engine Fighter is the Best

Sweden’s Gripen E vs. America’s F-35A: Which Single Engine Fighter is the Best

Sweden’s Gripen E vs. America’s F-35A: Which Single Engine Fighter is the Best Choice for Export Clients?

The Swedish Gripen E and American F-35A are the only two Western single engine fighters both in production and on order by their producing countries, and were the two frontrunners to supply the Royal Canadian Air Force with a new generation of aircraft to replace its ageing CF-18A/B jets. Both the Gripen and the F-35 have a great deal in common, including being designed to prioritise low costs both to produce and to operate relative to other aircraft of their
generations, and having somewhat unremarkable flight performances but focusing on advanced avionics and beyond visual range capabilities. There is also a great deal to distinguish them, most notably that the F-35 is a fifth generation fighter while the Gripen E is a modernisation of the fourth generation Gripen and is considered a ‘4+ generation’ design. Where the F-35 was developed under the world’s largest weapons program, and it is expected that over 2000 will be built despite possible deep cuts, the Gripen E is unlikely to see more than 200 airframes built with limited orders from the Swedish Air Force and only one success on export markets.

The F-35 was developed as part of an international project involving eight program partners, while the Gripen was developed by Sweden but heavily dependant on imported components to compensate for the limitations of the small European country’s industrial base and defence sector. The Gripen’s most complex inputs are largely of foreign origin, including an American F414 engine and a sensor suite and Meteor long range air to air missiles sourced from elsewhere in Europe. While both the F-35 and Gripen are single engine fighters, the two are at opposite ends of the spectrum with the F-35 being approximately twice as heavy and its F135 engine having over three times the thrust of the Gripen’s F414. The American fighter’s most notable strength is its radar evading stealth profile, which significantly improves survivability against both ground based air defences and enemy aircraft, while the Gripen’s radar cross section although small by fourth generation standards still leaves it far more vulnerable.

A key advantage of the F-35 is that as part of a far larger program it is not only produced on a far bigger scale, making it more cost effective due to economies of scale particularly considering the very small production lines for the Gripen and other European jets. The larger size of the program also ensures much more investment in research and development to continue to modernise the design likely past the middle fo the century, where Sweden’s ability to continue to provide upgrades for the Gripen remains highly questionable particularly as the aircraft is expected to be phased out of service much sooner in the Swedish Air Force than the F-35 is in the U.S. The F-35 also has the advantage of being much more widely used making spare parts readily available from allies, where the Gripen remains relatively rare and could be far more difficult to obtain parts for.