Gripen E - deep technical interview with Saab's Jussi Halmetoja
Unlikely as it is, the main competitor of the 5th generation Lockheed F-35 is the Saab Gripen-E. These two types, as different as they could get, faced-off in pitches for new fighter jets in the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Nordic countries, were proposed to Canada, and recently also competed in the Czech Republic. Yet the Gripen-E is a very significant departure from the Gripen C/D of yesterday. Essentially, it’s a brand-new fighter jet inside, just sharing the aerodynamic of the old Gripen C/D on the outside.
Saab’s Jussi Halmetoja will take us on a technical deep-dive of the Gripen E’s engineering and tactical systems, explaining how it technologically fully matches most of the F-35 strengths and in some areas, even exceeds the F-35 capabilities.
Can you introduce yourself to our readers?
Hello. I'm Jussi Halmetoja and I now work for Saab an operational advisor for the Air Domain. I’ve had over 2,300 hours in cockpit - before joining Saab, I was a frontline squadron pilot on both Vigen and Gripen systems, a weapons instructor on the squadron, I was also on the operational test job. After that, I was also involved in some developmental and experimental flight testing with the Gripen C, and also when we started working with the Czech Republic and Hungary as the first export nations.
After the flying career, I’ve had staff positions at the Meteor missile program office in the UK MOD, and then at the Swedish procurement agency FMV as the head of the air-to-air missile capabilities. I was also the requirements manager for the Gripen E.
Over the years, I've had the privilege to fly in and with pretty much every Western fighter that you see in service today. My role today is to bring this experience into the Saab fighter domain business, where I get involved in system requirements, the program development. But I also do a lot of marketing and sales support across the whole Gripen program domain.
The F-35 pitches several key areas as the gamechanger in regard to the previous generations of the fighter jets. Most notably stealth, advanced sensor fusion, advanced datalink, advanced sensor suite, ESM and ISTAR capabilities. Let’s start with the advanced sensor fusion, because you agree on its importance.
Sensor fusion has been out there for decades already. The advance Lockheed is pitching regarding the F-35 is an autonomous fused sensors management, in Lockheed’s terms Active Sensor Management. That means the aircraft itself manages, steers and tasks the various on-board sensors not just to passively correlate tracks from different sensors, but to actively build the most accurate and reliable tactical picture by managing all sensors without any pilot intervention. Is this something the Gripen E can do as well?
The mission to reliably detect, track and verify real objects in a complex battle space using a lot of sensor input from multiple sources is one of the biggest challenges for fighter platforms today. To create full situational awareness, it demands fully fused data. This is a matter of life or death for any pilot.
At Saab, we've been working with this complex data fusion challenge or technology across our domains for probably at least 50 years, if not more. It is one of our core capabilities. We’ve realized long ago the necessity to implement sensor fusion throughout the entire command and control networks - not only on a singular aircraft, but also the entire networks such as aircraft, the early warning radars, other sensors. This development in the early sense of sensor fusion dates back to the Draken era in Sweden. It was, in fact, pioneered here in the 80s, where we already deployed integrated, high-rate datalink systems on many platforms. And it's fair to say that we've gathered a lot of experience over those decades, always prioritizing the mission the best way possible for the pilots.
In the Gripen E, the pilot is now assisted by a new, task-based high-level command structure. The sensors automatically steer and tune parameters to optimize their performance.
That task is done in a very similar way you mentioned that allegedly the F-35 does. No more frantic “switchology” and lists of complex routines for the pilot in the cockpit. That's gone long ago now.
We've developed evolved automation – we even use aspects of things like AI and machine learning-based technology to help predict outcomes of events throughout the mission and offer the pilot advanced decision support to make the right actions at the right time in every moment. For example – how to launch a weapon and still maintain survivability against an enemy, complete situational awareness for when and how to act and when and how not to.
The ultimate point of Sensor Fusion, to sum it up, is to maintain a constant low workload for the pilots - so they can fully focus on the fight and the mission. And if you can't do that, you've failed your pilots and your capability. This is a concept we call human-machine collaboration (Saab’s product name for that.)
This is what you need to fight and survive in the complex battle space of today and tomorrow against multiple threats.
You mentioned the active management or tasking of the sensors in a similar way that the F-35 claims. So how does that work in more detail? Does it mean that, for example, on the tactical situation display, the pilot merely increases or decreases the range of the, let's say, range circle and he doesn't have to set up the radar range or so forth anymore manually? Is all of this done seamlessly on the background?
The mechanization of this is off course very complicated to answer. Instead of a long explanation, let’s just say that now, instead of setting the parameters of every single thing you want to do with your sensor suite, you now tell or give the sensor suite a task to go and look for this and that specific type of targets in this environment or in this location.
The system will know what are the optimum settings to use that radar or that sensor to achieve that task.
This is something that you can create easily, seamlessly while airborne. You can also pre-plan this if you want to do that, for instance, for ground and surface targets. You can also send these tasks across the tactical air units, the formation of Gripens, seamlessly if you would like to have someone else assisting you.
So the sensors work automatically, seamlessly, and you just have to focus that task at hand.
What are all the sensors which are integrated into Gripen-E’s sensor fusion? Of course, the radar and the data link are the basis for all sensor fusion. What about the IRST and the ESM? Are they also integrated?
In the Gripen E’s sensor fusion, every sensor is by default involved in acquiring information and acquiring data. And that includes not only all the sensors in one Gripen, but all the sensors in the whole formation of several Gripens, so they can work collaboratively in an automatic way to use all the active and passive sensors to acquire and maintain tracks and keep the situation awareness.
But not only that. Who else is connected to you to your tactical datalink? It can be airborne early warnings, it can be other sensors on the ground, it can be friendly surface-to-air missile surveillance systems. All these things can fuse automatically to produce the very best situational awareness for the pilots. And it's all automatic - you don't have to do or care about anything.
So you're saying that every single sensor on every Gripen, all those separate tracks are integrated and correlated into a single sensor fusion displayed to the pilot.
Yes. If you’d like, you can also exclude one sensor or aperture from the sensor fusion mix due to any reason - it can be jamming, weather, or anything else. You can do that if you want. But normally the system is smart enough to know what it has to do in every single moment to acquire and keep the track data quality robust.
Also importantly, the pilot will always have an indication of how good your data quality is right now. I can't really go into detail how we present that, but this is a very essential item for the Gripen pilot. An information to really know how good is your situation awareness right now. And should that situation awareness value go down, the system then will automatically do whatever it can to increase that SA.
Speaking about sensors - Gripen-E's IRST, the Skyward-G, is further development of the Typhoon's PIRATE sensor. That system was explicitly designed to counter stealth threats in an environment where the radar would be considered pretty much useless – specifically, the notional Soviet MFI programme.
Could you elaborate? Is Skyward G designed explicitly with anti-stealth IRST capabilities? What are the improvements or changes in regard to the PIRATE? And why has the field of view changed?
We use the evolved Skyward IR scanner. It's LWIR (Long Wave Infrared), which detects very small temperature variations at very long ranges. Hence, the field of view doesn't have to be very wide because of the ranges it's designed to operate at. It is capable of passive detection of stealthy (low observable) objects. And yes, this is the requirement. It's one of the essential requirements in the modern fight tactics and we know that it works. We have really great test results.
It's not possible to hide IR signatures, especially at altitude. Hence, say I get an indication of a target that might be RF-stealthy, but it can be detected by IR.
Today, especially with the resolution modern IRST scanners have, you can put a very fine beam of AESA radar energy in that target location. That's how you work collaboratively with sensors. And now I have multiple sensor inputs combined with very high-power signal processing and the human-machine collaboration function that we talked about earlier. Perhaps I even have a third-party sensor input, too - you never know.
As a result, now that stealthy target is not so stealthy anymore. Now I can see you and that means that he’s in trouble. That's the end. So, it’s about working with radar, IR, multispectrum, collaboratively.
Additionally, we know that for any measure and a countermeasure, there is off course a counter-countermeasure. Future fight will be even more contested with electronic warfare. This means that all the fighter platforms may need to be able to build situation awareness – the cornerstone of modern fighter tactics - autonomously. And this is where a sensor like IRST also has its mission.
As you mentioned, there is a counter-counter measure to everything, and that includes IRST. It’s easy to detect even stealth aircraft on the background of a clear sky, but once uneven IR background comes into play – clouds or even ground clutter –, then it becomes much harder to detect such target.
The Typhoon’s PIRATE IRST pioneered a novel approach where a complex software wasn’t trying to detect a “bright spot”, but rather was searching for something contrasting with the IR background. It took them many years to develop this capability. I presume Gripen E has also quite complex software to deal with this? Is the IR data, the detection of adversary aircraft on the IR background clutter, something where Gripen uses modern techniques such as Machine Learning or AI?
Off course any sensor, be it RF or IR or anything else, will always be affected by a number of things. One of the things is, like you mentioned, is clutter. It can be ground clutter, it can be surface clutter, it can be background clutter, it can be jamming, it can be all kinds of things.
When these sensors started emerging or evolving around the 70s, 80s and the early 90s, this was a much bigger issue. But since then, given the technology evolution and also a combination of hardware, networks and software, you can do a lot of things to process signals to really know what's going on. So that's what we have done, like you say.
In terms of using AI machine learning technology type in terms of acquisition… We do that, but more for the decision support for the pilot, rather than applying it on the real, physical data. See, for the physical data, you want to know what's going to happen all the time. You don't want to have any noise impact you didn't regard or didn't know of. This capability is there and could be trusted because the pilot knows it has been tested in labs, in flight tests, in synthetic environment and others.
Let's move on to Datalink. Simple sharing of the target tracks is, as we all know, a matter of the 80s, 90s, even before that (eg. the SAGE system of the 1950’s). Going beyond that, the modern datalinks are all about sharing advanced data like the wingman statuses, the fuel, the weapons, maybe even system damage or limitations. Even more important is coordinating the engagements over the datalink - so that, for example, a flight of four fighters can collaborate together and select which fighter will be shooting at which target. Is this something that the Gripen-E can do as well?
What a lot of people think these are new and revolutionary features of the modern datalink designs of today, we in Sweden have actually been using for decades – already in the of Saab Viggens in the late 1980s. I would say already 20 years ago, I sat in a 4-ship of fighter planes and I’ve had full situational awareness over the data on what my wingmen were doing, their combat values in terms of fuel and weapons.
And even back then, the Swedish air force has already been using datalinks for more than 20 years, by the way. That means that here and now, Saab has unrivaled level of experience when it comes to working and expanding the capabilities of the tactical datalinks.
Today, the datalinks are essential to exchange information, coordinate actions and create battle space superiority in a joint perspective, so the capability is multi-domain. Most datalinks share different types of information over some I would say partitions on the data network. The platforms and operators have some choice depending on their operational requirements. So information such as formations targeting weapons engagement, what's going on real time combat status. For Saab, this has been the bread and butter for many years, using both national and Western interoperable waveforms such as Link 16.
Specifically speaking about the Gripen E datalinks. The design has now implemented new channels in this waveform using secure and flexible high-rate data exchange on the Link16 as a choice, enabling technical functions developed in the avionics, taking the operator far beyond the realms of say as a conventional fighting tactic.
We talk about whole new ways of optimizing the sensors with the passive sensors, targeting how you can deliver weapons, how you can support weapons, how you collaborate. It's far from the traditional. Let’s illustrate on an example. Say we have a 3-ship of Gripens. One Gripen is using a collaborative sensor network to assign targets to everyone else. Another one, Gripen somewhere else, makes the weapon missile launch against those tracks. And then a third Gripen at a rear location yet somewhere else, can support that missile with data which allows the two first to turn back, survive and be ready for the next weapon release.
This is the new flexibility which gives us tremendous opportunity. We call that the “Gripen e-formation” - this way where you fight as a living organism, where everyone now knows what everyone else is doing through full exploitation of the sensor data and the network. This makes Gripen tactically superior, which is a requirement for the Swedish Air Force to strike with coordination where the enemy is weaker. Like a wolf pack, I would say.
Additionally, anybody who knows anything about datalinks, also knows that datalinks have consistently been one of the great weak points of some platforms. That also applies today for the F-35, because the a data link they are using that is not actually interoperable with anyone else. This is a long-running and profound problem resulting from the design restrictions of a [stealth] platform such as the F-35. It makes them unable to properly communicate with anyone else than the other F-35s, that means the rest of the fighter force or allied forces in general, anyone else. And that makes each joint strike fighter less interoperable, less useful and more restricted to operate. It is a problem that the community knows, but not everyone else has just yet realized.
Isn’t it true that Gripen’s datalink is, by nature, limited in the exact same way the data link on the F-35? If you have a very very advanced data link on the F-35 or on the Gripen, the bottleneck for sharing information with other aircraft is the Link 16 system, which is many years behind the top-end platform-specific data links like the MADL in the F-35 and the TIDLS in the Gripen.
That brings us to the next question. Both F-35 and Gripen E are using multiple antennae to direct the radiation of the datalink emissions directionally, so it's not omnidirectional and it would be less susceptible to detection by enemy ESM. The F-35's data link uses AESA arrays to create very narrow beams. The Gripen E does it differently – using conventional, but highly directional data link antennas. Why is that? Why didn't you use AESA?
I actually worked on this. The stealthy platforms often rely on LPI data link solutions to minimize the risk of detection by enemy ESM, just like you said. Yet the downside here is that these aircraft are not able to share any information outside that tactical formation or that specific aircraft, thereby limiting interoperability with others. The “command center in the sky”, the quote made about the F-35 by the chief of defense? That actually doesn't happen. That this is the biggest flaw.
In the Gripen-E, the datalink solution is rather based on Link16 - even though you do have the choice of other datalink systems that we have already delivered [eg. MANET or TIDLS]. That means it's fully interoperable with Western allies. We let the customer decide how to equip their aircraft.
We also have various techniques to minimize signatures, including abilities to fully control platform electronic emissions or EMCON levels implemented at all stages of emission through pre-planned automated EMCON settings, which you also then can easily adjust whenever or wherever needed, while airborne.
The other reason for [highly directional datalinks] is jamming. Jamming is always a concern for any datalink user and any datalink system. We know the enemy will absolutely try very hard to do this. It's another aspect of a fighter operation that we in Sweden have spent decades working on and preparing for.
While it is possible to sporadically jam and interfere with parts of a network, fully jamming a datalink system system would requires the enemy to be able to strategically place many, many jamming emitters or antennas across the whole entire fighter area of operations. And that's just not possible to achieve.
Let’s focus more on this. The marketing materials on Gripen-E would suggest that the data link, the advanced data link with those highly directional antennas, is the proprietary Saab datalink (TIDLS) used for the Swedish Air Force. Are saying that those highly directional antennas can actually be used to communicate over the Link16 system, too?
Well, this is where I can't give you any exact details, because the whole airframe of the Gripen-E is full of apertures and antennas. The particular technical solutions, where they are and how it’s possible to exploit those systems in terms of acquisition, jamming and information exchange, is classified.
Link16, as we know, is a round emitting datalink system. This is just how Link16 works. We have different solutions for Sweden as a Gripen-E customer on one hand, and for other Gripen-E (and also Gripen-C) customers where we have implemented different types of data links [eg. Brazil’S MANET]. How are those capabilities different from the Link 16 and what capabilities they have, I can't unfortunately get into details on.
Earlier, you spoke about Saab’s advanced datalink for the Gripen - like the datalinked, coordinate targets engagement, wingman data and so forth shared over datalink. Is that only available for the Swedish Gripen’s datalink, or also using the NATO-generic Link 16?
You can do that with both. You can actually use the Link 16 at expanded levels. Nowadays, there are Link 16 channels that give you the ability to actually send your own, proprietary encrypted data to your own units. This is one of the new capabilities that we are implementing.
Then we have the national datalink, or other datalinks that have different abilities and capabilities. The mission is still the same - to create and share, disseminate and achieve situational awareness across the whole information and the whole battlespace.
Does that mean that when there is an export customer for the Gripen E, the export Gripen E comes with two separate data links – one, more advanced, to talk just with other Gripens, and one less advanced to use Link16 with all its limitations? Or is it Link 16-only?
The technical solution is so that you can use more than two datalinks at the same time. It's really up to the customer requirement. What is the CONOPS [Concept of Operations]? What are the operational requirements of various customers? And what kind of requirements or needs do they have?
For Sweden it's clear. They are basing the information exchange in Gripen E on this new, fast, expanded Link16 capability. And then you always have a national data link as a backup, if needed.
Gripen has quite a modern Electronic Warfare Suite, the Saab Arexis. However, Saab has been using that same exact name for many generations. Could you explain what the current generation of Arexis does? How would you compare the current generation of the Arexis, set up on Gripen-E, with the other state-of-the-art solutions like the F-35's famous ASQ239 or others?
Some authors are referring to using interferometers to pinpoint location of the enemy emitters, which is the state-of-the-art in the class - the are used by the Growler, which is the specialized electronic warfare variant of the Super Hornet, and according to some estimates also as one of the features of the F-35’s ASQ-239.
The mission of EW is to combat the advanced threats in the highly contested threat environment of the future. It has been a crucial requirement to equip the Gripen E with the very best EW-Suite available. It is maybe the single most important feature in the Gripen-E design.
The airframe of Gripen E comprises of seven antenna systems, including fourty apertures around the airframe, which provide not only 360 coverage, but spherical active and passive sensing.
The main features include the RAVEN AESA radar, obviously, which is the primary array, but then also you have electronically scanned GaN (Galium Nitride) apertures in the wings and the fin; and the new missile approach warning system, the MAPS, capable of providing very accurate angular resolution.
So, these enable the multi-layered, we call it, leaf chain, using smart sensing jamming from long and medium to short ranges to keep you up and over.
On top of that, Gripen-E carries an extensive amount of a variety of smart measures - really a lot, in the order of several hundreds, for chaff, for hot chaff, multicolor flares, active electronic devices such as a Britecloud etc.
Comparing the EW systems is always quite sensitive and in many ways subjective. Let me say that [using] the highly integrated use of the radar, the RWR and the ESM, the Gripen-E can precisely detect, identify and geolocate all sources of radiated electromagnetic energy, including unidentified non-direct-emitting sources.
By that, I mean you can listen in to something which is not looking at you. And this is unique. There are only one or two aircraft platforms in the world that can actually do this. You don't achieve that with interferometry, even though it is very capable, but needs to have an emitter looking at them.
So, regarding unidentified non-direct-emitting sources, even missiles - IR, RF including signal homing, the home and jam - we can look at and use as source of information. This is unique.
Together, it all enables a powerful and highly flexible combat ISTAR capability in class of the most modern peer Western fighters such as the F-35. It can do the same things.
We also have an ability to rapidly update and modify the systems as the threats change on the battlefield. This is a central part of the Gripen design philosophy. Off course, everybody says they can do that - but we have demonstrated and proven this capability, because without it you will not survive.
The Electronic Warfare suite comprises of several subsystems. The ESM (Electronic Signal Massures), the MAWS (Missile Approach Warning System), and then the actual offensive Electronic Warfare capability. Let's go through each.
Speaking about ESM, what kinds of emitters is Gripen able to passively geolocate via ESM? It's nowadays pretty standard to geolocate static emitters - for example, ground-to-air radars. What about moving targets like enemy aircraft using their radars? Is Gripen able to geolocate position of actually moving enemy electronic radiating targets?
This is really about the capability of your electronic support measures. ESM normally comprises of passive sensors. For every passive sensor that we have, whether it's a radio frequency passive listener, there is always going to be a frequency band within which this electronic support measure is listening and actually identifying things.
I can’t be specific regarding the frequency range, but I can say that in the Gripen-E, we have vastly expanded this frequency range to cover a lot more. Because that's what we need to do. As long you as you have something that is emitting, we can listen on to it.
One single Gripen has the ability to very exactly identify and locate that target, because the Gripen is also moving through the air. So you get a baseline and movement, and the physics will help you to use that.
But the real strength is if you have two or three or four Gripens that all can listen automatically. Then you can use all this angular data and really quickly build very, very precise coordinates for both fixed, as well as moving and maneuvering targets on the ground, on the sea, but also in the air, just by doing passive sensing.
Just to confirm - in regards of moving aerial targets, the Gripen-E is capable of both single-ship, as well as multi-ship datalinked, passive RF signal geolocation by ESM, right?
Yes, that's correct. Let me emphasize that the real capability. With the Gripen-E, we can sense the targets who are emitting, but not radiating against at the Gripens with their associated radar. So, you can be a passive Gripen somewhere, passively looking at a target location to do identification, detection, geolocation tasks without that radar actually looking at that Gripen who is measuring.
This is unique. Allegedly, the F-35 can also do this. But there are no other platforms that can do this in this fashion.
You also mentioned that using this technique, you can actually detect non-radar based incoming missiles like infrared-guided missiles. Is that correct?
Yes. With the whole collective capability of the equipment sensor suite, passive sensor suite, you can detect, locate and track many threat missile systems. There is certain limitation depending on what kind of threat missile system that is, also depending on what the speed is. Obviously hypersonic missiles that go space and back and so on are going to be more challenging. But we have the capability to passively warn, detect and locate many of those systems in the Gripen, in a single ship, but also in the formation.
Apart from the tactical usage of ESM to pinpoint enemy locators and being able to attack or avoid them, there is also the operational or strategic usage - to actually “vacuum up” the wireless data for exploitation by the intelligence analysts back on base. This is what the specialized platforms like the EF-111 Raven or EP-3 Aries used to do in the past – and what the F-35 can do, one of it’s big selling points.
There was a story widely published about an F-35 in this regard. After the conflict in Ukraine started, a F-35 was flying by the NATO eastern border, passively capturing all there was on the airwaves. And it detected a Russian S-400 battery operating on war-time frequencies which were insofar unknown to the ESM systems, recorded it and allowed exploitation by the analysts.
Is Gripen’s ESM also able to record the electronic emissions across broad spectrum, not just radars and battlefield systems but also communications, data links, ISR, maybe even voice communications in UHF, and record all that and bring it to analysts for exploitation by intelligence?
Yes. The Gripen-E is now a fully fledged, combined ISTAR platform. That means intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance. The whole passive ESM sensor suite has the exact same capabilities like the F-35.
Comparing to a bigger aircraft, like a RC-135 Rivet Joint or something like that, these have bigger antennas and hence even bigger frequency bandwidth. But fighters such as Gripen-E and the F-35, they have the same capabilities. There are no differences.
Wherever they fly, wherever Gripen E is flying, it constantly records everything within the domain of the frequency coverage of that system. We have a very good capability to then extract that data, analyze it on a squadron level to see what is this new emitter sensor and what are it’s capabilities, and then to build a new software to counter that.
Also, more on that later, the Gripen E is unique in that you can actually use that information to change parameters in your sensors, your weapon systems, even your decision support - because you now have the access to the electronics part of the aircraft.
Say that the Gripen E is flying somewhere, and it detects an intelligence source over the electromagnetic spectrum, which may be interesting for the intelligence analysts. Eg. some enemy command center broadcasting. Can it actually transmit the information it has eavesdropped on over its ESM system immediately, over data link, to a ground location so the chain of command can analyze and utilize this information immediately? Or is it only possible to offload it after landing via some flash drive or other physical interface?
This is really about the design and capability of the datalink. What information you want the datalink to actually transmit.
Today, the technical parameters of the data links we have in any aircraft across the whole flight domain don't have these capabilities. The datalinks operated by us, F-35, anyone else today, they don't have the capability to send all that data back to a ground station real-time. Maybe in the future they will, but current design doesn't allow you to do that just yet.
But the aircraft, Gripen-E, it records everything all the time while it's airborne.
How it’s done instead is to send locations, target information, coordinates, some other related information immediately over the datalink. And then when you land, you very quickly extract that detailed sensor data and then you put it in your evaluation system. This is how we want to do it today.
That brings us to the digital ground infrastructure. The way the F-35 ecosystem works is that pretty much everything is connected to a multinational network, and unless you have some firewall protections, it will be shared with Lockheed and who knows else.
Saab has been pitching a different concept where we have the autonomy of the data. You will land the Gripen, you want to download the data, and both the data you have recorded with your ESM system as well as any other intelligence, any other mission data, data about the Gripen - it all stays with the operating nation, right? It's not shared anywhere unless they want to.
This is something that's been reported on the different fleet management systems that everyone's using. Most modern fighters today come with a computerized fleet management systems. These are used to plan the flight operations with regards to sustainment, to maintenance, overhaul and things, simply to manage and assist with airworthiness and operations.
The difference, as you say, is who owns and who gets access to this data. Who is in charge. Who calls the shots on that information. And what if, just hypothetically, what if that system actually for any reason breaks or becomes unavailable? If you don't have control, how long can you sustain your operations without that fleet management system?
The idea that any air force would be forced to surrender that data to another government or worse, a private company, I think that's profoundly unswedish. To us, this is just unthinkable. This is not how we do things.
The Gripen-E fighter guarantees autonomous operations for any customer - they are in sole control of their data.
That said, on a case to case basis, there can be an arrangement to share some maintenance and technical data for specific mutually beneficial reasons - but this is then an agreement between the nations, and it's not by compulsion. Lots of Gripen air forces do this with Saab and with each other today. But they are in control of the process not matter what. It’s not Saab or anyone else.
Ownership of this critical data has a direct link to capability and sovereignty - and this is what fighters are ultimately supposed to guarantee for your nation's life.
I couldn't agree more. On a related note, the counterpart of these fleet management or mission support systems is the mission computer of the aircraft itself. Is Gripen-E based on an open mission system architecture?
Yes, this is actually something that really distincts us from anyone else. The way we have constructed the avionics system.
We talked about the avionics design of Gripen. This is a new way to approach evolution. What we’ve been developing over 10 years now is a tactical mission computer system, where we can partition the kind of flight safety, airworthiness related things such as flight control, and all those things, and then put a hard wall into the tactical mission computer.
On the other side of that hard wall there is the tactical software, which directly links into sensors, weapon systems, HMI parts, decision support, and all that stuff.
With this new design, the operator, the air force, will have the ability to go into that tactical mission computer. The tactical software partition.
And because there is now this hard wall, you will no longer have to touch any of the flight-critical parts. That means that once you do changes, upgrades, modifications that you want to the tactical partition, you don't have to do a lot of labor, some timely or costly verification, validation work to see that you didn't mess up the airworthiness, criticalities. The air force can do it on their own.
This is completely new. You can maybe compare it to Tesla, where you can do an upgrade of software, insert your own new applications into your mission computer according to your requirements, and you have the control. That also means that we now have a new approach in design in how we can manage midlife upgrades. There are no more mid-life upgrades. Now you have the control, you have the power to do all those little modifications and upgrades at your own pace - without having to ask anyone for permission!
This is a new way of looking at it. The the US. NGAD initiative (6th gen fighter) is talking about this idea and design philosophy of avionics as a novelty. And it will come maybe 10-15 years down the line. Yet in Gripen-E, it flies every day already today.
If I understand you correctly, that gives every export customer the same capability which for example with the F-16 or F-35, only the Israelis were allowed - to code and integrate their own hardware, their own software into those planes.
Yes. With this new philosophy, you have the possibility to do that.
And we always offer a collaborative “Gripen Design control center” in the nation that operates the Gripen E platform, which helps them actually build this capability to be able to modify the system, tactics and performance ingenuously in the Gripen-E operating country.
So if a new customer buys Gripen E, you would actually provide support and training say for the local military research agency so they would learn how to write their own software and integrate their own systems into the Gripen E architecture?
Absolutely yes, that's exactly what the capability means. The local air force, the operators, they will be in control.
Some minor tactical changes can even be done at a squadron level and it will not take months, it won't take weeks, it can be done in hours. Perhaps days depending on the level and magnitude of that modification and that upgrade.
That's unique.
Oh yes. It's interesting to talk about this with our avionics engineers. Many of them are really, really talented, genius people. Sometimes they say that they were naively brave in their ambition to make this happen, and that it has been taking quite some time. But now, once we are here, all the pain in this development process really has paid off. We are really proud about how we managed to do this, and we have a lot of visitors from all around the world in IT, high tech companies coming to see how Saab did this.
I would say that's one of the most powerful capabilities of the Gripen-E. Off course, I must ask the question - how is it with the informational security? If the adversary was able for example to hack over the data link and gain access to the system, it could essentially demilitarize the fighter jet.
How exhaustive and intensive is protection of the Gripen-E aircraft and all the associated ground infrastructure against enemy hacking? Is this something which was baked into the construction from day one? Do you have a division or program inside to make sure that these important systems are secured from outside interference?
Ensuring the security, safety and criticality of software, of hardware, not to allow things like that to happen - this is the foundation, this what I would say the spine, the DNA, of the avionics ambitions like this. If you fail with that part, then all the other work you have done will be of no value. We have put a lot of efforts to prevent any outside suppression or interference into software and hardware of the platform.
On a related note - is the Avionics architecture and mission software of Gripen-E a clean-slate design, or is it an evolution of the Gripen-C software?
I would say it's both. Meaning – the way we have designed and built the whole core Avionics, that’s brand new.
That said, all the nice and good and sweet spots and bits and pieces that we learned from Gripen-C and Gripen-A and other platforms along the decade of evolution... Obviously, we left those sweet spots into the Gripen-E as well, wherever we could.
In the terms of mechanical design, computer design, if there is anything that we can use, reuse or benefit from, this is our ambition to do. And I think that one of the benefits of being kind of a smaller company that many other producers are, is that we have smaller teams. They have less prestige, less authority. So we empower ideas, ambition, sometimes crazy ideas. Not all ideas are always good, but some of the ideas and some of the ambitions are throughout genius.
Let's continue with stealth. On the Saab website, there are actually renders of an early design of the Gripen NG with apparently stealthy design. It had a flat lower fuselage, it had dual canted tails, it had F-22-like air intakes, and it was obvious that it was modified very much to adhere to the planform alignment principle of stealth/VLO design.
Yet when the real Gripen E rolled-out, it was nothing like that early developmental stealthy render. What made Saab change their opinion? What made Saab not pursue the planform alignment and all the stealth technologies even on a limited basis, and instead continue with fairly conventional Gripen-E?
The stealth question is one we get a lot from all around. For us, it was a deliberate, informed choice to create efficient survivability in the Gripen-E not by stealth, but rather through powerful, smart, networked EW capabilities.
Like all fighter designers, we do whatever we can to also minimize radar signatures by shielding, reshaping and so on. But the truth is that the battle space of today is now changing. In fact, it already has changed that the enemy has capabilities to detect, track and engage low-observable targets. We know this. This is done by low frequency radars, passive sensors and many other techniques.
Then, a networked sensor systems provides also missile targeting capability against those so-called stealthy aircraft, thus putting them at risk. Something that was “invisible” to radar maybe in the 1990s is not invisible anymore.
Saab has also been a radar designer and builder for decades. We are at cutting edge of radar technology, where new materials and better signal processing have already provided higher performance against smaller targets at very long ranges. That’s how and why we know about the advances in radars - because we are delivering radars.
If we can see you with new radar systems, also in the fighter jets – then so can the enemy.
RF stealth was always going to be a one-trick pony in the court. Today, it's been defeated by technology. And this is generally very bad news. I'm sure we've all seen General Kelly, the head of US Air Force Combat Command. He recently noted something to the effect that without the ability to fight in the electronic spectrum, we very soon will lose the air war. This has to be acknowledged.
That is why every Gripen-E is now equipped with highly effective means to suppress hostile sensors and weapons systems, rather than going full out geometric stealth.
This is also directly related to the important factor which sets Gripen-E apart from everyone else. The modularity and openness of the avionics design. The access to the tactical software, where you can adapt, optimize performance of systems, sensors, weapons, and all that decision support so that you will be better than the enemy. The ability to control the capability. The thing is - if you have stealth today, how much can you control?
The question of stealth, unfortunately, is one of the topics where the public debate has completely warped the original meaning. First, the notion was that stealth is an all-defeating magic cloak of invisibility. Now, the notion is becoming that stealth is pretty useless becaus of thee low frequency radars. But it's not so black and white, right?
The simple truth is that stealth decreases the detection range, and that's it. And while the low frequency radars can detect stealth aircraft, it's impossible to use low frequency radars for target tracking and missile guidance. It's a simple matter of physics, the wavelength is too long for precision targeting. For precision targeting, you need to use short wavelength radars, and for these, stealth is still efficient. That practically means that if you have RF stealthy aircraft -VLO is be much better term-, what it does is it decreases the threat range at which the enemy can successfully guide his missiles to hit it.
Saab has a promo video of Gripen-E where it shows doing the exact same thing, decreasing the radius of those threat circles, simply using electronic warfare. Would you trust the Arexis electronic warfare system of Gripen to fly into the threat area of, for example, the SA-21 (S-400) system?
Mm-hmm. This question brings us right into the core aspect of the capability to fly inside missile engagement zones. That is the survivability. If you are not survivable, you will not be able to fight for very long, or at all. So what's the capability of that sensor or that IADS we have to fight against? And what's the mission really, what's the thing we want to achieve?
Are we going to defend our nation - or go attack somebody? All of these are relevant to what's the risk we're willing to take in our ambition for a mission. What's the purpose of our fight, really?
Enemies are evolving. They have new radars. But not only the low frequency radar - they have all kinds of other acoustic, passive, LIDAR, MIMO, say what, they have all kinds of detection and tracking and targeting.
Like you said, even though you can detect a low observable or very low observable platform, you still have to fire and try to defeat that with a missile. The thing is – the RF-guided missiles, including the air-to-air missiles, all have a loft trajectory. When they are fired against any target, on which the launch platform has sufficiently good situational awareness, that missile fired will go very high up. Then towards the terminal phase, it will dive towards its targets from above, opening its seeker from an advantageous position.
That being the case, we can legitimately ask - how efficient will stealth be against the radar detection from those top-down aspects? It's been optimized for aspects not from the above, but from the below. The same also applies for surface to air missiles.
All this means that stealth can be detected and the enemy unfortunately does have the capability to both target and send missiles against that stealth target. So what's the risk you are willing to accept? It all comes to this. What's the doctrine? How do you value survivability? How important are your pilots? Are you going to use electronic warfare instead? And how do you know how good your electronic warfare is? Well, let’s say there are means to do it. To know how efficient it is.
I think that you definitely need more than one ability to ensure your survivability. With the Gripen E solution, we believe in the situational awareness that will help you to know where you are and where and what the threat is. Then we build survivability and lethality. We use network-enabled warfare. And this is the difference here.
It's not one aircraft, one piece of electronic attack equipment. It's the whole formation where sensors, systems, and weapons on board of Gripens and on other platforms work collaboratively, to automatically enable mission execution in totally new ways, unpredictable to the enemy. This creates new forms of survivability.
And then we have the human-machine collaboration that will deliver decisive information advantage to assist the pilot in Gripen cockpit to make the right actions at the right time.
So a combination of suppression, electronic warfare, networks - that's what creates modern survivability.
EW is a game of who can outsmart whom when both parties can see each other. For a while, you have the electronic warfare playing the upper hand; and for a while, you have the enemy surface-to-air missiles playing the upper hand. We have seen this in the iterations of EW and SAM systems winning and losing in Vietnam, the Israeli-Arab wars, the new generation of Russian IADS and A2AD systems, then the current airborne EW systems. Hence, EW seems to be a temporary solution and as you said - you don't want to put all your eggs into one basket.
This is exactly what General Kelly, the head of air combat command, says. They see what is going on when they look at the Indo-Pacific, in China and Taiwan etc. They see development of new radars, new systems, new networks. Then they realized that - look, if we can't counter these with electronic warfare, then we will lose the war. This is exactly what happens.
Over the decades, new capabilities have emerged, new technologies. I would say that today, any advanced operator has a very good understanding on the technologies, on the capabilities, even though new things and more powerful systems emerge and get developed. But the regarding the systems that will appear in the domain of air, land and surface systems today, the most advanced operators in the West and East have a fairly good understanding on what those systems can do. And that's kind of the way you want to learn about what's going to happen.
You have to keep track, so you can then make your countermeasure to prevent the countermeasure they have to make a counter-countermeasure.
If Gripen depends so heavily on electronic warfare for survivability, how does it counter the home on jam of the enemy missiles and systems?
While EW is the instrument to suppress the enemy, to create survivability, it's linked to the decision support for the Gripen pilot in the cockpit. To know where is an S-400 or S-500 missile gonna be, even though it might not be there. Where the enemy’s R-77s and R-37s are going to be or potentially going to be, and how dangerous to the Gripen-E would those missiles be in there. Because we still want to avoid flying into missiles, even though we have to be in the weapons and missile engagement zones of long-ranging systems. Knowing where the threat is, you can take appropriate actions early enough.
Also, as I already gave the example with collaborative targeting, shooting and guiding missiles - you can take those Gripens in the front and make them come back, while others are supporting them in the task. So it's EW and decision support.
Home-on-jam is something that we see and most missile manufacturers develop in different ways. Yet if you want to jam a missile and it goes into HOJ mode, this also means -without going into the specifics- that it will adversely affect the kinematic range of that missile. Hence, as long as you know that, then you have the situation awareness and you can then manage that threat in an efficient way.
There is a set of capabilities which are unique to Gripen, and especially post-Ukraine, it's obvious how useful they are. It's the improvised basing capability, being able to start and land on even improvised road strip “bases”. This is what saved the Ukrainian Air Force in the beginning of the war - being able to disperse quickly while their regular or peacetime air bases were being struck with cruise missiles. Saab provides general figures regarding the length and width of the road strips on which Gripen E can land. Could you be more specific regarding the exact parameters of the length and the clearance on both sides? That means, what is the required width of the road itself, and what is required clearance on both sides from, for example, trees?
There’s a little more into this. As you say, it's about really creating survivability and keeping your flexibility to operate, to the survivability to or to spread your resources. As you mentioned, the war in Europe has reminded us all of these lessons, all lessons that we may have forgotten and we now had to relearn.
Large fixed bases are essentially just large fixed targets. Simultaneously, given the extraordinary cost of some of the new fighters out there, with all the supporting capability they require, forces their users to have only maybe one or two bases to rely on. Really big, fantastic large fixed targets for the enemy. Very vulnerable by design.
Survivability through dispersed operations, which now referred to as “Agile Combat Employment”, has suddenly became a huge talking point for any air force who realizes that they need to be able to do it. Yet most of them can't, only a few.
Real-world dispersed operations mean that you have to be able not only to distribute your fighter force over a wide area from a remote, sometimes austere, locations. But also support and sustain them for operations for months. That means that unless you have a complete fighter system that's designed to do this, you are likely to fail your operations.
I's really to be ready day zero and not day one, because when that day one comes, your bases and infrastructure will be hit by enemy's long-range precision fire just like we have seen in the war in Ukraine today, which is happening right in front of us. In Sweden, we’ve learned this a long time ago.
The requirement to operate from austere temporary bases and roads is to take off and land on surfaces that are a minimum of 800 meters long and a minimum of 16 meters wide. To be able to do that, you need to do some preparations depending on whether you are operating from a base on a regular road. But the jet and its supporting network must be able to go pretty much everywhere and relocate as needed. In terms of creating clearance, objects and hurdles and things, there's not a lot of requirement for that. Obviously, if you land on a normal regular road, you will have to remove some road signs and things like that. But it is all very simple and that's really how you can do it and not many others can.
So when you're saying 16 meters, that's the width of the road itself.
That's correct. That is the design requirement posed by Swedish Air Force in their ambition to do this dispersed operations landing. It's not a lot,16 meters wide and 800 meters long. When you actually land on this runway from a distance, it looks like a very small air strip. But with the agility of the platforms that we design, it is not a problem at all.
Also, we design flight controls and all the other things that support the pilot so that you can easily land and take off on an airstrip with those dimensions, even with a heavy loadout and a lot of fuel. So having a heavy aircraft.
When we're talking about heavily loaded aircraft, are there any constraints on the road surface loading, which must be allowed?
Not really. Most of the strips that we used in the Swedish Air Force are pre-prepared, and there are many of them across Sweden. They have been just subject to regular inspections by the base people and base support people. If it's a robust, well-maintained runway, we can use it. We don't have any specific requirements for heat, durability or things like that. As long as it's a fairly flat 800 meter long, 16 meter wide strip, it's ready to be used by the Gripen.
And the length, which you mentioned, 800 meters, I presume it's because of the landings. If you wanted, for example, to taxi the Gripen or tow it by truck to some location and just take off, are the requirements shorter, or do the regulations or operating procedures prescribe that 800 meters are the rock bottom under any circumstance?
It's a design requirement and because of that design requirement, then the platform always has to do it within the design requirement. Normally, the airstrip is 8 to 9 hundred meters long and then you have some taxiways adjoined to it which may turn or may be straight. But as far as the design requirements go, it's not a challenge for Gripen at all.
Whether you are operating from fixed bases or especially austere locations, there is always the problem of foreign object damage to the jet engines. Especially the F-16 is known to be very sensitive to this. They have to do the FOD walks and wipe the runway clean of all debris. How much is Gripen sensitive to this? If you want to deploy Gripen and land it in an austere location, do you have to do a FOD walk and clean the surface clean before it lands?
FOD, the foreign object damage is a real issue for many fighters. There's the risk of engine damage from objects on runways, taxiways or even aprons or parking spaces. Most of the peer fighter platforms have rigorous procedures that must be followed to enable safe operation, which reduces flexibility.
In Gripen, we have a higher level of FOD tolerance from the outset due to many, many factors. The higher position of our air intakes is one thing that helps us – but we’ve reinforced many critical engine and airframe sections to better handle the risk of FOD.
This relates not just to FOD, but also to bird strikes for example. This is a part of a core design task of building and constructing safety and redundancy for a single engine fighter like the Gripen.
Hence, for Gripen, no specific mandatory procedures such as FOD walks are necessary. We don't have to do that. This is off course pretty important for agile combat employments to actually happen, so you are able to operate freely from dispersed austere locations.
That said, the Swedish air force sweeps runways before using them on a routinely basis on the main operating bases, runways and air stations. But that's to remove hazards for other aircraft operating alongside Gripen, not for the Gripens themselves.
So we have a built-in design to allow us to handle this issue in a very good way.
You mentioned a very interesting information. The Volvo derivatives of the F404 and F414 engines actually have design modifications to improve their tolerance to FOD and bird strikes, eg. reinforced fan?
Yes. This is actually something that we do out of airworthiness. But not only because we are required to do so. There are some design philosophies and design requirements valid for operating single engine fighters out there, airworthy.
It’s also in Saab’s engineering design philosophy. Over the years of operating mostly single engine fighters, we’ve realized that there are certain things we wanted to do to really ensure robustness and durability of single engine fighters. To allow a higher strain tolerance.
If you have a really big bird, there's no engine that's gonna withstand that if it's a direct hit. But in regards of smaller birds, other smaller other objects – we have taken steps to increase the reliability not only of the engine but also all the other systems we have in the jet.
What about sustainment and growth potential. How many flight hours is the Gripen-E rated for and what about the lifecycle costs? For the reference, the F-35 is rated for 8000 flight hours.
Regarding the cost per flight hour, that's also always in focus. Let’s start with that, because it's about operation sustainment and service life. Compared to the Gripen C, the Gripen E’s sustainment operation costs come slightly higher. More advanced airframe, new sensors, and also to be honest also higher fuel [burn rate]. What we worked on is actually to make the costs predictable and affordable over the entire life cycle of an aircraft.
How do we do that. The airframe of Gripen E is qualified for a minimum of 8000 hours service life. But I would say that this is not the main factor that will send any jet off to a disposal these days and this 8000 flight hours figure, comparing with available US figures, like you mentioned. Our service life estimates use a more rigid calculation with a higher safety coefficient than the other platforms do. It's just our legacy. So some of these figures may come slightly lower than the peer comparison. But then again, 8,000 hours is not what is the kind of determining factor.
But flight hour costs? If you look in some calm detail, comparing the US government accounting office figures, that needs to be regarded. To compare about flight hour costs, we come around two to two and a half times lower than the US declared F-35 flight hour cost. And that's pretty conservative. Also, that figure from the US GAO is derived from operating hundreds of airframes. So how would that be affected if you have just 20, 30, or perhaps 40, and so on?
What are the sustainment and operational costs set? What are the costs of base modification and so on and so on? Where is that and that total bill going to end? These things are very important for everyone to understand.
The other half of this question is the future sustainability. Both regarding the reserve power/space/cooling/computation capacity built-in to the Gripen E, and regarding the future service support. For example, say that the Swedish Air Force would either develop or more probably join some multinational 6th generation fighter program and even Gripen E would fall to be a legacy system. Will the Saab still provide full support, updates of the software and things like that?
Future-proofing is an essential requirement in the whole design philosophy and requirements set up for the Gripen-E. Obviously, we do allocate spare capacity in terms of processing power, storage and all that stuff - it's just Saab’s engineering DNA, and also the requirements that we have for the Gripen-E.
The Swedish Air Force plans to operate it at least till 2070, and there are at least two or three big modernization packages that we can also offer to all the Gripen export customers.
Statement from the Saab Technologies office, who kindly facilitated this interview:
Saab respects every nation‘s right to make its own decisions regarding the acquisition of fighter jets.
Nevertheless, we remain confident that Gripen would have been the best choice for the country, both from a financial and operational perspective.