Gripen, Lion the of Sky

摘要

A country with fewer people than Michigan quite clearly has no business developing its own world-class combat aircraft. For the five decades in which the Swedish Air Force (Flygvapnet) and a dedicated team of contractors clustered around Saab (Linkoeping, Sweden) have succeeded in doing exactly that, the world's fighter community has regarded their experience as a curiosity. Then, late in 2001, the JAS 39 Gripen won the first two of a series of "new NATO" fighter competitions. Hungary and the Czech Republic selected the Gripen in the face of competition from the US and France, and despite not-too-subtle pressure from Washington to buy NATO. Now, the Gripen rolls into four more campaigns ― Brazil, Poland, Slovakia, and Austria―with momentum. What is a Gripen, and why has it become the first fighter in years capable of beating the F-16 in a nose-to-nose sales contest? Gripen (pronounced GREE-pen) is Swedish for a gryphon (or griffon, if you're American), a heraldic beast with the wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. The first thing that anyone notices on being introduced to one is the airplane's size: Its 12,600-pound empty weight is a full third less than that of the F-16C, and it is half the size of any other contemporary fighter except the Mirage 2000. First impressions are important, because the Gripen's size reflects the concept of airpower that led to its creation. Sweden's Cold War air force was intended to discourage the Soviet armed forces from using Sweden as a shortcut to the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean. Air defense was a primary mission, but the air force would also play a major part in defense against an amphibious invasion force hitting the Baltic coast.