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Gripen C

11 November 2020

How Gripen can be cost effective

2 min read

Gripen and its predecessors have been championing in the area of low cost per flight hour for decades. With Gripen, it's about focusing on what's necessary and making the most of basic requirements, while keeping the overall costs to a minimum. However, it is also important to point out that the cost-effectiveness of Gripen does not compromise its performance.

Force Technology talks more about the origin and features of the Gripen and how it is one of the most cost-effective yet powerful modern fighters in the world today.

"Originally developed in Sweden in the 1980s, Gripen was designed to be relatively cheap, easy to maintain and fight off any modern threats. These traits have made Gripen an attractive prospect for many nations including Brazil, Czech Republic, Thailand, South Africa, and Hungary," the video says.
Today Croatia, Canada, India, Finland, and Bulgaria are some of the countries that are likely to join the Gripen bandwagon as they look for a replacement for their ageing aircraft.

Gripen was designed to operate in dispersed bases which require short take off and landing, also known as STOL, capabilities. This means that the aircraft can easily operate and are serviceable in bases away from the main airbases, such as highways and taxiways. The little maintenance that takes Gripen to get back up in air again, and its turnaround time of less than 10 minutes in between missions, reflects in the overall lifecycle cost of the Gripen.

A White Paper submitted by Jane’s in 2012 also confirmed that the operational cost of the Gripen aircraft is the lowest among other known modern fighters such as Rafale, F-35, Eurofighter, F-18 and even F-16.
The paper added that Gripen proves to be the least expensive of the mentioned aircraft (in terms of cost per flight hour, or CPFH), when it comes to fuel usage, pre-flight preparation and repair, scheduled airfield-level maintenance, and associated personnel costs.

Watch the video here.

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