The United States and China are not the only nations racing to build sixth-generation fighter programs. While Washington’s Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems and China’s J-36 fighter prototype continue to monopolize media headlines, other sixth-gen concepts have come to fruition in recent years. Swedish defense firm Saab, maker of the infamous JAS 39 Gripen platform, presented its own ideas for a next-gen crewed fighter and accompanying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) last year. Featured on a Swedish outlet, the futuristic renderings were discussed by the head of Advanced Programs at Saab, Peter Nilson. The conversation was published in part by the @GripenNews X handle, noting the “overall vision of multiple air system components sharing DNA.”
Back in 2019, Sweden joined the British sixth-generation BAE Systems Tempest project alongside Italy and later Japan. The manned next-generation multirole fighter collaboration is expected to embark on its first flight later in the decade, but without Sweden’s participation. Global Defense News reported in 2023 that Stockholm dropped out of the project. Shortly after this announcement was made, Saab reported that it had received an order for Swedish future fighter concept studies that “includes conceptual studies of manned and unmanned solutions in a system of system perspective, technology development, and demonstrations.” It appears Sweden is more interested in looking domestically in order to field a sixth-gen fighter program instead. Läs artikel