Hello Swedish friends.
I’ve been told before that Sweden cannot supply the Gripen fighters to Ukraine due to the country being at war.
While I understand the purposes and reasonings behind such a law, I was wondering if there is much of any talk within Sweden of changing this. Is it something the average Swedish citizen would have an opinion on? Is it debated?
I recently read that Ukrainians will be undergoing fighter training in Sweden. Does that mean the policy is potentially changing, and they will be receiving these much better-suited jets than the ones we Americans can sell them?
Thank you.
We’ll see, this government has generally been pretty low-key about their involvement in supporting Ukraine so far. There’s not really a public debate about the arms supply as a result and as far as the “no exports to countries at war” clause that is pretty much obsolete at this point.
As you said they are training Ua gripen pilots so I guess they are at least considering it, but then the problem becomes that there isn’t a huge number of Gripen in existence unlike the US planes.
AFAIU. Swedish regulations as a general principle state that arms cannot be sold to states that are either, actively engaged in a military conflict, have a non-democratic rule, or violates human rights.
The catch is that there are some exceptions in the law which are often used as a loop hole. F.x Sweden sell arms to Saudi Arabia, USA, Pakistan, and Thailand. All of whom violates one or more of those rules to some extent.
So in reality that law does not stop Sweden from supplying Ukraine with arms, and indeed Sweden has already repeatedly supplied Ukraine with weapons after February 2022.
Update. There’s an official statement from the Swedish government, on the 16 June.
The armed forces are tasked with orientation training for Ukrainian pilots and associated ground crew personnel on the JAS 39. The background is that the Ukrainian armed forces have expressed requests to be able to operationally evaluate the JAS 39 as one of the most urgent measures is to strengthen the Ukrainian air defence with a modern combat aircraft system. https://regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2023/06/tolfte-stodpaketet-till-ukraina/
In another statement the defence minister stated that the air force “has no gripens to spare, as all are needed for the defence of Sweden”, and that the offer was primarily intended to prepare for a future sale of Gripen to Ukraine. https://www.svt.se/nyheter/utrikes/direktrapport-forsamrat-sakerhetslage?inlagg=bd201131a47d882621ba5dad2679a292
So, Ukraine will be able to train on and evaluate the Gripen, but there is currently no official plan to supply them as part of a military support package. Not to rule it out entirely, just not very likely at this time.
Thank you very much.
I see. So it very much is a quantity problem. Though I do hope Gripen production will increase significantly in the near future, with NATO at large beginning to procure more of them for their unique capabilities. None of our American stuff is that efficient and suited to rugged, dispersed usage. Nobody’s aircraft are that suited to dispersed usage, afaik.
This would at least serve to drive the cost/unit down, making it that much easier for states like Ukraine to purchase them down the road. This will likely take years though. Ah well. F-16s will have to work. We do have extremely large quantities of them available, today.