Sweden built the Gripen to be cheap to fly and easy to turn around on a road base. Its own budget now says the fleet is not flying enough. The 2027 budget bill, handed to the Riksdag on Thursday 12 November, shows that the Swedish Air Force logged 10,098 JAS 39 Gripen flight hours in 2025, down from 11,256 in 2024.

That is a fall of 1,158 hours, or 10.3 per cent, and the lowest Gripen total since 2019. The figures sit in Table 4.1 of the defence chapter, Expenditure Area 6, and are taken from the Swedish Armed Forces’ annual report for 2025. Aviacionline highlighted them in a report on the same day.

The number on its own does not mean Sweden’s fighter force is weaker. What makes it news is the government’s own verdict on it.

What the budget bill says

In plain Swedish, the bill states that flight-time production in the JAS 39 system developed negatively in 2025. It adds that the Armed Forces assess that Gripen flying hours do not fully meet the long-term need to build and sustain all the capabilities of the fighter units at the pace required.

A year earlier the tone was very different. The 2026 budget bill, covering 2024, said Gripen flight-time production was continuing to develop positively. That was the year the fleet hit 11,256 hours, its second-best total since 2018.

Not enough technicians

The bill names the main reasons in a footnote to the table: a shortage of aircraft technicians, the ongoing development of aircraft types, and pilot training that is now done to a greater extent outside the Air Force. Elsewhere in the same chapter it says flying hours for combat aviation, among others, are being hurt by a continued shortage of personnel, especially in aircraft maintenance.

The table does not split the hours between the older Gripen C/D and the new Gripen E, and it gives no availability rate for the fleet. So the fall cannot be pinned on any single variant or a technical fault. The technician gap is the reason the document itself puts first.

The Swedish Armed Forces’ own footage of a JAS 39 Gripen landing on a road base in Finland.

The trainer column tells part of the training story. The SK 60, the Saab 105 jet trainer that flew 1,673 hours in 2024, logged none in 2025; the type was retired in June 2024. Its turboprop successor, the SK 40, flew 787 hours.

A busy air force in transition

All this comes as Sweden’s workload grows. Since joining NATO in March 2024, the Air Force has had to guard Swedish airspace around the clock while also flying operations over and surveillance of allied airspace. The bill says the Air Force quickly built up an ability to detect and destroy drones, which it used operationally in 2025 during its deployment to Poland.

The fleet is also changing. According to the bill, the first Gripen E was delivered to the Air Force in October 2025, and deliveries during the year included four JAS 39 Es. The C/Ds are getting block updates, and work on a future fighter continues under the Armed Forces’ concept study known as Vägval Stridsflyg.

A caretaker budget

The timing adds a twist. After the September 2026 election Sweden still has no new government, so the bill was submitted by a caretaker government. According to the government’s press release, a caretaker budget should not contain new policy, but the previously planned build-up of total defence remains, with some adjustments, and all parties in the Riksdag back that.

So the planned build-up continues. The harder problem is people. More advanced jets need more trained technicians, not fewer, and Sweden’s budget now says so in writing. Until those positions are filled, the most important number for the Gripen force may be the one in the hours column.

Sources: Government of Sweden (Budget bill for 2027, Prop. 2026/27:1, Expenditure Area 6; budget bill for 2026; press release of 12 November 2026), Swedish Armed Forces, Aviacionline

Header photo: aceebee / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0