By Kris Osborn, Warrior

The Swedish military is in the early stages of surging forward with Saab and some other companies to build what looks like a 6th-generation manned or unmanned stealth fighter jet. 

Available design renderings of Sweden’s mysterious new fighter reveal a platform which could be either manned or unmanned, a versatility now woven into several US aircraft, such as the F-47 or lesser known Dark Star SR-72.  The image certainly looks like a smooth, stealthy, blended wing-body horizontal configuration with an F-35-like single engine column. Similar to other 6th-generation platforms, the Swedish design has no tails or fins, a configuration which of course greatly lowers the radar signature of an aircraft. “

The Swedish Defense Materiel Administration (FMV) recently awarded Saab with the contract, worth around $276 million and covering the period from 2025 to 2027. As well as the FMV, Saab will work with the Swedish Armed Forces, the Swedish Defense Research Agency, GKN Aerospace, and other unnamed industry partners,”  The War Zone writes. 

What’s less visible to the eye, however, is likely to determine the tru performance parameters and capabilities of the platform, or series of platforms Saab and the Swedish military intend for the project. It would not be at all surprising if this new 6th-gen aircraft functioned in a similar capacity to the US Air Force’s “Family of Systems” approach to the F-47 in which manned platforms operate small groups of drones in real time from the cockpit. In this respect, it would not be surprising if the new Swedish aircraft were an exquisite, high-tech, stealthy sensing, reconnaissance and attack drone.  US Air Force CCAs, while critical, are being built to be mass produced, lower cost and attritable … however some early demonstrators do look a bit stealthy. However, the idea is to engineer larger numbers of more “expendable” drones capable of flying forward to test enemy air defenses, conduct forward reconnaissance or even launch strikes when directed by a human. 

This Saab project, should it ultimately emerge as a drone fighter platform, appears to be a sophisticated, 6th-generation-capable kind of aircraft engineered with advanced stealth properties. This would suggest that Saab’s 6th-gen aircraft or drone is “not” being built to be attritable but rather as a highly advanced 6th-gen platform engineered to fly for decades into the future. 

The image of the new aircraft published by The War Zone shows a fighter-jet-like stealthy aircraft with no cockpit for crew, something which perhaps indicates that Saab and Swedish military plans intend to engineer an unmanned design. However, depending upon the scale and actual dimensions of the platform, it appears entirely feasible that a cockpit for a manned-crewed could easily be integrated.  The most likely scenario, simply looking at the US Air Force’s B-21 and F-47, is that it will be designed as both. 

One possibility might be to operate a new 6th-generation unmanned stealth platform in close coordination with Saab’s updated 4th-Gen “plus” Jas 39 Gripen fighter, advanced tactical jets upgraded to expand performance parameters far beyond the limitation of most 4th-gen aircraft. The JAS 39 Gripen is considered a 4th-generation “plus” aircraft, meaning it has received many upgrades making the latest variants more lethal and survivable. It does have upgraded electronics and is capable of hitting high speeds of Mach 2. However, the Saab Gripen is by no means 5th Gen. It has a slightly rounded or blended quaisi-stealthy fuselage but clearly lacks the stealth properties sufficient to truly challenge or evade Russian-built air defenses. However, if the Gripen were intended to operate as a host-ship aerial node in less-contested airspace, it might be in position to operate stealth, 6th-generation forward drones without needing next-generation stealth itself. This would depend heavily upon the range and security of its ability to network across long-distance formations with unmanned systems. 

Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University