Swedish Gripen Fighters Scramble to Intercept Russian Su-30SMs: Can They Challenge the ’Super Flankers’?

The Swedish Air Force scrambled two Gripen fighters in the late hours of June 20 to identify a pair of Russian Navy aircraft near the country’s airspace. The Gripens flew over Malmo in southern Sweden, where they quickly drew public attention due to their high visibility. The Russian fighters in question were confirmed by the Russian Navy Su-30SM combat jets. Although Sweden only formally joined NATO in 2023, its armed forces have been closely integrated with those of the alliance since the early years of the Cold War, with the country’s alignment with the wider Western world having been closely reflected in its rising tensions with Russia from the mid-2010s. The Swedish Air Force currently operates approximately 100 Gripen fighters, of which under ten have been modernised to the Gripen E/F ‘4+ generation’ standard. The fighter class has failed to secure an exports in Europe, although small numbers are leased by the air forces of the Czech Republic and Hungary, which limits interoperability on the continent and makes the Gripen one of the more niche combat jets in service. Efforts to market the enhanced Gripen E/F variant abroad have also been met with underwhelming success, leading Saab President and CEO Micael Johansson to<a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/ceo-of-sweden-s-saab-admits-extreme-frustration-as-clients-don-t-want-gripen-fighters-no-sales-for-over-eight-years" >&nbsp;inform reporters&nbsp;</a>in 2022 of his “extreme frustration” at the fighter’s failure to meet expectations for foreign sales, for which he blamed blaming political factors rather than the aircraft’s limitations.&nbsp;<img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/06/21/article_6856cd7c7cf7c8_41485010.png" title="Gripen C Equipped For Air-to-Air Combat">The Gripen C/Ds currently fielded across six Swedish Air Force squadrons is today considered effectively obsolete, with its PS-05/A mechanically scanned array radar not only considered far out of date, but also being among the smallest radars carried by any fourth generation frontline fighter in the world at just 156 kilograms. By contrast, the Su-30SM’s N011M Bars radar is among the very largest carried by any fighter class in the world, and is approximately four times the size at approximately 650 kilograms. As a significantly newer radar design, it uses a modern electronically scanned array, which is far more efficient, less susceptible to jamming, and has considerable electronic warfare capabilities. The current limitations of the Swedish Air Force’s fighter fleet are set to be addressed with an ambitious plan to modernise the Gripen C/D fleet to the Gripen E/F standard, which integrates fifth generation level avionics, an enhanced F414 engine for greater fuel efficiency and a higher flight performance, and the Raven&nbsp;ES-05 active electronically scanned array radar. <img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/06/21/article_6856cda9dba7a3_55796507.jpg" title="Russian Navy Su-30SM2">Where the Gripen C/D remains overwhelmingly outmatched by modern Russian ‘4+ generation’ fighters, the Gripen E/F heavily compensates for the limitations imposed by its small size, weak radar, and below average flight performance by focusing heavily on advanced electronic warfare capabilities. Its capabilities are nevertheless among the most limited of the fighters in production around the world today, with the aircraft’s primary appeal lying in its very low lifetime costs and maintenance needs.&nbsp;The Russian Air Force and Navy are themselves modernising the Su-30SM, with fighters delivered from 2022 having been built to the enhanced Su-30SM2 standard with the same AL-41F1-S engines from the Su-35, providing three dimensional thrust vectoring, a far superior flight performance, more power for onboard subsystems, and a much longer range. These engines are currently being retrofitted onto the fleet of close to 100 Su-30SMs already in service. The fighters are also set to integrate new generations of air-launched weapons, with among the most significant for their air-to-air capabilities being the R-77M missile, which has a similar range and comparable performance to the Gripen E/F’s primary air-to-air missile class the Meteor.&nbsp;