What is the annual operating cost of the Gripen E?

1. What the reporters and Saab actually say about per‑hour costs

Saab’s own, widely cited number for the newer Gripen E/F is about $22,100 per flight hour—this figure is described as including maintenance, fuel, crew and logistics in Saab’s comparative reporting ^[1], but other published estimates diverge sharply: a Czech‑era report claimed an hourly cost as low as $4,500 for older Gripen types ^[2], an operational analysis website reported an hourly cost near $8,000 for the Gripen E ^[4], and trade commentary has cited figures around $27,000 per hour ^[3], which illustrates methodological differences and vested interests in how “cost per flight hour” is compiled and presented.

2. Why hourly figures diverge — methodology and scope matter

Differences in quoted hourly costs reflect what each source includes and the fleet context: manufacturer figures often bundle direct variable costs (fuel, consumables, routine maintenance, crew) plus some logistics, while independent studies may add or exclude depot‑level overhaul, training, infrastructure, or amortized support contracts; IHS Jane’s and Saab both stress that comparisons are sensitive to fleet size, local support arrangements and accounting assumptions, so raw hourly figures are not directly interchangeable without knowing the accounting scope ^{[5] [6]}.

3. Converting hourly cost to annual cost — sample calculations and ranges

An “annual operating cost” per aircraft equals the flight‑hour cost multiplied by annual flight hours plus fixed support overhead; using Saab’s $22,100/hour and a low‑utilization tempo of ~150 hours/year (derived from a Czech fleet that logged ~2,100 hours across 14 Gripens, yielding ~150 hours per aircraft) results in roughly $3.3 million per aircraft per year in direct flight‑hour costs ^{[1] [2]}. At 300 hours/year that annual direct bill doubles to about $6.6 million; at 600 hours/year (high operational tempo) it rises to roughly $13.3 million. If one instead uses published lower and higher hourly estimates, the annual direct operating cost could be as low as ~$675k/year (at $4,500/hr × 150 hrs) or as high as ~$8.1M/year (at $27,000/hr × 300 hrs)—showing that annual totals move in step with both chosen hourly metric and utilization assumptions ^{[2] [3] [4]}.

4. What’s often left out — fixed and program‑level costs

Beyond per‑hour variable costs, real annual program bills for an air force include fixed elements—squadrons’ infrastructure, base personnel, spare engines, upgrades, indemnified maintenance commitments in export contracts, and national support centers—that can add millions per year per fleet; meta‑analysis and defense reporting note budget lines such as national increases to support Gripen fleets (for example, an announced multi‑billion support uplift for Swedish capability build‑up) that cannot be captured by per‑hour math alone ^[7]. Sources here do not provide a single consolidated annual program cost per aircraft that bundles all such fixed national expenditures, so precise full‑system annual costs cannot be asserted from the available reporting.

5. Bottom line — a defensible answer and its caveats

There is no single authoritative “annual operating cost” of the Gripen E in the public reporting provided; however, using Saab’s $22,100/hour figure as a baseline yields direct flight‑hour bills of roughly $3.3M–$13.3M per aircraft per year across plausible 150–600 flight‑hour annual profiles, and alternative hourly estimates in the sources push that range lower or higher depending on methodology ^{[1] [2] [3]}. Any party seeking a definitive annual program cost must specify whether they mean only variable flight‑hour costs or the full national program envelope—including spare engines, depot maintenance, infrastructure and training—because those fixed costs are not consistently disclosed in the cited reporting ^{[5] [6]}.