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Fact check: What is the cost per flight hour for the Gripen versus the F-35?
Executive Summary
Canada's debate over the Saab JAS 39 Gripen E versus the Lockheed Martin F‑35 centers heavily on operating cost claims but the available analyses disagree and leave significant uncertainty. One report cites a large gap—Gripen ~$8,000 per flight hour versus F‑35 ~$35,000—while other pieces either decline to provide hourly figures or offer different national estimates; overall the assembled dataset shows contradiction, selective citation, and missing apples‑to‑apples comparisons [1] [2] [3]. Policymakers need standardized, up‑to‑date lifecycle cost studies to move beyond headline numbers.
1. What proponents claim loudly and often — cost advantages sold as certainty
Advocates for the Gripen frame the debate around significantly lower operating costs, emphasizing savings in per‑hour flight expenses and fuel efficiency that could enable more flying within constrained defence budgets. The most explicit claim in the assembled material puts the Gripen at about $8,000 per flight hour and the F‑35 at about $35,000, a narrative used to argue for lower lifecycle burdens and easier sustainment if Canada buys Gripen airframes and invests domestically [1]. These figures appear intended to highlight industrial and budgetary benefits and are often cited without standardized breakdowns for maintenance, fuel, sortie type, or age of aircraft.
2. Pushback and silence — competing pieces avoid firm numbers or show different data
Several analyses revisiting the same Canada decision notably avoid giving a direct per‑hour comparison, instead discussing higher-level lifecycle, integration, and support cost concerns for the F‑35 and asserting Gripen’s lower operating profile without a specific hourly figure [2] [4]. A separate national source reports an F‑35 per‑hour figure in local currency—~150,000 PLN per hour—but does not present a Gripen comparator, underscoring that currency, fleet mix, accounting assumptions, and national pricing produce divergent headline numbers [3] [5]. The result is a patchwork of partial claims rather than a single, verifiable comparison.
3. Why the numbers diverge — hidden assumptions and scope differences matter
Differences stem from which costs are included: direct sorties-only fuel and maintenance versus fully burdened costs that fold in spares, depot maintenance, training, software support, upgrades, and overhead. The assembled analyses imply that F‑35 critiques focus on lifecycle, integration, and modernization costs, while Gripen supporters emphasize manufacturability in Canada and lower immediate operating metrics [2] [1] [4]. Without standardized definitions—per‑flight sortie, per‑hour sortie, or per‑mission cost—comparing $8,000 to $35,000 is likely misleading because each figure may embed different accounting choices.
4. The Canada policy debate: industry, interoperability and risk narratives
Articles situate the cost conversation inside competing national priorities: industrial benefits and onshore manufacturing for a Gripen purchase versus interoperability and mature alliance logistics for completing an F‑35 buy. Pro‑Gripen narratives treat operating savings and domestic workshare as central economic arguments, while pro‑F‑35 pieces warn that mixed fleets raise interoperability and sustainment risks and stress fifth‑generation capabilities and sensor fusion as non‑monetary factors [1] [4]. Each side’s framing indicates potential agendas: industrial policy on one side, alliance cohesion and capability parity on the other.
5. Missing evidence: the decisive data never appears in the current set
The assembled sources collectively fail to present a recent, independently audited, line‑item per‑flight‑hour comparison that reconciles currency conversions, fleet ages, sortie profiles, and national maintenance models. Claims citing single numbers rarely disclose the underlying methodology—no parametric breakout of fuel, maintenance man‑hours, depot cycles, or attrition is provided in the dataset—and one source explicitly declines to provide a Gripen number while presenting an F‑35 cost in local currency [2] [3]. This absence prevents a definitive, evidence‑based conclusion.
6. Reading the incentives: why each side emphasizes certain metrics
Pro‑Gripen commentators emphasize immediate operating savings and local industrial content, which support political narratives about jobs and sovereign sustainment. Pro‑F‑35 analysts emphasize long‑term security, interoperability and advanced capability, arguing these factors offset higher per‑hour maintenance or integration costs. The differing emphases reveal policy tradeoffs: near‑term budget relief versus long‑term force structure and alliance synchronization. Each set of claims therefore serves strategic and economic agendas as much as technical cost analysis [1] [4].
7. Bottom line and practical next steps for evidence‑based decision making
From the sourced material, the only defensible statement is that some reports claim a large per‑hour cost gap favoring Gripen, but other analyses either dispute or withhold comparable figures, so the claim is currently unresolved [1] [2] [3]. Decision‑makers should commission an independent, current lifecycle cost comparison that standardizes definitions, includes currency normalization, and models Canadian operating conditions and industrial offsets. Until such analysis is public, quoting single per‑hour figures without methodology risks misleading policymakers and the public [2] [1] [4].