Why Gripen aircraft are so unique

According to the head of state, servicing these aircraft is really budget-friendly, because a small number of people must be involved.

For our pilot with expertise and experience, it's not a year and a half of training, as, for example, we had with the F-16, but 6 months. All the take-off and landing technical capabilities of the Gripen are also advantageous, you know — they can take off and land on runways.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

President of Ukraine

We cannot also ignore the fact that these aircraft are very convenient in terms of using weapons.

"When we didn't have F-16s yet, we already started finding tools to use Western weapons on our Ukrainian Soviet-made aircraft. It took us months, we couldn't use the existing missiles because there weren't such mounts," Zelenskyy said.

The President does not hide that it was really difficult.

In general, it all came down to the fact that not only Ukrainian, but also Western engineers developed and worked on the specified requirements.

"So, as for Gripen, everything is hooked on it. Probably, almost everything that Ukraine uses — missiles and other weapons — can all be hooked on it," the Ukrainian leader explained.