Sweden's AI-powered Gripen E fighter is changing the future of air combat—and Ukraine could be its biggest beneficiary. Discover how AI-controlled flights, Meteor missiles, advanced electronic warfare, and Sweden's networked defense strategy could challenge Russian airpower. We break down the Gripen E, Archer artillery, ASC 890 surveillance aircraft, CV90s, and the complete Swedish military ecosystem supporting Ukraine. Is this the blueprint for the next generation of warfare? Watch now and decide.
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Saab Gripen E AI Fighter Jet for Ukraine
02:13 - Gripen Jet Deal Sends 150 Aircraft to Ukraine
03:47 - MBDA Meteor Missile 200km Range Capabilities
05:43 - ASC 890 Radar Plane Tracking Russian Aircraft
09:50 - Archer 155mm Howitzer and CV90 Armor in Ukraine
13:38 - Can Swedish Military Tech Stop Russia in Ukraine?
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#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
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SOURCES / ATTRIBUTIONS: https://pastebin.com/5RidUxqU
⏱️ CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Saab Gripen E AI Fighter Jet for Ukraine
02:13 - Gripen Jet Deal Sends 150 Aircraft to Ukraine
03:47 - MBDA Meteor Missile 200km Range Capabilities
05:43 - ASC 890 Radar Plane Tracking Russian Aircraft
09:50 - Archer 155mm Howitzer and CV90 Armor in Ukraine
13:38 - Can Swedish Military Tech Stop Russia in Ukraine?
Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join
#militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis
#themilitaryshow
SOURCES / ATTRIBUTIONS: https://pastebin.com/5RidUxqU
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NewsTranscript
00:00Somewhere over Sweden, a fighter jet is flying a combat mission, without a pilot.
00:05In May 2025, an AI system called Senator took the controls of a Saab Gripen E and flew three
00:12beyond-visual-range sorties, choosing how to maneuver, when to commit, and how to win
00:17a simulated dogfight against a live opponent.
00:20And while this will undoubtedly make the Swedish Air Force one of the most powerful and technologically
00:24advanced in the world, that's only a part of why this development is important.
00:29More importantly, this is the aircraft Ukraine has now signed up to buy, and it's the single
00:34most advanced thing to come out of this entire partnership, and it has the potential to stop
00:39Russia dead in its tracks.
00:41So let's start with the machine itself, because once we understand what the Gripen E actually
00:46is, we'll understand why Moscow has every reason to be worried.
00:51The Gripen E is built around a General Electric F414 engine that allows it to top out a little
00:57above Mach 2, somewhere around 2,100 kilometers an hour.
01:01It carries 10 hardpoints, an internal fuel load of roughly 3.75 tons, and it can lift off
01:07and recover from a stretch of public highway with a six-man pit crew.
01:11But the raw numbers are not the headline.
01:14The headline is what the Gripen E carries inside.
01:16At the heart of the jet sits the Leonardo ES-05 Raven, an active electronically scanned array
01:23radar mounted on a repositioning swashplate, which lets it physically swing the antenna to
01:28see further off to the sides than a fixed array can.
01:31Bolted alongside it is Skyward-G, an infrared search and track system that lets the jet hunt
01:37without ever switching its radar on, staying silent while it builds a picture of the sky.
01:43And wrapped around the whole airframe is the Orexis Electronic Warfare Suite, a spread
01:48of digital receivers, jammers and decoy controllers, giving the pilot a 360-degree picture of who's
01:54looking at them and the means to blind whoever is.
01:57Saab built this jet from the ground up to keep fighting when its radar is degraded, its data
02:02link is being chopped up and its GPS is being spoofed.
02:06In other words, they built it for exactly the electromagnetic hell that Russia has turned
02:11East Ukraine into.
02:12And there's one more thing about this jet that's almost tailor-made for Ukraine, something
02:17baked into its design back in the Cold War.
02:19Swedish planners always assumed that if war came, the very first thing a Soviet attack would
02:24do is crater their main air bases.
02:26So they refused to depend on them.
02:28They built a doctrine, called VAS-90, around dispersing their fighters to ordinary stretchers
02:34of motorway, rearming and refueling them with tiny conscript ground crews and getting them
02:39back into the fight from places no enemy could ever map in advance.
02:42And that doctrine guided them toward the entire Gripen line, the older C and D models, and
02:48the new E alike.
02:49These aircraft thrive in exactly that environment, having low maintenance hours, low operating cost,
02:55fast turnaround, and most importantly, no need for a pristine two-mile runway.
03:00For decades, that doctrine looked like a quirky relic of Swedish neutrality.
03:04Then Russia spent years trying to destroy Ukraine's air bases from the air.
03:08And suddenly, a jet built to operate from a country road without a fixed home looks less
03:13like a relic and more like a prophecy.
03:15This is why the F-16s, or Mirages, which are admirable fighters in their own right, have
03:20struggled to make a definitive impact in Ukraine.
03:23But the Gripen-Es, being designed around that, have a chance to shine, with 16 of them confirmed
03:29to be part of a purchase deal in mid-2026.
03:32However, there's another bigger deal that could encapsulate as many as 150 aircraft
03:37over the coming decade, essentially making it not just a temporary donation, but a fully
03:42fledged part of Ukraine's air forces.
03:45Now, beyond its operational capacities, let's talk about the weapons that make the whole thing
03:50lethal.
03:50The Gripen-E can carry up to seven MBDA Meteor missiles, and the Meteor is not an ordinary
03:56air-to-air missile.
03:58Most missiles are rockets.
03:59They light a motor, burn hard for a few seconds, and then coast the rest of the way to the
04:04target,
04:04bleeding off energy the entire time.
04:06The Meteor instead uses a throttable ramjet, a motor that keeps burning and keeps pushing
04:12all the way to impact. It cruises above Mach 4. MBDA's official figure puts its range beyond
04:18200 kilometers, even if it's an optimistic ceiling.
04:21The part that makes the entire rocket tick is the thing that keeps its engine lit, giving
04:26it what the manufacturer calls a no-escape zone several times larger than the AMRAAM-class missiles
04:32flying today, on the order of three times longer in a head-on shot and as much as six times
04:37bigger in a tail chase. That's the volume of sky inside, which an enemy pilot simply can't
04:42outrun the missile no matter how hard they turn. Pair that missile with the aforementioned radar
04:48in the jet, and you have the one combination that could genuinely challenge Russian air power over
04:52Ukraine. So that's the hook. A single Gripen, properly armed, can push a Russian fighter back
04:58before that Russian pilot is even in range to shoot. And the Meteor does something subtler than
05:04just flying far. It carries a two-way data link, which means the missile and the launching aircraft
05:10can keep communicating with each other in flight. The jet can update the target's position after
05:15launch, hand the missile off to be guided by a completely different sensor, or fire on a track
05:20it never saw with its own radar at all. In practice, that means a Gripen can launch a meteor at
05:25a target
05:25being painted by another aircraft or by a radar on the ground, while the plane itself stays silent and
05:31invisible, never lighting up its own radar to give away its position. And the missile is not just a
05:37missile, but just one node in a network. Of course, one spectacular aircraft paired with a highly modern
05:43missile doesn't stop an invasion. A war is not won by the most impressive machine on the field.
05:48It's won by the thing you cannot photograph as easily, the web that connects all the machines.
05:53And Sweden has actually been doing just that in Ukraine, package by package, for more than four years.
06:00The Gripen is just a spearhead. So let's pull back and look at the whole thing, because the real story
06:05here is not a fighter jet, but the entire defense industry ecosystem. Sweden has been engineering
06:11its military for decades around the assumption that one day it might have to fight an enemy with far
06:16more soldiers, far more tanks and far more aircraft than it could ever field itself. A small country
06:22staring down a giant neighbor. If that scenario sounds familiar, that's exactly the point. The Swedish
06:28answer to being outnumbered was never to match the giant gun for gun. It was to see first, decide faster,
06:35and connect everything so tightly that a smaller force could land its blows precisely where they
06:40hurt and vanish before the counterpunch landed. That philosophy is now being handed piece by piece
06:46to Ukraine. Start with the eyes, because everything else depends on them. In May 2024, Sweden announced
06:53what was then its largest aid package of the entire war, worth around 13 billion Swedish kronor, and at the
06:59center of it sat two aircraft called the ASC 890. To look at it, it's unremarkable. A converted Saab 340
07:07turboprop, the kind of small regional airliner that once shuttled business travelers between provincial
07:12airports. But Saab stripped it out and bolted it to the ERII, an AESA array that stares sideways across
07:19a 120-degree arc on each side of the fuselage. When in the air, that radar can pick out fighter
07:25-sized
07:25target somewhere between 300 and 400 kilometers away, and it can track up to 1,000 things in the
07:31air and 500 on the surface at once. But the number that actually matters here is the angle. A radar
07:37sitting on the ground is trapped behind the curve of the Earth and behind every hill and tree line in
07:42front of it. A Russian cruise missile or a Shaheed drone skimming in low can hide in that ground clutter
07:48until it's almost on top of its target. The ASC 890 flies above all of that and looks down. That
07:54look-down capability is the whole reason it exists. And against an enemy that's fired well over 100,000
08:01drones and thousands of missiles at Ukrainian cities and power plants, an aircraft that can
08:06swap below flyers early is not a luxury. It's the difference between a city that gets 10 minutes of
08:11warning and one that gets 90 seconds. The aircraft was first spotted flying over Ukraine in March 2026,
08:19and by Ukrainian accounts, it's already been feeding targeting data into the air defense network,
08:24with one widely reported episode crediting it with helping an F-16 down a Russian Su-35.
08:30Then there are the eyes on the ground, and this is where the Swedish radar family earns its keep.
08:35The giraffe radars get a fraction of the attention that Patriot batteries do, and that's a mistake.
08:41Sweden has supplied Ukraine with several variants from across the giraffe line,
08:45and according to Ukraine's own Ministry of Defense, these systems can detect aerial targets out to
08:50around 100 km and up to 20 km in altitude, depending on the model. We'll note that those particular
08:57figures come from the Ukrainian government, which is an interested party, so treat them as the operator's
09:02stated performance rather than an independent measurement. But the design itself is important.
09:08The giraffe is named as such due to a folding mast that lifts the antenna up over the tree line.
09:13Like a
09:14giraffe, it can see the low, slow, small targets that hide in terrain, the cruise missiles, and the drones.
09:20It refreshes its picture every single second. It deploys in under 10 minutes and tears down in under
09:26five, which means it can shoot a look, share what it sees, and move before a Russian counter-battery
09:31drone can find it. And crucially, it keeps working in the middle of heavy jamming. That last point is
09:36everything, because the Russian electronic warfare environment is precisely where cheaper radars go
09:41blind. So, Sweden has supplied the eyes for the Ukrainian military, but they also need the fists.
09:48Now, before we get there, make sure to subscribe to the military show for more daily news on the war
09:53and all major events. Back to the weapons Sweden is using to sway the war on Ukraine in its favour.
09:59The first fist it handed over is the archer, which may be the most impressive and devastating thing in
10:04this entire package. The archer is a 155mm self-propelled howitzer with a .52 caliber
10:11barrel, bolted onto a 6x6 articulated chassis built from a Volvo hauler, and the entire gun is
10:17automated. Where an old Soviet towed howitzer needed a crew of 10 or 12 men sweating over it,
10:23the archer needs three, and they never have to leave the armored cab. From the moment a fire mission
10:28comes in, the vehicle can stop, lay the gun, and put the first shell in the air in well under
10:3230 seconds.
10:33It can fire 8 or 9 rounds a minute, with the first three out in roughly 15 seconds, and then
10:38it's already rolling away. That speed directly translates to survival and better combat operations.
10:44On this battlefield, Russia hunts artillery with counter-battery radar and with drones,
10:50and the rule is brutally simple, the longer your gun sits still, the sooner it dies. The archer uses the
10:56now well-known shoot and scoop tactic, where it can fire a salvo and be gone before the enemy can
11:01work
11:01out where it came from. But reach matters too. With a standard shell, the archer can get a range of
11:07around 40 kilometers, and with the precision-guided Excalibur round, it can reach roughly 60. One gunner
11:13who spent years on a Soviet D20, which is a similar howitzer hailing from the Soviet era, called the
11:19archer sniper artillery. It takes one shot to get one kill, and the brigade used it to destroy a Russian
11:25self-propelled gun, confirmed by drone footage. Sweden donated the first handful early in the war,
11:31and in 2025 it authorised its procurement agency to buy 18 more specifically for Ukraine, with
11:37delivery through 2026. The second vehicle is the CV-90, and the soldiers who ride in it have given it
11:44a
11:44nickname that tells you everything. The Beast. Sweden initially sent 50 of the 40mm gun variant, and each
11:51one carries a crew of three, plus a squad of infantry behind armour that was in the donated version,
11:57specifically uprated for protection against mines, small-caliber fire and grenades. On a road, it will
12:03do about 70 kilometers an hour, but the reason crews love it is that the thing survives. Ukraine's 21st
12:09Mechanized Brigade has published a video of CV-90 shrugging off multiple FPV drone strikes, and still
12:16driving, drawing fire away from the infantry climbing out the back. Ukrainian units have pushed
12:21it so far beyond its design that they've used it as improvised artillery. It is, by a wide margin,
12:27one of the most capable infantry fighting vehicles in Europe, and Ukraine has agreed with Sweden to
12:32eventually build it on Ukrainian soil. And then there's everything underneath the headline systems,
12:38the unglamorous mass that an army actually runs on. Across more than 28 packages, Sweden has sent
12:44STRV-122 tanks, its own up-armoured version of the Leopard 2. It has sent more than 200 tracked
12:51armoured personnel carriers. It has sent RBS-70 air defence missiles to swat drones and helicopters,
12:58Carl Gustav recoilless rifles and anti-tank weapons by the Thousand, combat boat 90 fast-assault
13:03craft for the rivers and the coast, tow missiles, ammunition, trucks, and the spare parts and training
13:09that keep all of it running. By Sweden's own official accounting, the total value of its military
13:14support to Ukraine reached roughly 128 billion Swedish krona as of early 2026, with a framework
13:21worth another 80 billion locked in for 2026 and 2027. This is not charity in dribs and drabs,
13:28this is a small nation pouring a serious fraction of its defence industrial base into another country's
13:33survival. So now, finally, we can answer the real question, the one the title of this video is
13:39really asking. How could all of this actually stop Russia? Because it's not the jet or the howitzer
13:45or any other machine on display, it's what happens when you wire them together, and that's the thing
13:50Sweden understands better than almost anyone, because it's the thing they built their entire defence
13:55doctrine around. The ASC 890 is orbiting high over central Ukraine, looking down and it catches a flight
14:02of Russian aircraft forming up to launch glide bombs. It passes those tracks down the data link.
14:08A giraffe radar near the front confirms and refines the picture. A Gripen-E, sitting on a dispersed strip
14:13far from any targetable air base, gets the queue, comes up, and launches a meteor from a distance at
14:19which the Russian pilot has no good answer, forcing him to turn and run before he can ever release his
14:24bombs.
14:25Meanwhile, the same network that vectored that missile is telling an Archer crew where a Russian
14:29battery just fired from, and that Archer puts a precision shell on it and is moving before the
14:34smoke clears. That's the logic, and it's worth dwelling on because it's genuinely elegant.
14:40Russia's advantage in this war has always been mass, more guns, more planes, more bodies. The answer
14:46from Ukraine and Sweden isn't to match the mass, but to attack the cause instead of the symptom. You don't
14:51just shoot down the glide bombs one by one, an exhausting and losing game. You push back the aircraft
14:57that carry them so the bombs are never launched. You don't just dig in and absorb the artillery.
15:02You see the gun the instant it fires and kill it. Every layer of this system is designed to let
15:06a
15:07smaller, smarter force decide and strike faster than a larger, clumsier one can react. That's how
15:13Sweden always planned to survive its own much larger neighbor, and now Ukraine has inherited the
15:18blueprint. And there's a second payoff hiding inside this partnership, and it points at the future
15:23even more than the present. This relationship runs in both directions. Ukraine isn't just a recipient.
15:29Every single day, Ukrainian crews are firing these Swedish systems in the most intense,
15:34most technologically saturated war of this century. They're fighting against live electronic warfare,
15:39swarms of drones, and an enemy that adapts week to week. That generates something no Swedish test
15:45range on earth could ever produce. Real combat data on how every one of these machines actually behaves
15:50when someone is genuinely trying to destroy it. Sweden gets that feedback, so Saab gets to find
15:55the flaws and fix them faster than any peacetime program ever could. The partnership is basically
16:01giving Sweden all the testing they need against an enemy that it always thought it'd face. That can
16:06speed up development to what we've already seen Ukraine accomplish, prototypes done within months
16:11rather than years. Of course, this all hinges on the fact that Ukraine manages to get its production
16:16up and running, and even then, it's still fighting an uphill battle. The Gripen E deal is enormous,
16:22a letter of intent for up to 150 jets, which would be the largest Gripen export in history,
16:28and one of the largest arms deals Europe has ever seen. But these are not arriving tomorrow,
16:33but should start being sent around 2030 and stretch through the decade. The older C&D models that could
16:39come sooner are aging hand-me-downs, limited in number by airframe fatigue, and they lack the very
16:44systems that make the E so dangerous. And Russia won't stand still. It adapts, it jams, it builds,
16:50and it will hunt every high-value system on this list, the early warning aircraft most of all.
16:55Even then, the scale of the project is enormous. Sweden and Ukraine have built a complete,
17:00layered, modern air and ground defense architecture. The jet is the part that makes the headlines,
17:06the system is the part that wins. And the longer this partnership runs, the more it stops being about
17:11Sweden helping Ukraine survive a war, and the more it becomes about the two of them, together,
17:16writing the manual for how the next one gets fought. But the war won't be won defensively.
17:21That's where the offensive power of Ukraine's long-range missiles comes in. To learn more,
17:26make sure to check out this video and subscribe to The Military Show for more content like this every day.
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