Stockholm Offers Fighter Jets for Ukraine if Sweden is Allowed to Join NATO
The offer appeared to be the latest move in an ongoing diplomatic effort to persuade Turkey to drop its objection to Sweden joining the military alliance.
The Swedish defense ministry said on Friday it could contribute its Gripen warplanes to a Western coalition that is trying to speed fighter jets to Ukraine — but only after Sweden is allowed into NATO.
The offer, included in a $200 million package of weapons, 155-millimeter caliber ammunition and other defense support for Ukraine, was the latest move in an ongoing diplomatic effort to persuade Turkey to drop its objection to Sweden joining the military alliance.
“Support in the form of JAS-39 Gripen would be conditional on Sweden first becoming a member of NATO,” the Swedish Defense Ministry said in a statement.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Swedish defense ministry said on Friday it could contribute its Gripen warplanes to a Western coalition that is trying to speed fighter jets to Ukraine — but only after Sweden is allowed into NATO.
The offer, included in a $200 million package of weapons, 155-millimeter caliber ammunition and other defense support for Ukraine, was the latest move in an ongoing diplomatic effort to persuade Turkey to drop its objection to Sweden joining the military alliance.
“Support in the form of JAS-39 Gripen would be conditional on Sweden first becoming a member of NATO,” the Swedish Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had tentatively agreed to admit Sweden in July, on the eve of NATO’s annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Sweden’s conditional offer to give some JAS-39 Gripens also comes as NATO is racing to train Ukrainian pilots and support crews to fly Western fighter jets — what officials and experts describe as one of the few weapons systems that could change the course of the 19-month war.
But the Defense Ministry statement on Friday said that it would review the training needed for Ukraine’s pilots as well as the support that Stockholm might receive from the Western fighter jet coalition as it mulls whether to reverse course.
The original article contains 378 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 44%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
They drive a hard bargain, but deal!
Wouldn’t that require Turkey to actually care about Ukraine? They seem perfectly happy to play both sides of the conflict.
Turkey can seem all they want, but they have a very vested interest in reducing Russian black sea influence. They care more than any other member of NATO other than Poland.
Edit: it wouldn’t surprise me if they promised more weapons to Ukraine to specifically target the black sea fleet through secret diplomatic meetings, for example
Ok now THAT is a power move I can respect. I know it’s kinda in the realm of playing politics, but Erdogan is being such a fucking tool and he genuinely needs to be taken down a notch.
If this is the thing that finally gets him to stop dicking around and undermining the rest of NATO, and gets Sweden into NATO, and also gives Ukraine a modern multi role fighter that just happens to be able to fire Meteor missiles (much of the data is classified, but it’s considered to be at least as good as an AMRAAM, with a much newer design and longer range)… well, that’d be pretty awesome.
Because the entire rest of NATO will lean on him even harder.
Tangentially, it might be a very shrewd tactic for Sweden to offer a deal to Turkey on some fighters. THAT might be a clear enough quid pro quo for Erdogan to accept.
I feel like this is more trouble than it’s worth. Ukraine doesn’t need to be training pilots and ground crew on two completely new aircraft that no one in Ukraine’s forces are familiar with.
This might be a good decision in peace time. But Ukraine is fighting for existence. They won’t care about the most efficient approach. They will care about bring as much capacity to the fight they can. If they can’t get more f16s these aircraft are likely to be welcome.
They will care about bring as much capacity to the fight they can.
That’s what I’m referring to, though. Trying to field Grippens as well will diminish their capability of fielding F16s.
We also don’t know what Ukraine think of this offer at this stage, right now Sweden is trying to negotiate its way into NATO, they’re interested in convincing NATO regardless of what Ukraine wants.
Their nation is spending something like half its budget if not more on defence, they can manage a few dozen jets.
Besides, they’ll have to phase out their soviet era jets at some point because of the sheer age of them soon. Those Su-24 etc airframes are probably in rough shape by this point.
Some Ukrainian pilots apparently finished their Gripen orientation about a month ago, according to the Swedish defence minister. The plane can operate with pretty minimal infrastructure and has a really low cost per flight hour (both in relative terms for a modern jet fighter, of course), so it seems like it’s exactly the kind of thing Ukraine could do with even if it does take a bit of time to train on it
That isn’t wrong in general but Gripen are actually a much better fit for Ukraine than F-16. They were designed with being able to start and land on improvised runways and easily maintenance by conscripts out of small bases in mind.
If Ukraine gets Gripen then they get access to an air platform that can fire the best air to air missile in the world.
Meteor is deadly.
They could use F-16’s in the SEAD/DEAD/bomb truck role whilst using the Gripens to shoot down russian jets and helicopters from extreme range.
Your link seems broken, here’s the correct one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_(missile)
Works fine here, this might be a kbin/lemmy type formatting thing going on.
