JAS 39 Gripen

==History==
One of the agreed terms of the alliance between the European Federation and the Empire of Japan in China was the procurement of modern aircraft for the Empire. Initially, the Japanese had requested British technical data on the F-35 program. The Federation instead offered blueprints for the upgraded Super Typhoon, which this data had been used to create. The final agreement fell instead to a sale of 50 Super Typhoons. However, three weeks later, with further time to deliberate, the deal was renegotiated again for the transfer of the Federation's fleet of 100 JAS 39 Gripens to Japan.
There were several reasons for this decision. Although the Eurofighter had been considered for adoption by Japan as early as 2007, it and several other competing airframes had been declined in favor of the F-35 by 2011. However, no planes had been delivered by the time of the 2014 invasion, and the global collapse it brought on made future procurement of the stealth fighter unlikely. The Empire retained the ability to manufacture the F-15J independently, and while this was an excellent aircraft, there were concerns that the rest of the air fleet would not be able to meet the demands of the Empire. The F-4EJ Kai was an intolerably ancient airframe, and the F-2A, which had been developed to replace the F-4EJ, had high unit costs when it had been in production, which had halted in 2011. Furthermore, 40% of the aircraft's construction had been the responsibility of the United States at the time, meaning that in addition to the effort involved in restarting production after so long, almost half of the aircraft's production production process would have to be engineered from scratch.
The Gripen on the other hand had various appealing traits to the Japanese. It was concluded that both aircraft exhibited similar levels of performance, both were considered equally obsolete by the Federation, but the Gripen's production cost was almost half that of the Eurofighter, with almost twice as many Gripens as standard Eurofighter Typhoons awaiting scrapping or conversion to Super Typhoons. The Gripen was also determined to be easier to convert to an aircraft carrier-capable variant than the Typhoon due to the Typhoon's carrier-based variant proposal being designed for ramps common to European and Russian aircraft carriers, while the Japanese navy favored flat-top carriers similar to the Americans and considered ramps undignified (though Izumo-class helicopter destroyers were deliberately built without catapults or ramps, limiting them to STOVL aircraft without significant modification to the deck). While the carrier-based Typhoon was designed for STOBAR vessels, the Gripen was capable of operating out of CATOBAR and STOBAR vessels, and was capable of taking off from shorter runways in general.
Although primarily used by Sweden before the 2014 war, several other countries flew the Gripen in small numbers, and continue to do so in 2020. Hungary, originally borrowing a dozen fighters for its own air forces, refused to return the aircraft when demanded by the European Federation, citing that the lease previously signed with Sweden had been extended by 10 years in 2012, and that the agreement was still valid. South Africa is another country that possesses a small number of JAS 39Cs, though budgetary constraints meant that only half of them were functional at any given time, and likely less now. Aside from these few dozen outliers, the Japanese are now the primary operators of the "Guripen".
==Variants==
<tabber>JAS 36C=
The JAS 36C supplements the F-2A as Japan's land-based multirole fighter. A very capable and extremely efficient craft, acquisition of the Gripen addressed significant shortcomings in Japanese air power not only in wholesale providing Japan with a ready-to-fly fleet of excellent aircraft, but providing the advanced avionics and weaponry alongside it.
|-|JAS 36D=
The JAS 36D is a two-seater trainer variant of the Gripen. Although it lacks the 27mm cannon, it retains the 8 external hardpoints and can be modified for special missions, such as electronic warfare.
|-|JAS 36M=
An improved, carrier-based Gripen based off of technical data and prototypes from the Gripen M and Gripen NG project, featuring two additional hardpoints, a more powerful engine, and further improved avionics. The incomplete protoypes were delivered alongside the original order of 100 aircraft and completed in Japan.
</tabber>
Category:PACYOA: TE
Category:Japan
Category:Hungary
Category:South Africa
Category:Aircraft