The Swedes beat the US to having an operational 4th generation fighter. Not only that, they also beat them on having such a one capable of supercruise:
http://www.gripen.saab.se/news/pdf/GN1_01.PDF Page 2, 3rd column:
"Gripen is supersonic at all altitudes and can cruise supersonically with an external load including fuel tank, four AMRAAM and two Sidewinder missiles without the need to engage the afterburner"
Pretty nice.
Oh, they have a helmet mounted sight system on it now, for "look over shoulder look-n-shoot" capability. Much like the Russians do.
Of course, standard things like triplex fly-by-wire and glass cockpit with three colour MFD's is in there. And the datalink thingie that's becoming popular for sharing info.
Price the same as a new F-16C. But operating costs much lower at around $2500/h (including fuel and maintenance). That's about the lowest there is for a 4th generation fighter from what I read. 10 manhour of maintenance for every hour of flight isn't too bad either.
Fully loaded, it can easily operate at fields around 800m. On landings, it can be brought to a stop on less than 400 metres.
It's designed to run on rough airstrips or even roads, and naturally is designed for the harsh Swedish climate.
"Assuming fuel and weapons have been pre-positioned (which is SOP for any operator) enough ground equipment to support 4 gripens can be carried by one C-130 Hercules."
"Once back at base - which might be just a stretch of roadway covered in snow, or sand - each aircraft can be refuelled and rearmed by its six strong aircrew and be back in the air in 10 minutes"
And these aircrew dudes are normal conscripts, not specialists.
New forms of ILS and navigation systems, incorporated into the aircraft, makes is self reliant in this way.
And the airframe is upgradeable - it was concieved when thrust vectoring was in its infancy. Once this technology becomes economically viable, the Gripen will have an airframe and FBW software that easily can be modified to use it.
The F-22 has stealth over the Gripen, but it'd be hard to compare the two as the premises for what the aicraft must do are quite different - the ripen is basically a fast multirole fighter and designed for quick launches and interceptions, due to the nature of Sweden's geography.
It's nice to see that it's not only the Americans that can make great aircraft
.
Oh, and it's beautiful too:
Excellent visibility
Gotta admit that the new light weight helmet they've developed looks kinda funny:
