A delegation of Peruvian cabinet ministers arrived in Stockholm on 27 August, where Sweden’s Minister of Defence, Pål Jonson, welcomed the fact that the latest JAS 39 Gripen E/F is in the running to become Peru’s next generation combat aircraft.
If Peru selects Saab’s low-cost fighter, the country would become the third South American nation to procure the aircraft after Brazil and Colombia, and the latest member in a growing user community around the world, which recently included Thailand, whose government confirmed the purchase of four units earlier this week.
“There are possibilities for broader cooperation within areas such as defence and innovation,” Jonson reinforced in a bilateral meeting in Karlberg Palace. To that end, he added, “we’re pleased that the Gripen is being considered as an alternative ahead of Peru’s upcoming combat aircraft procurement.”
Even before these Palace meetings, several Peruvian government and military officials visited Saab's Gripen aircraft manufacturing site in Linköping.
The competition
According to GlobalData’s account of the Peruvian Air Force’s equipment list, the service have a legacy fleet comprising French and Russian multirole aircraft, from the Mirage 2000 to the MiG-29S and Su-25K, among other types, which have been in service over the last 20 to 30 years.
Currently, Peru is weighing up a trio of Western fighter aircraft, Gripen among them, but others include the Dassault Rafale and the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Although, the former has received bad publicity after a Chinese-made Pakistani J-10 is said to have downed an Indian Rafale in May. However, this is an unreliable assessment; in reality, detailed judgements about technical system performance are premature.
While the American-made F-16 is a proven platform with a global user community, Saab offers superior energy management, advanced electronics, lower operating costs, and greater potential for technology transfers as demonstrated by the offset agreements reached with Brazil and potential plans to manufacture and assemble Gripen aircraft in Colombia.
