How Many Gripens Does South Africa Have? (2026): Only 2 of 26 Combat-Ready

South Africa owns 26 Saab JAS 39 Gripen fighters — the full fleet it ordered in 1999 and received by 2012, minus one airframe damaged beyond economic repair in 2021. As of the South African Air Force’s own written answer to Parliament in April 2026, only two of those 26 are combat-ready. The other roughly 24 are grounded, cannibalised for spares or awaiting an estimated R4.96 billion in restoration funding that has not been allocated.

The short answer: South Africa’s Gripen fleet has never been larger than 26 aircraft — 17 single-seat Gripen C and 9 twin-seat Gripen D, built by Saab and delivered between 2008 and 2012 under the country’s controversial 1999 Strategic Defence Procurement Package. That number has not grown since, and one aircraft was written off after a 2021 ground-handling accident at Air Force Base Makhado. What has changed, repeatedly, is how many of the survivors can actually fly and fight. Defence minister Angie Motshekga’s office confirmed in a 2026 written parliamentary reply that restoring full combat capability across the fleet would cost nearly R5 billion — money the defence budget does not currently provide.

Why the number keeps falling: a fleet eaten by its own maintenance budget

South Africa became Saab’s first export customer for the Gripen in 1999, ordering 28 aircraft (later reduced to 26) as part of the arms deal that also brought Germany’s Valour-class frigates and Heroine-class submarines into South African service. Deliveries ran from 2008 to 2012, and the type has been flown exclusively by 2 Squadron at AFB Makhado in Limpopo ever since. The fleet has never seen combat and has mainly flown training sorties, air-defence exercises and occasional anti-poaching patrols.

What it has not had, consistently, is money to stay airworthy. In 2013 the defence minister told Parliament that 12 of the 26 were in long-term storage for lack of flying-hour funding. By 2016 the Air Force described 13 aircraft as “operationally active” and 13 in a rotational preventative-maintenance programme — effectively a fleet permanently split in two to keep any of it flying. A 2017 push, driven partly by anti-poaching demand, briefly returned every airframe to flight-capable status.

The real collapse came in December 2021, when the Gripen support and maintenance contracts between the SAAF, state arms procurer Armscor and Saab lapsed amid a budget and contract-management dispute. The entire fleet was grounded; defence analysts estimated roughly half the aircraft had already been cannibalised for spare parts, and by the end of that year only two of the 26 were airworthy. Saab and Armscor subsequently signed a new airframe support contract running from September 2022 to August 2025, and GKN Aerospace was contracted separately for engine maintenance from August 2023 through July 2026 — a contract that lapses again within months of this article’s publication, with no confirmed renewal reported.

Those contracts did not restore the fleet to its pre-2021 state. When South African troops came under heavy fire from the M23 rebel coalition in the Democratic Republic of Congo in January 2025, losing nine soldiers in two days of fighting, neither the Gripen nor the Rooivalk attack helicopter — both grounded at the time — were available to support them, prompting parliamentary demands for an inquiry into SANDF readiness. Reporting at the time already put the airworthy Gripen count at two of 26, the same figure the defence minister’s office confirmed in writing more than a year later, in April 2026, alongside the R4.96 billion restoration estimate.

How many …? Frequently asked questions

How many Gripen fighter jets does South Africa have in total?

South Africa took delivery of 26 Gripens (17 single-seat C models, 9 twin-seat D models) between 2008 and 2012. One was written off in a 2021 ground accident at AFB Makhado, leaving a nominal fleet of 25 airframes. The fleet size itself has not changed since 2012; no further Gripens have been ordered or delivered.

How many South African Gripens are actually combat-ready?

Two, according to the defence ministry’s own April 2026 written reply to Parliament, reported by TimesLIVE. The minister declined to give the full operational breakdown in the public record, citing national security, but confirmed that restoring the rest of the fleet to full combat capability would cost R4.96 billion. The same two-aircraft figure had already circulated in reporting on the SAAF’s inability to support troops in the DRC in January 2025.

Why are so few Gripens flying?

A decade of falling real defence spending, a 2021 lapse in the Saab/Armscor maintenance and support contracts, and reported cannibalisation of grounded airframes for spare parts to keep a handful flying. Personnel costs consume roughly two-thirds of South Africa’s defence budget, leaving little for flying hours, spares or the long-term support contracts the Gripen’s Swedish-sourced systems require.

Has South Africa ever used its Gripens in combat?

No. The Gripen fleet has never been deployed in an active combat role; its flying hours have gone to training, air-defence readiness exercises and occasional civilian-support tasks such as anti-rhino-poaching patrols in the mid-2010s.

Could South Africa buy new fighter jets instead of fixing the Gripens?

No such plan has been confirmed. Every public SANDF and Armscor document reviewed for this article discusses restoring the existing Gripen fleet, not replacing it, and the R4.96 billion figure the ministry gave Parliament in April 2026 was specifically costed as restoration and sustainment of the current 26-aircraft fleet.

How South Africa compares

The Gripen is one part of a wider South African Air Force inventory covered in DefenceMENA’s South African Air Force aircraft inventory, which sets the fighter fleet alongside the Hawk Mk120 trainers, C-130BZ transports and Rooivalk and Oryx helicopters that share the same readiness problems. The Army and Navy layers are covered in South African Army weapons and equipment list and South African Navy ships list, and a full assessment of the SANDF’s overall strength sits in South Africa’s military strength profile. For how South Africa’s Gripens compare with other African air forces’ fighter fleets, see fighter aircraft flown by African air forces in 2026 and Africa’s largest air forces, ranked; South Africa’s Gripens also feature in the Nigeria vs South Africa military comparison.

A note on the numbers

The 26-aircraft delivery total and the 2021 write-off are well corroborated across SAAF, Saab and independent reporting and are treated here as confirmed. The “two combat-ready” figure is Reported rather than Official in the strict sense: the April 2026 parliamentary reply itself deferred the detailed operational breakdown to a closed session citing national security, and the two-aircraft number comes from TimesLIVE’s characterisation of the minister’s written replies to MK Party MP Mzwanele Manyi, not from a published official table. It is corroborated by earlier, independently sourced reporting from January 2025 describing the same figure during the DRC deployment crisis, which is why this article treats it as a reliable estimate rather than a one-off claim. Historical figures for 2013, 2016 and 2017 come from SAAF and ministerial statements of those years and describe different points in a fleet whose availability has swung repeatedly rather than declined in a straight line.

Sources

• TimesLIVE: SA Air Force crisis laid bare
• Parliamentary Monitoring Group: Question NW623 to the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans
• SAAF: Gripens grounded (December 2021)
• SAAF: Gripens still grounded
• SAAF: 13 of 26 Gripens active, the rest in rotational storage (2016)
• SAAF: A dozen Gripens in long-term storage (2013)
• The Mercury: Defence experts criticise absence of air support for South African troops in the DRC
• Daily Maverick: SANDF to send reinforcements to DRC after nine SA soldiers die in battle
• DefenceMENA: South African Air Force Aircraft Inventory (2026)