Saab 32 Lansen was the first aircraft designed in Sweden where the design work was not based on ordinary blue-prints, but on a mathematical coordinate system.
Founded in 1937, Saab AB, a Swedish aerospace and defense company, is famous for its fighters. In the past, Saab also gave birth to a transonic attack aircraft line called Saab 32 Lansen, one of the dangerous attackers in the early years of the Cold War. By the end of World War II jet planes were considered the future of fighters. In 1946 Saab was tasked with developing an aircraft to replace Saab 18 as Sweden’s standard attack aircraft. The requirement was to develop a jet-powered attack aircraft to replace a wide range of vintage aircrafts. Its first flight took place in 1952, being a very advanced concept in both design and configuration, as it was an aircraft with the best design and quality in comparison to any other European design of the times. The aircraft was designated Saab 32 Lansen, literally “the Lance”, similar to the names of later Swedish combat aircrafts, such as Viggen or Draken.
The Saab 32, officially commissioned in 1955, met the requirements of the Swedish air force at that time: the ability to strike anywhere along Sweden’s 2,000 km coastline within 1 hour after takeoff from the base, and fly in all weather conditions day and night.
Not only that, but the Saab 32s also had the most advanced electronic and weapons systems at the time, and these designs were also the standard for designing weapon systems being applied to the fighters today.
With four cannons, bombs, rockets, air-to-air missiles and Rb-04 long-range fire-and-forget air-to-surface missiles developed by Sweden, the Saab 32 Lansen were made into terrifying multi-purpose attackers.
As a second-generation aircraft, Saab 32 Lansen has many versions, but there is a special version J 32E – specialized for electronic warfare / electronic countermeasure (ECM) with G-24 jamming systems, used to jam enemy ground radar. There are also external jamming devices like Adrian and Petrus to jam radar mounted on enemy aircraft. A total of 14 aircraft were built for electronic countermeasure, and all of these aircraft retired in 1997.
