Saab 35 Draken

The Draken's signature aerodynamic configuration combines two delta sections: an inner wing swept at roughly 80° and an outer wing swept at about 57°. The inner steep-sweep delta delivers supersonic performance and reduced wave drag; the outer shallow-sweep delta improves low-speed handling and landing behaviour. Conventional pure-delta aircraft like the Mirage III and Mirage 5 suffered from poor low-speed handling, and the double-delta resolved that trade-off through pure aerodynamics. The layout was unique to the Draken, but the underlying problem it solved later drove delta-canard configurations on the Saab 37 Viggen, Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault Rafale, Saab JAS 39 Gripen and Chengdu J-10, which use canard foreplanes for similar low-speed-handling gains.

Sweden's Cold War air-defence requirement drove the programme. Armed neutrality, plus extensive Baltic and Arctic airspace, demanded a credible supersonic fighter for air policing against potential Warsaw Pact incursions. The Draken offered Mach 2 performance comparable with the U.S. F-104 and F-106 and the Soviet MiG-21 and MiG-23, road-base operations for the 'Bas 60' and 'Bas 90' dispersed-basing doctrine, and cost-effective indigenous development. The programme also established the Swedish aerospace base that later produced the Viggen (1971), Gripen (1997) and Sweden's contributions to future Tempest / FCAS work.

Both are 1960s-era Mach 2 delta-wing fighters. The Mirage III is a French Dassault design with a conventional delta wing, around 1,422 family-wide airframes built and roughly 21 export operators. The Saab Draken is a Swedish double-delta with about 651 built and around 5 operators. The Mirage III achieved far greater export success thanks to aggressive Dassault marketing and supportive French export policy. The Draken offered more sophisticated double-delta aerodynamics and Swedish road-base operations, but production volumes were lower and Swedish export policy was restrictive. Both are historically important Cold War fighters, and the Draken's double-delta planform makes it visually unique among delta-winged contemporaries.

Saab moved on to the Saab 37 Viggen from 1971. The Viggen offered a delta-canard layout, road-base operations and updated mission systems, and the Swedish Air Force progressively transitioned from Draken to Viggen between 1971 and 1999. Sweden retired its last Drakens in 1999, with Austria following in 2005. The aircraft's modest export base — constrained by Swedish neutrality and arms-export rules — limited foreign sales, even though the type served its operators well. The Viggen and later Gripen built directly on Draken's design heritage and on the Swedish aerospace industrial base it created.

Around 100 surviving Drakens are preserved at Swedish and foreign aviation museums. Highlights include the Flygvapenmuseum at Linköping, Sweden — the Saab heritage museum with a comprehensive Draken exhibit — along with Danish, Finnish and Austrian aviation museums and several U.S. private collections. A handful of airframes remain airworthy and appear at airshows, particularly privately owned and restored examples in the United States.

Draken International is a U.S. private adversary-air contractor founded in 2011 and named after the Saab fighter. It operates a mixed fleet of retired military jets — including the Atlas Cheetah, Aero L-159 Honey Badger, Mirage F1 and Saab Draken — for U.S. Department of Defense contracted adversary-air training. Alongside ATAC and other private contractors, the company forms a sizeable U.S. adversary-air industry providing threat-representative training to U.S. military pilots at lower cost than fleet aircraft. The Saab Draken fleet itself is small; most contracted sorties are flown on other types.