Optionally manned Gripen E/F???!!!!

Ok.

It takes a bit of news to have me saying "holy bat shit" but this did it.  An optionally manned Gripen E/F?  It makes perfect sense.  We've been doing it for years with our F-4 and now F-16 target drones but to do it to an operational airplane?  Its nothing if not gutsy mixed with a huge dose of thinking outside the box.

via Bloomberg.

Saab AB (SAABB) is working on a version of its Gripen fighter that could fly without pilots as the company explores ways to keep the program viable for another 30 years.
“What we are talking about is an optionally manned aircraft,” Chief Executive Officer Hakan Buskhe said in an interview at the Paris Air Show. The concept would follow development of the Gripen E, an upgraded model of the jet Saab is developing for the Swedish and Swiss air forces, he said.
The emergence of increasingly sophisticated air defenses is driving military planners around the world to explore greater use of unmanned planes to mitigate risk to personnel. The U.S. is boosting spending to develop unmanned combat aircraft, with France and the U.K. cooperating on an attack drone project and China showing a prototype.
“Just because you need an unmanned fighter does not mean it is affordable to build a new platform,” Bushke said. “If you like for a mission you can put a pilot into the aircraft and if you need to use it for high risk you fly without a pilot.”
Evolving the Gripen E to feature such a capability “is not a big step,” Bushke said, without saying when such a version may fly.

Just wow.