Sweden's parliament approved the JAS programme in June 1982, and the name "Gripen"—the griffin—won a public competition that September. On 9 December 1988, test pilot Stig Holmström lifted the first prototype into the sky above Linköping. A flight-control software glitch crashed that aircraft three months later, but Saab pressed on. By 9 June 1996, the Gripen entered service, designed to operate from 800-metre highway strips and turn around in ten minutes with a crew of conscripts. The lightweight canard-delta fighter now serves six nations and counting.