At the onset of World War II, the Swedish Air Force (Flygvapnet) was equipped with largely obsolete Gloster Gladiator (J 8) biplane fighters.

To augment this, Sweden ordered 120 Seversky P-35 (J 9) and 144 Vultee P-66 Vanguard (J 10) aircraft from the United States.

Several other foreign alternatives were considered: the Soviet Polikarpov I-16 and I153 were considered obsolete, the Finnish VL Myrsky was rejected due to its all-wooden construction and while Japan offered the Mitsubishi A6M, delivery from Japan was impractical.

The new aircraft, designated J 22, was a mid-wing cantilever monoplane with a retractable undercarriage and an enclosed cockpit.

[6] The narrow-track main landing gear retracted rearward entirely within the fuselage.

[1][7] Power came from a Swedish copy of the Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp, manufactured by Svenska Flygmotor without a license at the time, although some sources state that after the end of the war, Svenska Flygmotor volunteered to pay a licence fee, with a symbolic US$1 eventually being agreed.

[2] While the two prototypes would be built at the Flygtekniska försöksanstalten (National Aeronautical Research Institute), production aircraft would be assembled by a factory at Stockholm Bromma Airport which would be built by, and leased from the Swedish airline AB Aerotransport.

Extensive use was made of sub-contractors, many of which (such as AGA, and Hägglund & Söner) were outside the aviation industry, to build sub assemblies of the J-22.

(While this was not absolutely accurate, the J 22 was in the same class as the early marks of Supermarine Spitfire and Mitsubishi A6M [Zero].

[13]) J 22 pilots tongue-in-cheek modified this to "the world's fastest in relation to track width", because of the very narrow spacing of the undercarriage.