The weekend in Sweden can best be described as tiring.
We were extremely lucky to have some time the day prior to the show to get to visit Malmen. There were plans to meet officials for a bit of a briefing on various programs being undertaken by Saab, which also gave a chance to see some of the early practicing.
Linköping is a very beautiful city, I'll say that. Sweden itself reminds me a lot of home when you're in the countryside, but once you hit the cities, it feels like a whole other world. Of course, I came at probably the worst time to avoid people, with a festival and the air show scheduled together.
Those two alone made things chaotic, to say the least. Even some of the local folks were saying how packed it was and how many people there were. I like people, so it didn't bother me none; but it absolutely felt like we were in a far bigger city. Linköping has a very similar population to my hometown, so I definitely took note.
One other weird thing—maybe not weird, but interesting—if you're ever in Sweden, you notice how much of the local food scene is relatively foreign food. I was surprised at how much Swedes loved burgers. Burgers everywhere, I swear. Sushi, Chinese, pizza, doner. If I looked for Swedish food, there were times I would struggle to find it.
Swedish burgers, though, are very good. I am not the biggest fan of smash burgers, but they seem to like them a lot, and they were all quite good. Bastard Burgers (yes) is a bit pricey, admittedly. I also had a very lovely arctic char while here; that was really nice. Did not try pickled herring, though.
After an early 5 AM wakeup call, we started Day 3 with a series of presentations on various platforms, including GlobalEye, Gripen, and Saab's future aircraft programs. This dominated the morning of Day 3, and at least for me, was highly educational.
Of course, I plan more dedicated content to go into this for this week, as there was a lot to take in; but we did get a very detailed rundown on where things stood. I came out of it having learned quite a lot, not just about the platforms themselves, but also Saab's internal vision.
Of course, before that, I couldn't help but snag some photos of both the Gripen they had outside and of the future A3 Autonomous Collaborative Platform. That is the term the company has seemingly chosen to differentiate A3 for attritable and optionally-attritable CCA. A3 is the further iteration of Saab's autonomous line; though not the final endgame, it currently represents their furthest concept in this domain.
It is one of several platforms being developed under Sweden's Koncept för Framtida Stridsflyg (KFS) program. A fully autonomous, supersonic platform able to act both in tandem with other platforms and independently, A3 was described as a "survivable, reusable platform" able to operate independently in GPS-denied, comms-degraded, and EW-contested environments—as opposed to a lot of the current CCA methodology of cheap, attritable platforms able to bring sustained mass at scale.
That isn't to say Saab isn't working on these concepts, nor do they position A3 as a competitive idea; instead, the company puts A3 as a layer between a cheaper CCA and a manned fighter—cheaper than a Gripen, but far more capable than something like an Anduril Fury or Kratos Valkyrie, to give examples.
The company envisions A3 as a high-end, collaborative partner to current platforms like GlobalEye and Gripen, as well as any future platforms that come along, whatever those may be. A3 will support a number of tasks, according to Saab, including EW/SEAD, deep penetration strike, and potentially air-to-air combat.
A3 is not a Gripen replacement—that was emphasized—but does bridge the gap between Gripen and a potential future fighter. It was noted by Saab that they are still waiting for direction on a future fighter beyond Gripen, which makes A3 important in keeping the workforce experienced in developing fighter-sized aircraft, while providing a platform to test future technologies ahead of such a decision. A3 itself is an internal development by Saab, though they seem confident they can get the Swedish government to commit to it.
Before A3, there will be A1 and A2. A1 is expected to fly within the next fifteen months, with A2 to follow by 2030. A1 and A2 will both utilize the GE F414 engine, while a future engine for A3 is yet to be decided. A2 will also introduce an internal weapons bay to the family.
I expect that A3 will fall broadly along the same lines on the engine front to ensure commonality among the fleet, but that is just me. Details at this time remain fairly scarce as to what capabilities A3 will have. We were told that A3 could feature a full sensor suite, including a version of the Arexis family EW suite if desired, but beyond that, information was scarce.
We will talk about A3 more, maybe tomorrow, but I wanted to give the brief rundown of it. I would like to try not to get too lost in going into extremely long details on the platforms themselves; I would rather do that in a dedicated space with some proper time to gather my thoughts and notes. I will make one last note on the ACP front by saying that Saab has apparently extended the offer for Canada to collaborate on the platform, if we desire.
There were a few other things that stood out to me, though, on the production side of things. When it came to GlobalEye, I was surprised to learn that the company recently expanded capacity to work on upwards of eight airframes at a time from their Linköping facility.
I also learned that the company aims to deliver up to four systems per year by 2030, with the current backlog including Sweden, France, and an unnamed Middle Eastern customer. France is interesting because I was under the assumption they would utilize their own airframe to integrate Erieye, but no, they plan to stick to the Global 6500.
Speaking of the 6500, there was also reaffirmation that the company plans, at this time, to stay with the 6500 as the baseline airframe. There are no current plans to move up to something like the 8000. They think the 6500 is more than capable enough for what is asked.
The conversion process currently takes, from contract to delivery, about 48 months to complete. Saab is currently working to improve those timelines to deliver faster, a lot of which will be driven by efficiency management and through cutting down on things like flight testing as GlobalEye hits milestones. We'll talk more about that, of course, later.
Capacity is probably the closest thing to the word of the week here. Capacity is the driver of a lot of conversations, and it is the topic I think came up the most from Saab as a challenge. Sweden is a small country, with a limited workforce and space available to an increasingly large number of companies.
Saab themselves are hiring upwards of three thousand people per year to keep up across the spectrum, and they still expect that number to keep growing year-on-year. Gripen is in a similar field. While obviously I couldn't get detailed info on negotiations and where they were hunting, the company aims to produce about thirty Gripens per year, and that (according to their own estimates) is not enough.
And so Saab is actively hunting a third production facility beyond Linköping and Gavião Peixoto. It was stressed to me that, ideally, Canada would be that location. I won't go into details on the proposal yet—that is for later—but I did want to make that note that Saab is holding out on other locations as they await to see our decision, though it was said that Saab would not be able to wait forever on a potential decision.
Such a facility would be conditioned on the acquisition of Gripen by Canada. The scale of the facility, what it does, and the investments planned are dependent on how many are ordered. While the company couldn't provide a direct minimum acquisition number for a Canadian facility, Brazil remains the current benchmark. So we would likely need an order of ~40 airframes to see a Canadian facility in some capacity.
I asked a lot of questions to folks and heard a lot, so I'm still trying to organize my thoughts and categorize things; but the production side of things was absolutely highlighted throughout this trip, not just as an incentive, but as a general concern for the company.
No matter what, a new Gripen facility will be built, and new facilities for GlobalEye will be needed. That doesn't change whether we order or not. Where they go is the question right now. GlobalEye can be secured on its own. It is not conditional on Gripen; it ain't a package deal in terms of both facilities being tied.
With all of this, though, we will go into deeper details later this week. For now, though, I did want to get this stuff a bit off my chest and highlight it, considering how much it was emphasized this entire week. Day 3 after this was primarily resting and relaxing once we left. We did get to see part of the Gripen display being practiced before we left, as well as the Finnish Hornet display.
I also got to meet the folks at GKN Aerospace in their latest 'UAV' demonstrator, which you can, of course, read about in our release. I didn't get much time with them, but it was really cool to hear them talk about the process of not only needing to develop their own platform, but also working to develop their own engine for it.
Still a conceptual product, but really interesting to see what others around us are doing. It can be beneficial to step into other people's ecosystems, engage with them, and see what it is they're working on and doing.
The rest of the weekend was spent at the air show itself, and oh boy, was it something. They say over 100,000 people attended both days, and it certainly felt like it. I spent most of the show both engaging with the fine folks in attendance and taking the opportunity to see some aircraft I don't usually get to see, like the Eurofighter, up close.
Being Canadian, obviously most European aircraft are outside the usual scope of what we see at these events, so I took a long time to just sort of relax and enjoy them. Having the chance to see both a Eurofighter and an A400 up close were personal bucket list items for myself.
The air show was lovely, obviously. So was seeing the F-35 for the first time in my life! I sadly didn't get to talk to anyone, but it was still fairly cool to see up close. I also got a lot of photos of the Swedish Grob G 120TP, which was absolutely a showstealer in terms of looks.
While here, I had a chance to sit in and engage with Saab CEO Micael Johansson on the company's outlook and plans. I also got a chance to see the surprise appearence of Lieutenant General Anatolii Kryvonozhko, Commander of the Ukrainian Air Force this week, and even hear him speak! That was a cool surprise.
While there, I also took the talk to the Saab Nimbrix team on their C-UAS plans, as well as introduce them a bit to Canada's C-UAS plans, including the Defence Drone Initiative. Nimbrix, for those who don't know, is Saab's C-UAS effector designed to target Group I and II UAS.
While Nimbrix remains in development, Saab is already looking to the future of the platform as a family of C-UAS munitions. While the current Nimbrix, which we will call Version One, will remain on the market, it will be joined in the future by several expanded versions, each adding their own capabilities, increased range and payload, different threat profiles, etc.
They sadly couldn't give me details on this family, but did confirm Nimbrix would soon be offered to the market. They also said they were interested in how Canada could potentially play a role in the supply chain. I also got word that Bolide 2, the latest version of Bolide for the RBS 70 NG, would soon start deliveries to partners.
While I didn't get to engage with folks, other highlights of the show included a Taurus model, a ground-based version of the RBS15, the LOKE C-UAS system, and a whole-ass Patriot. Overall, I had a fantastic time at the show. It was one of the best air shows I have seen in my short life seeing them, and I was happy to get out there.
From there, it was more crashing and dealing with tariff stuff. I skipped out on the show Sunday to engage with folks directly on things. That, of course, will be talked about later, as with much of the other things I have learned. For now, I am slowly trying to make my way back home to Canada, which should hopefully mean getting back to my proper schedule and self!
The rest of my photos from the show, for your pleasure
