Saab Announces Key Partners for Gripen Canada

Press Release + Really Long Noah Note

Saab plans to work with CAE, IMP and Magellan Aerospace as its principal Canadian industry partners if Gripen E is selected by the Government of Canada.

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Saab today confirms its intention to collaborate with several of Canada’s major international aerospace firms in a first step to establish a broad, national ecosystem that will build, deliver and support the Gripen E advanced multi-role fighter, should the Government of Canada proceed with a Gripen acquisition.

If selected, Saab and its Canadian partners will establish a comprehensive, in-country capability for the production, final assembly, support and further development of airpower capabilities. The collaboration would also include in-service support (ISS), training and long-term sustainment capabilities.

“Canada’s fighter capability is a long-term national investment. Together with CAE, IMP and Magellan Aerospace we are prepared to establish a strong Canadian industrial ecosystem around Gripen that delivers operational effect, national sovereignty and lasting industrial and technological benefits,” says Micael Johansson, President and CEO of Saab.

Saab has signed a new Teaming Agreement with IMP to establish a new final assembly line, for the Gripen fighter in Canada, if Canada decides to acquire the aircraft. IMP will also be responsible for electrical assembly production and ISS for Canada’s Gripens.

Saab has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with Magellan Aerospace to provide local manufacturing of advanced aerostructures, composite structures and structural assemblies in Canada, if Canada decides to acquire the aircraft.

Saab has previously signed a Memorandum of Understanding with CAE to deliver advanced fighter pilot and technician training, mission systems engineering and support/sustainment capabilities in Canada, if Canada decides to acquire the aircraft.

“We are proud to be selected by Saab to establish a Canadian capability for the production and long-term support of Gripen. While that capability would be established to meet Canada’s requirements, its potential reaches well beyond Canada. We see a real opportunity for IMP to produce and support aircraft for Gripen customers internationally, positioning Canadian industry as an enduring part of the global Gripen program,” says David Gossen, President, IMP Aerospace & Defence.

“As a proud Canadian manufacturer, Magellan Aerospace is well-positioned to bring decades of advanced aerospace manufacturing expertise to the Gripen program, supporting the creation of high-tech jobs and sovereign defence capability right here in Canada,” says Haydn Martin, Vice President Business Development, Magellan Aerospace.

“CAE has decades of experience contributing to the mission readiness of fighter pilots around the world,” says Pascal Grenier, President, CAE Defense & Security. “We have a longstanding commitment to the Royal Canadian Air Force and its training needs. Should the Government of Canada select the Gripen, CAE is prepared to work with Saab to support Canada’s future fighter force.”

These partnerships are designed to strengthen Canada’s sovereign defence capability while contributing to the development of advanced aerospace and defence expertise across the country. When activated, they will add significant new jobs and skills in areas such as high-technology manufacturing, advanced materials, and model-based systems engineering. They will also provide Canada with a self-reliant and sovereign capability to deploy, sustain and enhance a critical national asset for decades to come.

Additionally, Saab is engaged with a broad range of Canadian companies, academic institutions and research organizations to further develop a future defence industrial ecosystem in Canada.

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Noah Note: Saab is building out their team, and really have been for several months now. I have been waiting for them to make the move and showcase whom they were partnering with. Of course, I had the privilege of meeting with Saab officials in Sweden a little while ago to discuss their pitch for Gripen in Canada, so I can speak fairly well on this topic for once!

When I spoke to them at the end of August, the company had already signed agreements with a number of Canadian companies regarding Gripen, with some already working under first-phase contracts. If Saab waited for a contract to start building its Canadian industrial base, it wouldn’t be able to hit the delivery dates it’s promising. The goal, they said, is to have enough in place that work can start as soon as Ottawa decides.

These are the first three partners that Saab has announced officially for Team Gripen 2.0, although not the first movement we’ve had on the file. Funny enough, GE and Magellan have an MOU related to F414 engine overhaul that would take place in Mississauga.

IMP is back after failed talks with Bombardier as well. The two had discussions ranging from last year to bring Bombardier into Gripen 2.0, but from what I know, those negotiations fell through as Bombardier seemed reluctant to get into the fighter game, especially with their own focus on building up the Global as the world’s premier special mission aircraft PLUS trying to come to some agreement on GlobalEye production. Essentially, the cost of setting up a fighter line just wasn’t worth it.

I’ll get into things there in a moment, but I also wanna make note that there is also a Saab–Ericsson–Calian MOU from last year as well, related to secure, resilient, dual-use and interoperable communication systems. While not directly tied into Gripen, it is an avenue of collaboration that would fit into the current plans if desired. So I make note. I also make note of Cohere and Saab’s existing GlobalEye agreement as another thread for the team.

I’ve been lingering and procrastinating on getting what I heard out there, and I do apologize. With the news now though, I feel that now would be a great time to present what Saab told me, and give them a chance to present their plan as we’ve done before for Hanwha and TKMS.

Saab had made it clear to me that the push here comes from the need for capacity. Linköping and Brazil can’t keep up with the company’s expected global demand, so a third final assembly site is needed. Canada is its first choice, but officials said that won’t hold forever, since other countries are interested.

The company, though, doesn’t intend to stand up a direct footprint in Canada as they did in Brazil. Instead, the company would work through Canadian partners, and it expects those partners to grow, including into their own export work using what they learn on the program. The core group would include around a dozen companies that would be tied directly with Saab.

Saab describes it as a tiered supply chain. Saab would tie in those dozen companies, who would in turn be required to source from other Canadian companies rather than importing from abroad. How deep that requirement goes, and exactly how it would be structured, is still being worked out.

In total, the company expects around 250 Canadian companies to be involved in a potential Gripen program, ranging from small parts manufacturers and aluminum suppliers to folks like CAE, Magellan, and IMP. All subject to negotiation and discussions, as per usual.

The company also said they were working with other tier-1 international suppliers involved in Gripen to see what they could commit to Canada, though at this time I have not heard of any agreements or detailed talks of anyone outside of Saab and GE jumping on that, like a Leonardo or such.

In terms of the actual plan, once a contract is signed, the first immediate step would see engineers and production workers from Canadian partners head to Sweden for training while facilities are built here, which officials figured would take a year to a year and a half.

That training would follow the same model Saab used in Brazil, where the knowledge transfer was run like a course catalogue. Each skill area, like avionics development, was broken into set projects with their own length, prerequisites and final assessment, ranging from a few weeks to six months. More than 350 Brazilians went through it in Sweden.

Saab says Canada’s program would use that same catalogue as its baseline, with Canada able to add or drop areas. In the future, Canada could also potentially support training of personnel as a secondary education location.

Canada would have separate lines for structural parts and final assembly, and early Canadian-built aircraft would use some Swedish parts until Canadian suppliers are qualified. The first aircraft for Canada would come from Sweden about three years after contract, with the first Canadian-built Gripen about five years after contract, with the company arguing Canada starts from a stronger industrial base than Brazil did.

On the numbers, Saab says it worked out its job figures using a federal methodology and had the results approved, though it won’t publish the method. The figures include direct program jobs, indirect jobs in connected work like drones and AI, and induced jobs in the wider economy.

Those figures were based off an order for 72 aircraft and some export factors. The company, as an example, presented scenarios where Canada could let early Canadian-built aircraft go to Ukraine before its own, though that would be up to the Canadian government to decide.

By 2035, the company expects that 10,000+ jobs would be tied into the Gripen/GlobalEye supply chain, with about a thousand coming within the first year as ramp up begins.

The breakdown of the workforce puts production, technicians, mechanics and logistics at 44 percent, R&D engineering at 28 percent, other engineering at 17 percent and program management at 10 percent. Of that, the company says that 50 percent of the estimated jobs created would be centered in Quebec, followed by 26 percent in Ontario, 14 percent in the West and 10 percent in Atlantic Canada.

Canada’s line would also differ from Brazil’s in a few ways if we go with the full order as expected. I mention that because the level of Canadian assembly, and what we get, is directly tied into how many aircraft we would acquire. Saab has set their minimum for domestic assembly at ~40 aircraft, though at that number we would be looking to an arrangement more similar to Brazil than this. For the sake of this post, we are assuming a full order.

At that level, a Canadian production line would undertake the manufacturing of the entire airframe, including composites, electrical assembly, etc. Brazil, on the other hand, gets major sections from Linköping and from Saab’s São Bernardo do Campo plant, which builds the tail cone, air brakes, and forward and rear fuselage. Specific sections, such as the wing box, are split. It’s started in Sweden, partly assembled and pressure-tested in Brazil, then sent back to Sweden to be finished.

The future Canadian production site in turn would not be a direct copy of Brazil. Saab also plans several innovation hubs tied into the Gripen deal, including loyal wingman research, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, Arctic innovation and command and control as focus areas.

Canadian companies with the right clearances would handle the classified integration work on Canada’s Gripens, including data links, without any Swedish staff involved. Saab says this keeps Canadian and NORAD-related information in Canada and lets Canada upgrade its mission systems on its own.

That work would be anchored in a classified program office in Montreal under Canadian control. Officials described it as the site that would hold sovereign control of the fleet and most of the classified development, staffed by several hundred people from Saab, Canadian hires and partner companies. Canada would get source code access and the ability to issue sovereign software updates.

A similar example of how this might look is in Link-T, Thailand’s national tactical data link. When Thailand picked Gripen E/F in 2025, the deal gave it the intellectual property rights to use and expand Link-T without restriction, and Saab agreed to transfer Link-T development capability to the Thai Air Force and local industry.

Training is still an open question on Saab’s responsibility, but would be delivered through Canadian partners (primarily CAE). According to the company, a second training site is needed to keep up with growing demand, and Canada is one option. The company’s current work for Ukraine was given as an example of how it could look, with ITPS contracted to provide Ukrainian pilots their early training. Saab said a physical Gripen training facility in Canada is possible, and that Canada could take that role on if it wanted.

There is a bit more to speak on, but this covers the major concept that Saab has presented to the Federal government. The core concept is based off of making Canada a primary second location to the Gripen ecosystem, with airframe assembly, sovereign control of Canada’s own data, and positioning Canada as the secondary hub for workforce and pilot training.

The primary concept is built around funneling this ecosystem, as well as positioning Saab as a deeper prime for moving on other Canadian projects in the future, with a massive focus being put on Research and Development. CCA was one of the major areas Saab kept bringing up to me as an area Canada could contribute greatly.

Undiscussed, but Sweden is still uncommitted to buying Saab’s CCA, only funding the development of A1 and A2 while the more advanced A3 is being developed as an in-house project.

Saab also mentioned contributing to the company’s future fighter projects, but were very firm that it would be part of deeper conversations between Sweden and Canada.

Of course there are a few things here also worth noting. Firstly, IMP would be undertaking a massive project here. It would be a far greater challenge than the current Cormorant assembly would be, and I debate if their current capacity is enough to cover with that, CP-8A, etc.

Keep in mind, that assembly line experience is only being rebuilt now as the Cormorant work ramps up, and even that is again far different of an experience. I would want to see what IMPs plan would be, and their concept if there is a new facility involved.

Embraer is a full airframe OEM. IMP is starting with a much smaller base to scale up from. Supersonic structures, systems integration on a fighter airframe, integrating classified avionics are a big step up from where they are now. I also still question Atlantic assembly, which is why I think new facility. It’s a very odd place to be outside Canada Aerospace heartlands.

There are a few things also missing from my knowledge that sadly I don’t have an answer on. That isn’t to say we won’t see them mentioned, far from it, but they are on a list of things to look out for. I still don’t know about flight testing, how weapons integration or testing will be handled, have no work on workforce or education development outside brief words on working with Universities, I don’t know exactly how supplier qualification will work in the current plans, and we don’t know the projected or expected production rate per year, which is put mostly into negotiations and our laps.

We also have Saab pushing tier-1 suppliers to invest in Canada, but also no commitments (save GE) outside of Saab yet from major suppliers like Leonardo, where a lot of the high-tech, high-value manufacturing is located. I make note that I didn’t ask for like, an IP breakdown from Saab themselves on stuff like Arexis, not that I expect them to tell me in the middle of discussions. Companies tend to not talk that stuff.

So there are a lot of questions still unresolved, as expected, I didn’t expect everything to be answered at once, and no word doesn’t mean no work. The company I know is active trying to bring things together, so exclusion is not an outright no on things at this stage.

Still, I hope we see a lot more soon, and we start to see more of the partnerships come out. Getting CAE, Magellan, and potentially Cohere and Calian is a strong start for gaining Federal support for one’s proposal. People forget how much hitting the right marks, and getting the right people, play into bids and securing broad support. We’ve had projects this year get tossed around a lot more based off teams and content than we’ve had before. It’s something one has to consider.

Regardless, I hope this rundown is helpful to those of you curious and looking to know more! I need to do a proper writeup. I know that lol, but this covers the major stuff, and gives the framework of the plan that Saab presented me. It was quite detailed, and I had a lot of great conversations with the company that I really wanna share. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to speak to it fully.