Saab offers localization of GlobalEye

Eric Reguly of the Globe and Mail has reported on Saab’s offer to localize the manufacturing of GlobalEye in Canada. This confirms what we heard, and reported in the November 3rd edition of This Week in Defence. I should note that this offer has been on the table for a long while.

Under this plan Erieye would be manufactured and installed locally in Canada. Saab estimates that this, along with future maintinence and R&D would contribute upwards of 3000 jobs to the Canadian economy. This would of course also come with local tech transfer related to Erieye.

Of course I'm never one to go off of the numbers. I don't trust anybody's numbers when it comes to job creation, that's just me. This number also seems to be separate from the 10,000 job estimate that Saab gave with the Gripen.

Again this plan has been in the works for a while, at least a year. The fact is that Saab lacks capacity and diversifying manufacturing is good, especially at a time when they know that orders are very likely to pick up.

there's good reason to believe that Germany and potentially Denmark will be or during Global in the future, And with the E-7 Wedgetail out of the NATO AEWC Program, Saab has an opening towards quickly racking up double digit orders for GlobalEye. Helps its the one Euro option!

So demand will be high, and having a second source of manufacturing for Erieye would be beneficial to the company. I don't know what their current capacity is but I know it's not high, certainly not high enough considering all the potential future orders.

It's another piece of the puzzle a day ahead of the signing of the Canada-Sweden Strategic Partnership. It’s yet another incentive that the company very much wants to tie in with Gripen. They want that dual-fleet order. Its fairly common for Saab to offer it (us, finland, etc)

This is still though in spite of the fact that we still haven't gone through the Options Analysis phase of the AEWC Program.

To clairfy, no, I have not heard anything about sole-sourcing. We haven't had an RFI and as far as I know we're still trying to figure out exactly the requirements that we want. We're not at the stage of even releasing an RFI yet, so it'd be quite strange if the government decided to skip all those steps and jump on the Global right now.

That's me just trying to be realistic. I don't want to get anyone's hopes down if you were excited for this, but that's just the truth. We're not at that stage yet. They could if they wanted to, there's nothing stopping the government from doing stuff like that. Thats only if they want to take the risk though.

I do want to temper those expectations. It's also likely that this would tie in to Saab’s plan for a Radar R&D Center, something that they threw in their original fighter offering.

I also wouldn't be surprised if we also hear about Saab and General Atomics efforts to integrate Erieye onto the MQ-9. That's certainly another area they could jumo on considering that we're already getting the platform. It feels like a no-brainer.

On a slightly unrelated note though, I don't get why everyone seems to be comparing GlobalEye to the P-8?It feels like a weird comparison. They're completely different aircraft, with completely different purposes.

I don't get why it's such a comparison. While GlobalEye does come with Leonardo's SeaSpray radar (if you want it), it's not in anyway comparable to a Maritime Patrol aircraft. It's a supplement. It's another layer, but it isn't a dedicated MPA.

So please stop using that comparison media. It's going to confuse people when they try and figure out what each aircraft is and what role they serve.

Tomorrow is the big day though. It's the day the Strategic Partnership will be signed, and everyone will be together. If anything's happening it's very likely going to be tomorrow.