The CEO of the Swedish defense company Saab, Mikael Johansson, announced his readiness to open a final assembly plant in Ukraine to accelerate the fulfillment of an order for 150 Gripen fighters for the Defense Forces.
The CEO of the Swedish defense company Saab, Mikael Johansson, announced his readiness to open a final assembly plant in Ukraine to accelerate the fulfillment of an order for 150 Gripen fighters for the Defense Forces.
According to him, the contract with Ukraine for 100-150 fighters will double Saab’s needs for Gripen production.
«It’s not that easy during wartime, but it would be great to create capacity for at least final assembly and testing, and perhaps for the production of some parts in Ukraine,» the Saab boss told the Financial Times.
He added that Saab plans to increase capacity in Brazil, as well as possibly in Canada and other European countries.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson signed a letter of intent last week to purchase new JAS 39E/F Gripen fighter jets, but funding has yet to be agreed. Ukraine has received several F-16 fighters from the United States, but the Gripens are considered more suitable for its needs because they were designed to fight the Russian army, can take off and land from conventional runways, and have more flexibility and lower maintenance requirements than American aircraft.
The final contract would be a major development for Saab, which has sold 60 of its latest Gripen fighters to Sweden, as well as 36 to Brazil and four to Thailand. Johansson said one option was to use some of Russia’s frozen assets if officials could reach an agreement on them.
Defense Express reports that Thailand has purchased the Gripen for $138.25 million per aircraft. The Peruvian military, which is also interested in the Swedish fighters, is considering a price of $145.8 million per Gripen.
Even for the Swedish Armed Forces, Saab will fulfill orders for 60 aircraft by 2030. According to experts, the current production capacity of the Saab plant in Linköping covers a pace of about 12 aircraft per year.
Saš Tusa, an aerospace and defense analyst at Agency Partners, said Saab has «a better chance of doing this than many others.» He added that the Gripen’s peak production was about 18 units per year, and Saab is now producing «a little more than half of that.»
However, localization of production in other countries can increase these figures many times over.
