Saab Wins Swedish Defence Materiel Administration’s Future Fighter Aircraft Development Contract

The Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) awarded Saab a contract valued SEK 250 million ($25.3 million) relating to future fighter aircraft development.

The contract includes studies on future combat air capabilities.

The study is preparatory in nature and its purpose is to widen the work on how future combat air capabilities can be developed and realised.

Sweden is partnered with the United Kingdom and Italy on the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) programme. Within the program, new technologies are being studied that will be necessary to ensure air dominance in future conflicts, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), networked combat, unmanned aircraft, new sensors and stealth technologies. The new sixth-generation jet developed under this project will replace the Italian and British Eurofighter and the Swedish Gripen, starting in 2035.

In July 2019, the then UK defence minister Stuart Andrew and his Swedish counterpart Peter Hultqvist signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for both to work together in developing future combat aviation technologies. A year later, Saab said it would stablish a Swedish ‘centre-of-excellence' as part of a wider $6 million investment in the partnership.

Sweden’s focus is on developing the technologies that can be used to upgrade its fleet of domestically developed Saab Gripen fighters. As such, the country has not yet committed to join the Tempest future fighter project that is the core element of FCAS.