Canada’s top flight aviation industry and aerospace expertise makes it an ideal place to expand aircraft production, including Saab’s Gripen jet fighter, to meet the needs of Ukraine’s fledgling air force, said Sweden’s defence minister.
Pal Jonson made the comments on Wednesday ahead of a meeting with his Canadian counterpart, David McGuinty, and amid the ongoing debate about whether Canada will choose to fill out its own warplane order with Gripens, as opposed to U.S.-manufactured F-35s.
Saab and Montreal-based Bombardier are already deep into a partnership involving the GlobalEye early warning surveillance and control aircraft.
Building Gripen fighter jets outside of Sweden is an important consideration in light of the country’s limited capacity and labour pool.
Swedish defence minister shows interest in aircraft partnership with Canada
“Our own industrial base is quite pressed,” Jonson told CBC News in an interview Wednesday.
“We’re looking for partnerships to ramp up production. It can be in Sweden, but it can also be in other places as well. Now I know you have a great avionics industry and we’re very interested in collaborating with this.”
The CEO of Saab, Micael Johansson, was quoted in financial publications as saying Canada is one possible location for expanding the production of Gripen fighters in light of the possible contract with Ukraine. The company has primary fighter jet production facilities in Sweden, but also a final assembly line in Brazil.
The remarks put a slightly different spin on the growing debate about Canada’s fighter jet program. The company has promised it could create as many as 10,000 jobs in this country through a partnership over the Gripen.
The Liberal government is weighing whether to proceed with a full order of 88 F-35s, manufactured by Lockheed Martin. It has placed an order for the initial 16 stealth fighters, but suggested it could pivot to another jet for the rest of the fleet.
Jonson said that is a sovereign matter for Canada to decide.
He was asked whether a decision to expand the Gripen production line to Canada would be predicated on whether it chose to place its own order of Gripens.
“Not at all,” Jonson said. “I think that the co-operation between Saab and Bombardier is really blossoming and we know there’s a great interest for the GlobalEye, which is an airborne sensor which provides you with excellent capabilities to see, for example far into the Arctic … so that’s a good collaboration which we want to continue building on.”
Sweden and Ukraine signed a letter of intent at the end of October that could eventually see as many as 150 Gripen Es — the latest version of the fighter — exported to the war-torn nation. A similar letter was signed with France for the possible acquisition of that country’s Rafale fighters.
Firm contracts have not been signed in either case.
It has been reported Ukraine is looking to build up a mixed fleet of roughly 250 fighters, including Gripens, Rafales and donated F-16s.
There are a number of technical, logistical and financial hurdles to the plan, namely how the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is going to pay for the fleet.
The government in Kyiv is facing an imminent cash crunch, and it’s unclear at this stage how it could afford the jets without outside help.
