Saab Eyes 2027 Flight Of Future Fighter Demonstrator

SINGAPORE—Saab plans next year to fly a fighter-sized uncrewed aircraft to begin airborne testing of technologies that would support a future combat aircraft program.

“We are looking at a lot of different things, 150 projects,” said Per Nilsson, who works on advanced programs at Saab’s Aeronautics business. Which technologies will be trialed on the first iteration of the demonstrator are still being defined, he told reporters at the Singapore Airshow.

The demonstration is part of a Swedish government-funded project that kicked off in 2024 and is due to run through 2029. It aims to help the government decide in 2030 what will come after the Gripen fighter. The government has laid out three options: a go-it-alone project, a collaborative international effort and, perhaps the most unlikely, importing a foreign product.

The demonstrator is part of a transition in Saab’s work under the future fighter project from research and development to validating technologies. The concept phase involved around 270 specialists working on 50 R&D projects, Nilsson said. The activities addressed topics such as low observability, high levels of autonomy for crewed and uncrewed systems, and how to have strong electronic warfare capabilities.

Nilsson said Saab is looking to advance work on what it calls robust low observables. It is supposed to allow the use of low observables that traditionally have been hard to maintain for use in the operational concept of the Swedish Air Force. That means being able to operate the aircraft in dispersed operations and use road runways without specialized tools, he said.

The low observable technology will be demonstrated next year but not on the flying demonstrator by then, Nilsson said.

The government-funded program is supposed to involve supersonic demonstrators.

Saab will retain a key Gripen feature as it pursues the future program: a split software setup that separates functions from flight-critical ones. That feature, the company has argued, allows it to more nimbly upgrade the aircraft.

Nilsson said it is too early to say when a future fighter emerging from this could be ready for service.

In addition to the work on a future fighter program, Saab also is advancing work on collaborative combat aircraft, Nilsson noted.

One political development that could impact Swedish plans is what happens elsewhere in Europe. France, Germany and Spain have been collaborating on a future fighter, but the program looks headed for a divorce. In that scenario, France is likely to pursue its own effort, with Germany and Spain potentially looking for a new partner, possibly Sweden.

Nilsson would not be drawn on what Sweden might do beyond saying: “We follow it closely, of course.”