Saab CEO sees Europe streamlining defence demands amid spending push

SINGAPORE: The European defence market needs to align requirements and demand in order to create scale as it attempts to boost capability, the CEO of Swedish defence group Saab said.

“The important thing is that you cannot have every country, sort of tailoring the requirements to different sorts of versions, then it becomes difficult,” Micael Johansson told Reuters in an interview on Saturday on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security meeting in Singapore.

The European Union’s 23 members are expected to agree at a summit in June to raise the defence spending target above the current 2% of national output as countries bend to pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to spend more.

“Europe has a big catch up to do in terms of capability that we need to have in place to take care of our own security,” Johansson said, adding that defence capabilities will still need to be built up even if a peace deal in Ukraine is achieved.

Beyond improving capabilities in Europe, he said that he has seen a greater willingness for collaboration between countries other than the U.S. for defence products, and that European players are prepared to establish sovereign capabilities in the countries they partner.

“That’s what we’re prepared to do, if we’re part of this of course, to help, and that includes technology transfer and collaboration, and not just selling,” he said.

The Thai Air Force chose to purchase its Gripen fighter jets in August last year, selecting Saab over Lockheed Martin’s F-16 fighter jets even though Thailand is a security ally of the United States.

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He also noted that the company’s fighter jet programme is building more unmanned capabilities as air defence systems and lethal weapons capabilities improve.

“Because of the congested environment that you have to operate in, the suppression of enemy air defence systems, you have to take bigger risks and you have to think about attrition. Then you don’t want to send your fighter pilots into something that’s really, really dangerous,” he said.