After years of investment in unmanned systems technologies and its ongoing involvement in Europe’s Dassault-led Neuron combat demonstrator, Saab remains unsure of the sector’s near-term military potential.
Speaking at the company’s Linköping site in Sweden on 27 April, deputy chief executive Lennart Sindahl said: “There is definitely a market for unmanned systems – the market tends in a way to be in Israel and the US. Those are the only ones that seriously have developed an operational capability.”
While other nations, like France and the UK, plus Turkey, India and Indonesia, are all interested in producing cutting-edge UAVs, Sindahl argues: “I don’t see much more than advanced development research, and fascination about unmanned technology.”
“To bring forward something like the Neuron and present it to the market, it’s very hard to see an air force that could afford to introduce such a system,” he says. “It’s an entirely new aircraft system that would certainly need to be operational in parallel to a manned system.”
Sindahl made his comments inside a flight test hangar just feet away from a two-seat demonstrator which is proving technologies for Saab’s next-generation Gripen E fighter, on order for the Swedish and Brazilian air forces.
“We could easily deliver to the market an unmanned system that looked very much like this aircraft, actually – bringing it to unmanned or remotely-piloted could definitely be done.”
Saab, and also the defence market as a whole, still seems to be a long way away from making such a concept reality, with its operational UAV experience currently delivered by the unmanned Skeldar rotorcraft.
“We focus a lot on developing technologies for unmanned systems,” Sindahl says, also referring to its development of remote tower air traffic control infrastructure and involvement in Europe’s MIDCAS collision avoidance research project. “But I don’t see a large market at the present.”
Source: FlightGlobal.com
