Swedish defense firm Saab has presented concepts for a potential new-generation crewed fighter and a series of drones intended to work alongside it. With a long history of domestic combat aircraft development, a sixth-generation fighter and complementary stealthy drones make sense for Sweden, although there are big questions about whether this is a realistic prospect without joining forces with other countries.
The future concepts appeared in a recent TV segment aired on Sweden’s SVT channel, where they were discussed by Saab’s Peter Nilsson, head of Advanced Programs at the company. Screenshots from the broadcast were shared on social media by the Swedish military blogger @GripenNews.
Most interestingly, the footage includes an overall vision for a future combat aircraft ‘ecosystem,’ with multiple related crewed and uncrewed systems.
At this very early stage, the concepts should be understood as highly provisional, but they may or may not reflect design considerations that Saab is already addressing for Sweden’s next-generation air combat requirements.
The ecosystem appears under the title Saab F-series and the subheading “Same brain in different bodies.” From left to right, it consists of a crewed future fighter; a subsonic uncrewed platform with a weight of no more than five tons; the existing Gripen E crewed multirole fighter; a supersonic uncrewed platform with a weight of more than five tons; and a low-cost subsonic uncrewed platform with a weight of less than one ton.
Of these, the Gripen E — which is on order and in production for both Sweden and Brazil — is already well known and you can read more about it here.
Saab’s proposed successor in the Saab F-series is presented as a crewed future fighter that appears to be tailored for high speed, as well as low observability. It has a sleek, blended wing/body configuration with a prominent chine running around the arrow-like forward edges, giving it something of a resemblance to the Cold War-era Saab Draken fighter, with its distinctive double-delta wing. The swept wings are cropped, and the fuselage appears to have area-rule optimization for supersonic efficiency. The empennage looks like it consists of outward-canted stabilizers, it is unclear if it includes vertical tails as well.
Some of the same features found in the crewed future fighter concept — notably the overall blended wing/body and cropped wings — appear in the supersonic uncrewed platform, although this is shown as being somewhat smaller and it lacks any kind of tail surfaces.
Other depictions of the supersonic uncrewed platform concept include a higher level of detail, with stealthy chisel-type air intakes on either side of the fuselage and a prominent bulge roughly above where the engine nozzle would be, the function of which isn’t immediately clear. An underside view of the drone suggests significant internal capacity, for fuel and internal stores, although no details of the weapons bay are visible.
Captions for the supersonic uncrewed platform describe it as sharing the same afterburning General Electric F414 engine as the Gripen F, as well as some shared avionics and vehicle systems. On the other hand, the stealthy airframe, “digital backbone,” communications systems, sensors, and AI technologies are all new.
As for the lighter subsonic uncrewed platform, this is shown overall as much closer in appearance to a ‘typical’ fifth-generation crewed fighter (like the U.S.-made F-35 or the Chinese J-35). It has relatively small delta wings and outward-canted vertical fins.
Perhaps the most generic of the design concepts is that for the low-cost subsonic uncrewed platform, which has a broadly cylindrical, perhaps slightly flattened fuselage and a moderately swept wing. It also seems to have outward-canted vertical fins, but these are straight rather than swept. Overall, its look is somewhat reminiscent of a subsonic cruise missile, albeit with a longer wingspan. Its weight class — less than one ton (less than 2,200 pounds) would also align it much more with a cruise missile, or a remote carrier — a versatile store somewhere between a missile and a drone. At such a light weight, the low-cost subsonic uncrewed platform could potentially also be launched from the crewed future fighter or fighter-sized uncrewed platform.
In terms of relative sizes, there’s no indication that these representations are to scale, and the specified weight classes give a lot of room for differences, especially at the upper end for the supersonic uncrewed platform.
It’s also worth comparing both the crewed future fighter and supersonic uncrewed platform concepts with a Saab wind-tunnel model of a supersonic, stealthy Loyal Wingman drone concept. This is a design that you can read more about here.
Suffice it to say, the wind-tunnel model shares with those two concepts the blended wing/body configuration, especially the chine around the forward edges and outward-canted vertical fins. It also has cropped swept wings, although these are more complex, with prominent sawteeth on the trailing edges and what appear to be relatively very large control surfaces. It’s worth noting that the nature of a wind-tunnel model means that it necessarily has more detailed features — including weapons bays — and is closer to a potential finished form, while the concepts for the Saab F-series are far more generic.
However, the appearance of the F-series is itself interesting, reflecting Saab’s evolving plans for its Future Combat Air System (FCAS) program.
Confusingly, the FCAS nomenclature is also used by rival British and pan-European future air combat initiatives, and all feature a crewed fighter at the center, as well as a range of supporting drones and other advanced technologies. At the same time, Saab was previously involved with the British FCAS program, before stepping aside from that.
One notable feature of the Saab FCAS effort is the intention to have shared components across multiple crewed and uncrewed platforms, with the commonality between the unstealthy Gripen E and the stealthy supersonic uncrewed platform being especially interesting. Overall, such a philosophy should help drive down costs, speed development times, and reduce the maintenance and logistics burden once such systems are in service.
Based on the diagram of the ecosystem, it would also appear that Saab considers the drones to be very much at the heart of the FCAS initiative, something that is perhaps not as immediately obvious with the rival British and pan-European programs, where the crewed fighter — at this point — is very much center stage.
Nilsson talks about plans to have some drones that “will only be mock targets and [will] get shot down, but who might help so that you succeed in your mission.” This points to a vision for attritable drones — ones that are inexpensive enough to be willing to lose on high-risk missions while being capable enough to be relevant for those missions. It’s also noteworthy especially as the U.S. Air Force is now moving away from this idea, with attritable drones increasingly giving way to plans to achieve “affordable mass,” pointing to force-multiplying drones that offer a good balance between affordability and capability.
Some other details of the Swedish FCAS program are also presented in the TV coverage, including an ambition to replace the Gripen within the next 25 years — or around 2050. This puts the Swedish FCAS on a slightly longer timeline than is planned for the British and pan-European programs, both of which hope to have the crewed fighter component of their planned ‘system of systems’ in service sometime between 2030 and 2040.
A video for the pan-European FCAS, reflecting an array of complementary technologies, among them a crewed combat aircraft, ‘loyal wingman’ type drones, and a new generation of air-launched weapons:
The TV broadcast also makes it clear that the F-series is just one of the options that Saab is studying as it looks to develop a Gripen successor.
According to the SVT report, a decision on what the Swedish FCAS program will look like will need to be taken “within the next few years.” Interestingly, the same report observes that having Saab design and develop those platforms is just one solution. Otherwise, Sweden would have to acquire an off-the-shelf solution, or more likely rejoin the British FCAS initiative — or even the pan-European one.
One key aspiration for Sweden is that its FCAS program remains financially viable, even if it fails to achieve any export orders. This seems almost impossibly ambitious, bearing in mind the huge costs involved in developing a stealthy combat aircraft platform, let alone complementary crewed and uncrewed stealth platforms. Saab’s experience with the Gripen also shows that, whatever the capability of the product, gaining export sales is far from straightforward, especially when facing off against U.S. rivals.
One other option might be for Saab to exclusively pursue one or more next-generation stealthy drone concepts, drawing on its experience with the Swedish Highly Advanced Research Configuration (SHARC), an experimental drone, as well as its involvement in the French Dassault nEUROn. Such a path would allow these uncrewed platforms to be paired with fighters, including the Gripen, giving it much greater survivability while also accessing a larger marketplace in terms of exports.
Decisions still to be made on the future of the Swedish FCAS program will determine whether we see any of the Saab F-series concepts progressing as far as prototypes or production aircraft. For the time being, at the very least, they provide an interesting insight into one country’s evolving thinking around the future of combat air systems.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com