The production line for the Swedish Gripen E fighter in Brazil is expected to be expanded due to the purchase of the model by the government. Last week, Kiev and signed an agreement for the sale of 20 aircraft from manufacturer Saab.
The deal, worth almost R$15 billion, will be financed by the loan that the European Union managed to unfreeze for the Ukrainians after the departure from power of the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, an ally who had been vetoing the transaction.
“For this first batch, we will have to increase production. We need to expand in Brazil and perhaps have new units”, said the head of sales at the manufacturer Saab, Mikael Franzén. Today, the company has the capacity to produce around 20 Gripen per year.
“Maybe we will need to go to 30, or more,” said the executive in a conversation with journalists in Linköping, the small Swedish town where the Gripen factory is located. The Brazilian line is at the Gavião Peixoto unit, in the interior of São Paulo.
He noted that the contract The Brazilian factory delivered its first locally made Gripen for flight testing in March, and has three other planes in production.
does not aim to assemble planes for Kiev, although they will use parts produced in Brazil, such as the aircraft’s digital panel.
In addition to complying with the Brazilian contract, the São Paulo factory must produce 15 E models, for a pilot, which the . The three two-seater planes, designated F in this generation, will be manufactured in Sweden.
Ukraine, which according to the Oryx monitoring website lost 114 planes in the war, with the reinforcement of American European F-16 models, Polish and Slovak Soviet MiG-29s, in addition, today has 99 aircraft.
In addition to the Gripen, Zelenski is negotiating up to a hundred French Rafale fighters, but this deal is dubious — the model is more expensive to acquire and operate.
Franzén declined to comment on another potential impact on Brazil from negotiations with Kiev. As part of the agreement, Stockholm agreed to donate 16 Gripen C/D, older generation models than the Brazilian one, from its current fleet of 96 fighters.
The president of Ukraine, , wants the planes to be delivered from the turn of the year to reinforce its defenses against the Russian invaders, who have been at war in the country since 2022. The new models, from the E/F family used by Brazil, are only expected to start arriving in 2030.
The problem is that the FAB (Brazilian Air Force) had been negotiating with the Swedish government to acquire these older planes in one of their capabilities, ground attack.
It is currently exercised by AMX based in Santa Maria (RS). There are 23 planes that have already had their useful life extended from 2025 to 2027. The new Gripen were supposed to replace them, but today there are only 11 of the 36 fighters purchased in the country.
Its priority after entering 100% operational use this year, with all weapons tested, is the defense of the center of power from the FAB base in Anápolis (GO).
The donation of old Gripen aircraft to Ukraine complicates the military’s desire to see 12 of these planes quickly transferred to Santa Maria. According to Franzén, this is a topic to be discussed between governments.
Speculations once again circulated in military circles about the purchase of a new vector for the country, perhaps the Italian M-346FA or even old American F-16s from some European arsenal — a somewhat exotic idea, given that the plane is not specialized in ground attack —, by the FAB itself.
Like other defense companies with global reach, Saab has experienced a phase of great growth in the current phase of instability with wars in and around the Middle East.
The company sold almost twice as much in 2025 as in 2022, reaching the equivalent of R$42 billion. For this year, the forecast is 20% growth. It saw its workforce increase by almost 10% per year in the period, reaching 30 thousand employees, with 59% of its sales in the foreign market.
The journalist travels at the invitation of Saab
