Saab will not follow Dassault Aviation and the Eurofighter consortium in sending Lisbon an unsolicited offer for the replacement of the Portuguese Air Force’s F-16 fleet. In a statement to ECO/eRadar published on 25 September, the Swedish manufacturer said it is “ready to submit a proposal in response to the request as soon as the official process is launched, allowing the Government to make an assessment based on facts and clear requirements”, and that it has “full confidence that the Portuguese Government will conduct a transparent tender process”.

The position sets Saab apart in what has become, in the space of a week, a four-way race. ECO puts the value of the programme at more than €5 billion. Portugal’s Ministry of Defence has not yet issued requirements or opened a formal competition; the minister said in July that the process would start “soon”, and the Chief of the General Staff, General Cartaxo Alves, has since said the fighters will be among the equipment listed in the new Military Programming Law (LPM), which must go to Parliament before the end of the year.

Three unsolicited offers, one that waits

Dassault Aviation disclosed on 23 September, when it signed a memorandum of understanding with AED Cluster Portugal, that it had already handed the Portuguese state an unsolicited Rafale proposal in July. Lockheed Martin has positioned the F-35 for months. And on 24 September the Eurofighter consortium, through its sales director Ivan Gonzalez-Exposito, told journalists in Lisbon that it will deliver its own unsolicited proposal “by the end of October, beginning of November”, timed to land alongside the LPM.

Gonzalez-Exposito was candid about why the consortium is not waiting. “We still have not received the official requirements from the Portuguese Ministry of Defence — how many aircraft it wants to acquire, how it intends to operate them, how many main air bases or forward bases it plans to use,” he said, according to ECO. “We have been waiting for about a year.” The Eurofighter document will include a technical description of the aircraft, engine and weapons system, an indicative price “precise enough for budgeting purposes”, and, notably, public and private financing solutions to ease the payment schedule. It will also carry an industrial participation component and what he called political and military cooperation offers.

The industrial arithmetic

The battleground below the aircraft is the Portuguese supply chain, and here the contenders are now visibly competing for the same companies. Eurofighter says it has signed 30 non-disclosure agreements with Portuguese firms following its own MoU with AED Cluster, and named the candidates by pillar: Aernova, Caetano Aerostructures, Lauak and Mecachrome for industrial production; OGMA and Orion Technik for maintenance, repair and overhaul; Critical Flytech, GMV and CEiiA for software autonomy; Tekever and Critical Software for uncrewed and collaborative combat systems; and ETI for training and simulators. Only a selection will progress to memoranda “in the coming months”, he said. José Luis De Miguel Cortés, head of Europe at Airbus Defence and Space, framed the pitch as giving Portugal “a seat at the table” in future European combat-air programmes.

Saab’s answer is that it is already there. The company reminded ECO that it has memoranda of understanding with AED Cluster Portugal, Critical Software and OGMA, and that “several other Portuguese companies are also part of Saab’s global supply chain, and the volume of business with Portuguese partners continues to grow”. NorthSouth HQ has previously documented Gripen-related work at Kristaltek and Vangest in Marinha Grande and the Saab–OGMA–Critical Software agreements signed in 2025 and 2026. “Saab remains fully interested in developing the defence sector in Portugal and is confident that Gripen is the best choice for the country’s defence needs, bringing broad benefits to the whole country,” the statement said.

Reading the Swedish posture

Refusing to file an unsolicited bid is a choice with a logic. Saab’s Gripen E order book has filled since 2025 — Sweden, Brazil, Thailand and Colombia, with Ukraine negotiating a large order — and the company’s Portuguese pitch has centred on operating cost, sovereignty and local industrial work, arguments that carry more weight in a requirements-based competition than in a headline price fixed before Lisbon has said how many jets it wants or where it will base them. The risk is that a rival’s number, and a financing package, becomes the anchor for the LPM budget line before Saab has spoken. Eurofighter is explicitly aiming for that: its indicative price is designed, in Gonzalez-Exposito’s words, to let the Government “evaluate the budget it will have to allocate” in a law Parliament may approve “in October or November”.

Why this matters for the corridor

For Portugal–Sweden business, the fighter decision is the single largest industrial variable of the decade. A Gripen selection would tie the Portuguese aerospace cluster to Linköping for thirty years; a Rafale, Eurofighter or F-35 choice would not end Saab’s Portuguese sourcing, but it would cap it. What changed this week is the tempo: two of Saab’s rivals have decided to write numbers into the Portuguese budget debate before the tender exists, and Saab has decided, on the record, not to. The next fixed point is the LPM itself. NorthSouth HQ will track it.