Sweden’s Saab has locked in the Portuguese half of what it needs to run a credible Gripen E campaign in Lisbon. In memoranda of understanding signed over recent weeks with OGMA — Indústria Aeronáutica de Portugal, the Alverca-based aerospace MRO firm controlled by Embraer, and with Critical Software, the Coimbra- and Porto-rooted engineering group, Saab has assembled the local industrial spine that any future Gripen offer to the Portuguese Air Force would need.
Daniel Boestad, Vice President and Head of the Gripen Business Unit at Saab, confirmed the industrial intent in an interview with SAPO in early March 2026, and the MoU framework has since been extended to include a broader agreement with the AED Portugal cluster — the national aerospace, defence and space industry association based in Lisbon. The package, still formally pre-competition, is the most detailed Nordic defence industrial offer ever put on Portuguese soil.
What OGMA brings
OGMA is the one serious aerospace MRO asset in Portugal. Founded in 1918 and majority-owned by Embraer since 2004, it runs a multi-hangar complex at Alverca do Ribatejo just north of Lisbon, currently performing heavy maintenance and component work on Embraer KC-390, Pratt & Whitney PW100 engines, Lockheed P-3, NH90 and a long list of commercial airframes. Saab’s MoU envisages OGMA taking on Gripen-specific maintenance, repair and overhaul activities, and potentially a share of subassembly or component production if Portugal selects the platform.
The model is the one Saab already road-tested in Brazil: local manufacturing and integration at Embraer, transfer of critical technology, and a domestic sustainment base that lowers through-life cost for the customer and locks the supplier ecosystem in for decades. The Brazilian F-39E programme is the template; OGMA’s Embraer shareholding is what makes that template portable to Portugal with minimal friction.
What Critical Software brings
Critical Software is a less obvious name outside Iberia, but it is the reason the offer is credible in the software-heavy layers of a modern fighter. Founded in 1998 as a Coimbra University spin-off and now headquartered in Coimbra with offices in Porto, Lisbon, Oporto, Munich, Southampton, San Jose and Singapore, the group has delivered mission-critical software to ESA, NASA and multiple European defence primes. Under the Saab MoU, Critical Software is expected to take on avionics software development and verification work for the Gripen programme, slotting into the part of the supply chain where Saab has struggled to build capacity inside Sweden alone.
For Portugal, it is the first time a Portuguese software engineering house has been positioned as a named industrial partner on a major Nordic fighter programme. For Saab, it is a capacity release valve — a highly educated, English-working engineering pool at a cost structure roughly half of Stockholm’s, with an existing NATO-compatible security-clearance base.
Why the timing matters
Portugal’s F-16 fleet replacement has been under discussion for more than two years without a formal tender, and the public signals from the Portuguese Ministry of National Defence have tilted toward the F-35A as base case. Lockheed Martin’s offer has no comparable Portuguese industrial content. Saab’s calculation is that Portugal — facing tight SAFE and EU defence spending conditionality, a 2% of GDP NATO target it is trying to hit, and political pressure to show industrial return on any fighter buy — is reachable with a Gripen package precisely if it offers a credible Portuguese aerospace dividend.
Whether or not Lisbon ultimately chooses Gripen, the MoUs already change the corridor map. OGMA and Critical Software are now named, on the record, as capable of supplying a Swedish flagship defence programme. That alone is a reference that opens doors at Saab’s tier-two supplier layer, at BAE Systems Hagglunds, at FMV in Stockholm and at the Nordic joint drone procurement office in Helsinki. It is the kind of structural positioning that, in the aerospace world, is worth more than any single programme outcome.
The wider Nordic-Portuguese defence axis
Saab’s Lisbon play sits inside a broader pattern. Tekever’s £752M UK-funded drone package for Ukraine, Finland’s interest in European long-endurance UAS, and the four-nation Nordic joint drone procurement agreement signed in Helsinki in October 2025 are all pulling Portuguese defence suppliers into Nordic procurement orbits they were previously locked out of. Portugal’s accession to the European Sky Shield Initiative in February 2025 further aligned its air defence roadmap with the Nordic-Baltic grouping.
Execution risk is real. An MoU is not a contract, Portugal has not launched a fighter competition, and even a best-case Gripen decision is several years away. What the MoUs deliver today is optionality — for Saab, for OGMA, for Critical Software, and for every Portuguese aerospace supplier that can now credibly claim a Swedish reference customer. For Nordic defence primes evaluating Iberian industrial partners, Alverca and Coimbra just moved up the shortlist.