Saab is “on track to conclude one of the largest deals in its history”, CEO Micael Johansson told defence reporters in early May, signalling that a long-discussed agreement to supply up to 150 Gripen E/F fighters to Ukraine could be finalised within a few months. The Swedish defence group’s confidence rests on a concrete financing premise: the European Union’s €90 billion macro-financial loan to Ukraine has unlocked the budget envelope Kyiv needs to convert a long-running letter of intent into a binding contract.
The deal would be the largest Gripen export order ever signed and would push Saab’s production roadmap into a new gear. Johansson reiterated on the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call that Saab is working toward a delivery rate of 20 to 30 aircraft per year, up from a current run-rate of around 15. Reaching the 20-unit annual milestone is achievable within roughly a year, the CEO said. A second Gripen E assembly hub is now operational in Brazil, where Embraer rolled out the first locally produced jet at its Gavião Peixoto facility on 25 March 2026.
Why this matters for Portugal
For Portugal, the Ukraine campaign is not a side-show. It is the production-economics signal that will frame Saab’s industrial offer if and when Lisbon launches its formal F-16 replacement programme. Portugal’s defence ministry confirmed in March 2025 that it would no longer actively pursue the F-35 in the near term and that European platforms should be prioritised. Since then, three options have remained on the table: the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Dassault Rafale, and Saab’s Gripen E/F.
Saab has spent the past nine months turning that political opening into industrial substance. In September 2025, Swedish Defence Minister Pål Jonson visited Lisbon and Saab signed memoranda of understanding with Portugal’s state-owned aerospace MRO company OGMA in Alverca and with Critical Software in Coimbra. The first MoU outlines a Gripen MRO and component manufacturing model in Portugal modelled on Saab’s arrangement with Embraer in Brazil. The second positions Critical Software as a candidate supplier of safety-critical avionics and mission-system software for the Gripen programme.
In March 2026, Daniel Boestad, vice president and head of the Gripen business unit at Saab, publicly confirmed the OGMA industrial pitch and estimated that Portugal would invest between €2.5 billion and €3 billion for 18 to 24 aircraft over the lifecycle of any future programme. Johansson, on the Q1 2026 call, listed Portugal among “smaller campaigns” still active, alongside Canada and others.
The production-capacity calculation
Conventional defence procurement wisdom suggests that a large export order ahead of Portugal’s decision is bad news for Lisbon — capacity gets booked, slot prices firm up, delivery schedules slip rightward. The reverse is also plausible: a Ukraine signature crystallises Saab’s justification for the second Brazilian assembly line, the additional supply-chain investment, and the kind of industrial deals (offsets, MRO, component manufacturing) that smaller buyers like Portugal need to make a domestic political case for the platform.
Saab has also been explicit that the Ukraine programme will require an additional production hub somewhere in Europe. Discussions reported earlier this year mentioned options in Canada (with Bombardier) and elsewhere. If a European hub is part of the Ukraine deal’s industrial package, OGMA’s Alverca site — which already does deep-level F-16 maintenance under a separate Lockheed Martin agreement — becomes a more credible candidate, not a less credible one. The Portuguese MRO base is sized for sustained military-aerospace work in a way few other Iberian sites are.
What to watch in the next 90 days
Three signals will determine whether the May commentary translates into a near-term Portuguese decision. First, the formal Ukraine contract: Johansson’s “within a few months” framing implies a signature before the summer break. Second, the European Commission’s loan disbursement schedule: the €90 billion envelope is contingent on a sequence of policy reform milestones that determine when Ukraine can actually contract for the aircraft. Third, the Portuguese F-16 replacement timeline: defence minister Nuno Melo has indicated a programme launch but has not yet published a procurement schedule.
For OGMA, Critical Software, and the broader Portuguese aerospace cluster — including suppliers Kristaltek and Vangest, both already in the Gripen supply chain via Saab’s Brazilian programme — the next quarter is when the Swedish industrial offer either gets harder commitments or quietly thins out. Either way, the answer is being shaped not in Lisbon, but in the cadence of Saab’s order book.
The corridor view
The Nordic-Iberian defence corridor has thickened considerably over the past year. Saab’s RBS15 anti-ship missile is fitted to Portuguese Navy Vasco da Gama frigates. Critical Software is a tier-one supplier on Airbus aerospace programmes through a 2025 letter of intent. OGMA already serves Embraer, Lockheed Martin and now potentially Saab. Sweden’s defence-industrial strategy, anchored on Gripen, is increasingly comfortable using Portuguese capacity for the parts of the value chain that benefit from a southern-European cost base and surplus skilled labour.
For Portugal, the sequence matters. A Gripen win would be the largest single industrial-cooperation play in the country’s recent defence history. A loss to Eurofighter or Rafale would still leave Portuguese suppliers in Saab’s global Gripen supply chain via Brazil, but without the centre-of-gravity effect of a domestic operator. The Ukraine deal, paradoxically, makes the upside case stronger if Portugal moves while the Saab production ramp is still shopping for new industrial capacity.