The accelerated introduction of Sweden’s first GlobalEye surveillance aircraft will be made with the Saab-prepared asset entering use in an interim configuration, officials have confirmed.

Stockholm ordered two of the heavily adapted Bombardier Global 6000s – which will be equipped with Saab’s above-fuselage-mounted Erieye ER radar – in June 2022. A contract for a third followed two years later, after Sweden pledged to donate its two earlier-generation Saab 340 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft to Ukraine.

At that time, Sweden’s defence ministry said shipments of the new S 106 system – originally scheduled to run from 2027 – would be “expedited”, without elaborating.

“It will arrive quicker, but I will not say exactly when,” Brigadier General Lars Helmrich, director of the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration’s (FMV’s) air and space systems directorate, says of the lead aircraft’s introduction. “We have split the delivery in two steps,” he adds.

“We need capability first, and then we will get the full capability later,” explains Swedish air force chief of staff Major General Jonas Wikman.

“It will be way better than the current ones,” Wikman said during a media briefing in Paris on 15 June, referring to two Erieye radar-equipped Saab 340s already donated to Kyiv by the Swedish government. “But it will need to be modified again to be what was the intention from the beginning,” he adds.

Neither the air force or FMV have detailed the planned interim configuration for the GlobalEye: a type which in addition to performing AEW&C duties also can simultaneously monitor land-based and maritime threats.

Meanwhile, Wikman reveals that the air force’s dispersed operating model will also be employed during the use of its future surveillance aircraft.

“Our concept to operate GlobalEye is based on our being able to move our assets when we need to… to not have them in harm’s way,” he says. “It’s moveable by design: we will rotate and operate from multiple locations.”

Saab in late May announced a plan to increase its conversion capacity to four jets per year for the GlobalEye platform, which for new customers will employ the Global 6500 airframe.

That move was followed during the Paris air show by a French air force selection covering two aircraft and two options. Paris intends to acquire the GlobalEyes to begin replacing its aged Boeing E-3F airborne warning and control system aircraft.

On 20 June, Canadian airframer Bombardier announced its receipt of a firm order from Saab to deliver two Global 6500s for conversion to the multi-role surveillance configuration, without naming the end-recipient.