Evidence of meeting #38 for National Defence in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was aircraft.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
There is more than serious interest. It is committed now to the program ad infinitum. It will fund the program for 40 years.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
The aircraft is still in development, as you've said, and no one has yet bought it. Would Canada be on the hook for the cost of development if Canada were the only country to buy it, for the sake of argument? Who would fund that?
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
No, sir. The non-recurrings are actually very small, and we don't see a problem. In giving a price of $55 million Canadian, that's the price we would ask for it.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Maybe I missed it, but what year dollars are we talking about?
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
They would be in-year dollars, today, 2010.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
So 2016 costs would be substantially above $55 million.
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
Not necessarily, because one thing we see—and this is where I'm slightly coming outside my brief—is that as we go into this program we are making economies more and more that we didn't realize in going into the NG program. The unit cost of some of the bigger components is actually less than we expected, particularly the bigger items like engines and radar. So we're actually being slightly pessimistic in saying $55 million, but I have to use that for reasons you'd understand in our commercial side of the company. But we don't see any escalation--
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
Yes.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
It needs to be apples to apples in that case.
You talk about configuration. What configuration would that airplane be in?
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
That would be entirely up to your configuration requirements.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
The $55 million relates to what configuration of the airplane?
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
It's the fly-away, which is the aircraft pushed out of the shed with nothing on it--a clean aircraft.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
There would be no tanks or pylons. What about the electronic warfare suite? Would that be in there?
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
The contents of the aircraft would be there in their entirety. We would not have tanks on the aircraft at that price. We would have pylons. The aircraft would be completely configured to carry whatever you wished.
Conservative
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
It holds 3.3 tonnes internally and up to 3 tonnes externally.
Conservative
December 7th, 2010 / 5:15 p.m.
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
Yes.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
What does the Swedish air force pay for a gallon of fuel? Do you have any idea?
Technical Director, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
I don't have any idea, sorry.
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
We could find out.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Your suggested operating cost of $4,000 to $4,500 an hour is frankly not believable with just the cost of fuel, let alone throwing in spares and all the other things you talked about. I don't think that's an accurate figure at all. Your answers are understandable, and I get that.
How have you made the Gripen next generation stealthier compared to the Gripen D?
Vice-President, International Sales and Marketing, Saab Gripen Marketing, Business Area Aeronautics, Saab
We continuously look at the survivability across all aspects of lowering the signatures for both visual...the heat signatures. We're looking at putting in more radar-absorption material, particularly around the frontal areas of the intake, although that does come possibly at a penalty. We're looking at a balanced, managed signature to make sure the aircraft is as small as it can possibly be.
But we go back to the first principle of this aircraft, which is mission success. There's no point in surviving if you don't actually achieve your aim. First and foremost for us is to actually do the job at hand in whatever role we're doing. It's not secondary for survivability, but that does actually lag slightly on making sure the aircraft is a proper operational machine.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
You suggested a mixed fleet of Gripen NG and F-35. When we bought the F-18, we looked at the mixed fleet option and discovered that we could buy more of the most expensive aircraft cheaper than we could buy a mixed fleet made up of the two least expensive aircraft. The experts managing our next-generation fighter project did a similar study and came to a similar conclusion.
What makes you think that this would be an affordable solution?