Latest news with #ThaiAirForce
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Thailand to Buy 12 Swedish Gripen Fighters in Modernization Push
The Royal Thai Air Force plans to acquire 12 Swedish-made Gripen fighter jets as part of a broader plan to modernize its military. The air force announced Wednesday it has chosen the Gripen E/F jets from maker Saab AB to replace its aging fleet of US-made F-16s, with the acquisition to occur over three phases in a 10-year period.
CNA
6 days ago
- Business
- CNA
Thailand to buy 4 more Swedish Gripen fighter jets, air force says
BANGKOK: Thailand plans to acquire a dozen Gripen JAS 39 fighter jets built by Sweden's SAAB over 10 years to replace its ageing fleet of mainly US aircraft, the air force chief said on Wednesday (Jun 4), two years after Washington denied its request to buy F-35s. Thailand has one of Southeast Asia's best-equipped air forces, with 11 JAS 39 Gripen jets and dozens of American F-16 and F-5 aircraft, some of which have been in operation since the late 1980s. The budget for the first procurement phase from 2025 to 2029 is 19.5 billion baht (US$596 million) for four Gripen jets, Air Chief Marshal Punpakdee Pattanakul said. The air force, which had said last year that it wanted to buy more Swedish jets, said it would send the plan to cabinet for approval next month. If approved, the contract was expected to be signed in August. "We welcome the Royal Thai Air Force's selection of Gripen E/F as its future fighter and look forward to the next steps in this procurement process," SAAB CEO Micael Johansson said in a statement. "Gripen E/F is the best solution to provide Thailand with independent airpower for the future which will contribute significantly to the nation's safety and security," he said. The Swedish company said it had not signed a contract nor received a firm order yet. Thailand, which has a long history of military cooperation with the United States and was designated a Major Non-NATO Ally by Washington in 2023, had initially sought as many as eight Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth jets, among the world's most advanced fighter aircraft. But the United States in 2023 declined to sell them over what Bangkok said were issues with training and technical requirements including maintenance compatibility. The F-35 is considered a sensitive export sold only to the United States' closest allies, which in the Indo-Pacific include Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Saab CEO sees Europe streamlining defence demands amid spending push
By Jun Yuan Yong SINGAPORE (Reuters) -The European defence market needs to align requirements and demand in order to create scale as it attempts to boost capability, the CEO of Swedish defence group Saab said. "The important thing is that you cannot have every country, sort of tailoring the requirements to different sorts of versions, then it becomes difficult," Micael Johansson told Reuters in an interview on Saturday on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue security meeting in Singapore. The European Union's 23 members are expected to agree at a summit in June to raise the defence spending target above the current 2% of national output as countries bend to pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to spend more. "Europe has a big catch up to do in terms of capability that we need to have in place to take care of our own security," Johansson said, adding that defence capabilities will still need to be built up even if a peace deal in Ukraine is achieved. Beyond improving capabilities in Europe, he said that he has seen a greater willingness for collaboration between countries other than the U.S. for defence products, and that European players are prepared to establish sovereign capabilities in the countries they partner. "That's what we're prepared to do, if we're part of this of course, to help, and that includes technology transfer and collaboration, and not just selling," he said. The Thai Air Force chose to purchase its Gripen fighter jets in August last year, selecting Saab over Lockheed Martin's F-16 fighter jets even though Thailand is a security ally of the United States. He also noted that the company's fighter jet programme is building more unmanned capabilities as air defence systems and lethal weapons capabilities improve. "Because of the congested environment that you have to operate in, the suppression of enemy air defence systems, you have to take bigger risks and you have to think about attrition. Then you don't want to send your fighter pilots into something that's really, really dangerous," he said.
