The assembly of a supersonic fighter jet is a curious combination of cutting-edge technology with the care and meticulousness of a lifelong craftsman. The task requires a high dose of patience and a thousand checks before and after delicately tightening each screw. The first fighter plane made in Brazil, an F-39 Gripen manufactured by the Swedish Saab in collaboration with the Brazilian aeronautical company Embraer, already looks like an aircraft. Although he still has a few months left in this hangar in the city of Gavião Peixoto, 300 kilometers inland from São Paulo. Mobile phones, computers and smart watches are prohibited on the ship. What is going on here is a military secret.
The indigenous defense industry reached a milestone last Wednesday, the final phase of assembly of the Brazilian fighter aircraft began, what in the aeronautical sector they call “giving life” to what is now the fuselage, painted light yellow and embedded in a scaffold that embraces the body and wings.
Now begins the process of placing the nervous system, the 35 kilometers of cables, the 300 kilometers of tubes, the electronic brain, the engine… Then will come the landing gear, the camouflage paint, the final tests, and, finally, loading the missiles under the wings and belly. Then it will be ready to patrol the Amazon—the largest tropical forest in the world—or wherever the Brazilian Air Force decides to deploy it.
The baptismal flight is scheduled for 2025, as explained that Wednesday by the Swede Häns Sjöblom, general manager of the Gavião Peixoto plant, to a group of journalists invited by Saab to visit the “first F-39 production line outside of Sweden.” ”.
When in 2013 Brazil closed its contract with Saab to buy 36 combat aircraft, it made it a condition that there be a transfer of technology and that 15 of the Gripens be manufactured on home soil. This means that 350 Embraer professionals have received training and internships in Linköping (Sweden) and have returned home to manufacture, under Swedish supervision, the F-39. “We know how to do it, we are efficient and we make a good product at a competitive cost,” stressed Walter Pinto, vice president of defense programs at Embraer.
The Brazilian production line was designed with the perspective of seeking new clientele in Latin America, be it the Brazilian Air Forces or those of neighboring countries. The assembly hangar currently houses three Brazilian aircraft in different stages of construction. “With the current structure, there are possibilities [de aumentar la producción] if there is a new order [de Brasil] or from other countries,” stressed manager Sjöblom. The Brazilian Air Force is considering purchasing a second batch of Gripen; I would like Sweden to acquire, in return, some KC-390s, the military cargo aircraft that Embraer exports to several countries, including some NATO partners.
Right now, the managers of Saab in Brazil and Embraer are very attentive to Colombia, where the Government considers that the time has come to replace its fleet of Israeli Kfirs. The discussion, which began there 15 years ago, was frozen in recent months, but the breaking of diplomatic relations with Israel due to the brutality of the Gaza war has given new relevance to the issue.
Saab is one of the companies that has presented an offer to Bogotá. Luis Hernandez, director of industrial cooperation at Saab Brazil, avoids going into details. In the combat aircraft business, in addition to the confidentiality required in the business world, there is added the secrecy imposed by national security. Hernandez explains that “Saab is participating in these tenders. We are in a very sensitive phase in which we cannot enter into [revelar] our strategies. We can say that Saab is addressing the possibility in Colombia [de suministrar F-39 Gripen de fabricación brasileña] and in other countries that are beginning an acquisition process. And that we will be able to respond to those requests according to the client’s requirements.”
One of the challenges, adapting the aircraft to the tropical climate. Make sure it operates at 100% even when the temperature and humidity are very high. No pilot, least of all a fighter pilot in full combat, wants his cockpit glass to fog up in mid-flight. Recently, the F-39 test carried out real tests for 20 days over the skies of Belém, in the Amazon. It is an original fighter with up to 800 extra sensors that perform countless measurements, the results of which are transferred encrypted to a control center through secret channels.
“It is about the plane flying to the limit,” explains Martin Leijonhufvud, head of Saab Brazil’s Gripen test center. It consists of subjecting it to extreme conditions (35 degrees ambient temperature, 85% humidity), seeing how it responds and calibrating parts or applying improvements. In the Belém tests, they also left the fighter outdoors all night under a tropical storm. They looked at the weather forecast and chose the worst day.
In addition to the 15 fighters that it will manufacture in its territory, Brazil acquired another 21 aircraft that are gradually arriving from Sweden by ship. The seven that the Brazilian Air Force has received are already taking to the skies and are replacing the outdated fleet.
As a result of the collaboration between Saab and Embraer, the city of Gavião Peixoto also hosts a project design and development center and another for flight testing, where a leak is simulated in a tiny compartment that pilots train with zero risk in Fictional battles with enemy (red) and allied (blue) aircraft. It is impressive to sit in the tiny cockpit to pilot with the control located between your legs (next to the lever that activates the ejection seat for emergencies) and throttle with your left hand up to 2,400 kilometers per hour—double the speed of sound. —. Placing the fighter vertically or upside down is easy, but it makes the novice feel dizzy.
Buying a batch of fighters—no one buys just one—represents a very large investment that, furthermore, only materializes after many years. In the case of Brazil, around a decade. So politicians think long and hard before signing the final signature. The Argentine ultra Javier Milei can be considered an exception. Five months after coming to power, he bought 24 second-hand American F-18 fighters from Denmark.
The Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, was in charge of completing the purchase of the Gripen in 2013 after 18 years of discussions. “We are a peaceful country, but we are not going to be, in any way, a defenseless country,” she said then. The sale was closed with the Nordics for 4.5 billion dollars at the time against the Dassault fighters manufactured by Rafale, which France offered, and the F-18s from the American Boeing. An unexpected factor weighed in the final decision: the espionage of the US secret services on President Rousseff, revealed by analyst Edward Snowden. The Brazilian government concluded that it could not entrust its fighter planes to the Americans.
Officially, the criteria for keeping the Swedish Gripen were the performance of the devices, the cost—of purchasing, operating and maintaining them over decades of useful life—and technology transfer. Thanks to it, Brazil is at the gates of the select club of countries that manufacture supersonic fighters. And both Saab and Embraer hope to achieve new orders to export fighters made in Brazil.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Swedish defense company is producing at full steam to meet the demands arising from the war in Ukraine. Sweden’s recent NATO membership, with Finland, will hopefully boost business further. The shares of Saab and other companies in the sector are skyrocketing.
And, while Latin America can continue to boast of not having armed conflicts between countries, an open war in Europe and another in the Middle East, added to the tension between the two superpowers around Taiwan, predict more prosperity for the global defense industry. .
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