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The battle for Saab to sell Jas Gripen to the Swiss military just get tougher as French Dassault make an improved bid.

Thursday, 15 August 2013
The French aircraft manufacturer Dassault has made a competing bid for the sale of its fighter jets to Switzerland, thus putting Swedish Saab either on a precarious situation or on the defensive.

According to Swedish business daily, Dagens Industri referring to Bloomberg News, which also refers to the newspaper Blick, without mentioning the source, the bid might have been submitted in late June, and includes a range of attractive variants.

Saab Gripen / image/ Saab
These include 22 Rafale warplanes to the tone of 3.2 billion Swiss francs, 18 Rafale warplanes to the tone 2.9 billion Swiss franc or 12 fighter jets for 2.2 billion Swiss Francs, writes the paper.

Swiss Defence Minister, Ueli Maurer, has previously indicated that he might evaluate a concrete offer from Dassault if there was an attractive offer over what the Swedes are offering.

Switzerland announced on November 30, 2011 that the government had decided to buy 22 Gripen aircraft from Swedish Saab and that brought stress and consternation to the French who had hoped that theirs would be selected. Since then every efforts is being made for the Swedish business deal with Switzerland not to go ahead.

The Gripen deal has faces political opposition from the Swiss politicians especially those who lean more towards France.

The boss of Saab which makes Gripen, Håkan Bush in July said that the ongoing political process in Switzerland, which is assumed to lead to a referendum on the purchase of fighter jets, chimes with Saab's line of thinking - to present the facts but not interfering in either the decision or the referendum.

The Gripen fighter jets are currently used in Sweden, Czech Republic, Hungary, South Africa, Thailand and the United Kingdom (UK Empire Test Pilots’ School (ETPS) is also operating Gripen as its advanced fast jet platform for test pilots worldwide."

The French beat Sweden to supply the India air force recently and India would be the only country where the French fighter jets are used. Could the Swedish exposure and experience in the product perform better than political pandering?
By Scancomark.com Team