Saab pitches GlobalEye surveillance planes to Qatar, Saudi Arabia

By Allison Lampert

MONTREAL (Reuters) -Sweden's Saab AB has made offers of its GlobalEye surveillance planes to Qatar and Saudi Arabia as part of a broader effort to drive demand for its military aircraft, the defence group's CEO said on Thursday.

"We are campaigning, and we have given them offers," Saab CEO Micael Johansson told Reuters in an interview.

Qatar and Saudi Arabia have both shown interest in the early-warning and control aircraft already ordered by the United Arab Emirates, he said. "We are looking forward to how the decision process will look like in these countries.”

Saab, which won orders from France earlier this year for the aircraft, has also pitched the platform based on a Bombardier business jet to Canada, he said.

"There are a number of countries now looking at this capability and evaluating it," he said of GlobalEye. "We are in different stages in different campaigns as we speak. Some campaigns we have provided offers.”

The Netherlands defense ministry last week announced that it along with several NATO allies had abandoned plans to buy six of the rival Boeing E-7 Wedgetail planes and was assessing other aircraft types.

“So now they are looking at whether they can maybe have another capability which we are of course proposing to them, the Global Eye," Johansson said.

He was in Canada this week on the sidelines of a state visit to Ottawa by King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia of Sweden.

Johansson said Saab would be prepared to transfer technology and knowledge as part of setting up a facility with Canada's Bombardier to install sensors and other tasks normally done in Sweden to modify the empty "green" jets for defense applications. Canada has not yet made a decision, he said.

Separately, Johansson said Saab was not actively campaigning to sell its Gripen fighter jet to Canada, but was rather giving Ottawa "information" to decide whether to buy the plane.

Canada has considered the Gripen to replace some Lockheed Martin F-35 jets following a trade dispute with the United States.

Saab had offered to build the Gripen jets in Canada under license with Bombardier, creating a third production line to join those already operating in Sweden and Brazil.

Johansson said the Swedish and Brazilian production lines would both produce Gripen jets for Colombia as part of a recent $3.6 billion deal with the South American country.

(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Jamie Freed)