{"id":20866,"date":"2018-11-30T14:30:56","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T14:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/11\/30\/saab-puts-marketing-effort-for-swordfish-maritime-plane-on-hiatus\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T21:50:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:50:29","slug":"saab-puts-marketing-effort-for-swordfish-maritime-plane-on-hiatus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/air\/2018\/11\/30\/saab-puts-marketing-effort-for-swordfish-maritime-plane-on-hiatus\/","title":{"rendered":"Saab puts marketing effort for Swordfish maritime plane on hiatus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BANGKOK \u2014 Over the past two years, Swedish aircraft manufacturer Saab has put its advertising muscle into promoting a maritime patrol aircraft it called Swordfish<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in the absence of a launch customer and no immediate sales prospects<\/a>, the company is ending its marketing campaign \u2014 at least for now, the head of its Asia-Pacific business said Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom a product perspective, we are no longer marketing it. So it was a concept. It was an opportunity that we looked at on the back of GlobalEye, and we\u2019re just concentrating on GlobalEye,\u201d Dean Rosenfield said in a roundtable with journalists in Saab\u2019s Bangkok office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defense News traveled to Thailand the week of Nov. 26 to learn more about the country\u2019s air warfare capabilities, accepting airfare and accommodations from Saab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swordfish was initially conceived as a derivative of Saab\u2019s GlobalEye airborne early warning aircraft. Both are based on Bombardier\u2019s Global 6000 airframe and contain a suite of cutting-edge sensors, with Swordfish also adding torpedoes, sonobuoys, anti-ship missiles, an acoustics processor and a magnetic anomaly detector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while GlobalEye has landed a launch customer in the United Arab Emirates, Swordfish is still looking for a buyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saab hoped to position Swordfish as a lower-cost alternative to Boeing\u2019s P-8 Poseidon, which is used by the U.S. Navy to hunt submarines and conduct surveillance over open waters. The firm targeted a handful of international countries who had expressed interest in upgrading their legacy maritime surveillance inventories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such country was South Korea, which was looking for up to six additional aircraft to augment its fleet of Lockheed Martin P-3 Orions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March, one Saab official told Defense News that \u2014 should South Korea chose Swordfish as its future maritime patrol aircraft \u2014 the company was prepared to allow South Korea to have a hand in producing the aircraft, with the first few aircraft being produced in Sweden and the rest assembled in South Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saab had responded to South Korean requests for more information about Swordfish, Rosenfield said. But in June the country decided to award a sole-source contract valued at about $1.7 billion to Boeing for the P-8 Poseidon, eschewing the Swordfish and Airbus\u2019 C295.<\/p>\n\n\n\t