Overview
- The federal government said on May 27 that it has entered formal discussions with Sweden’s Saab as the preferred supplier for an Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) capability, but no contract has been signed and no procurement commitment has been made.
- Saab’s GlobalEye offering uses the Bombardier Global 6500 airframe and includes proposals to carry out missionization, maintenance and some production work in Canada with partners such as Bombardier and CAE.
- Ottawa has been seeking roughly six AEW&C aircraft to improve long-range surveillance over the Arctic and continental approaches, and Prime Minister Mark Carney said the GlobalEye can detect targets and signals at distances up to about 650 kilometres.
- The Saab selection wins out over U.S. rivals Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail and L3Harris’s Aeris X as part of a wider push to diversify suppliers and strengthen Canada’s defence industrial base.
- Key commercial and technical details remain unresolved, including final price, fleet size, delivery schedule, binding industrial guarantees and interoperability with NORAD/U.S. systems, and those issues will be settled during the coming negotiations.