Saab To Form Joint Venture With Mahindra Satyam

(By AviationWeek) Saab Group signed a letter of intent last week with Mahindra Satyam and will soon form a joint venture for civil aeronautics, special IT systems, network-centric warfare and command and control systems, CEO Håkan Buskhe tells AVIATION WEEK.
Mahindra Satyam is a global business and information technology services company with expertise in supply chain management, engineering and product life-cycle management and infrastructure services.
Mahindra Satyam and Saab had announced earlier they would jointly address the Battlefield Management System (BMS) for the Indian army. The solution for BMS, Saab says, is field-proven and deployed in many countries. Both partners intend to work together on the Indian BMS program and explore globalization of the co-developed product.
“We’re not here [just] for the Medium Multi-Role Aircraft [MMRCA] order,” Buskhe says, referring to India’s ongoing program to buy 126 new fighter aircraft. The company also is looking at bidding for numerous other projects in India, including ship-based and stealth radars—for which it signed a cooperation agreement with Bharat Electronics Ltd.—torpedoes and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The Indian navy has expressed interested in purchasing 10 AUVs.
“We are more or less viewing our complete portfolio in India,” Buskhe says.
On the MMRCA, for which Saab is proposing the Gripen NG, Buskhe says the company’s advantage lies in “the open platform and technology Gripen offers. It is affordable and easy to handle. We would like to share the full-fledged technology.”