Saab is about to consolidate its naval products into a newly created Naval business area designed to develop the company’s naval offerings and further embrace technologies such as autonomous systems. It will be the end of the line, however, for the Kockums name.
On 1 April 2026 Saab will have officially consolidated its naval operations into one business area by moving its naval combat management systems (CMS) business unit into what is currently the Kockums business area. The new business area – Naval – will be led by Mats Wicksell, who is a Saab senior vice president and currently the head of Kockums.
The move completes a consolidation that was first initiated on 1 Jan 2024 when Saab’s underwater business unit, which produces torpedoes and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), was moved into Kockums.
In a Saab press release on 13 March Saab President and CEO Micael Johansson stated, “We are consolidating and developing Saab’s naval offer to deliver greater value to our customers. By driving higher efficiency and accelerating innovation we are further strengthening our market position.”
However, on 18 March Warsight caught up with Wicksell to gain a deeper insight into the rationale for the consolidation.
Beginning with the initial move of Saab’s underwater systems business unit from the company’s Dynamics business area into Kockums, Wicksell explained, “The reason for that shift was mainly related to the increase of autonomy throughout systems of all sizes and classes, and the realisation that we’ve done quite a lot of unmanned and autonomy work in the underwater systems business. But we also saw there was a gap in our portfolio, with larger unmanned systems in between the existing systems we had and the submarines, and a need to create more unmanned and autonomous submarine capabilities.”
That initial consolidation proved prudent and in August 2025 Saab was awarded a SEK 60 million (EUR 5.58 million) contract by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) to develop a concept for a Large Uncrewed Undersea Vehicle (LUUV) for the Swedish Navy. The first sea trials for this are planned for the summer of 2026.
Wicksell then moved on to explain the latest consolidation to create Saab’s Naval business unit.
“Our CMS business is actually a combat systems business, which means most of the business in that business line today is delivering as part of a ship development programme, delivering the complete combat system capabilities to an integrator, either be it the shipyard or government integrator,” he said. “So it’s not really all about the CMS; it’s alot about integration of all the different sensors and effectors, and not only from a sort of data-logical point of view, but also the integration on a ship, and being part of the ship design, where you place your sensors and effectors on the ship, and how that affects [the design], so you’re actually working together with the shipyard on the ship design as well.
“And then, of course, an enabler for us to do that is the combat management system as such, which is a key product in this, but very few customers today buy just a CMS; they buy a combat system in general. So that is to a large extent an integration business and very closely related to our surface ship business, but also we’re using the CMS in the submarines as well.”
Saab has contracts for numerous programmes involving integration of its 9LV CMS and wider combat system on naval vessels, including Finland’s Pohjanmaa-class corvettes, Germany’s F123 Brandenburg-class frigates, and the signals intelligence ships that Saab is building for Poland.
Beyond such programmes where there is a close collaboration between the combat system work and the ship design and build, Wicksell also noted that Saab’s naval combat systems unit “is also operating independently of whether we are the ship builders or not, so we have quite a lot of export programmes with our 9LV CMS and combat system.
“We will continue to operate that business line, also independently of our shipbuilding,” he added.
In terms of growing Saab’s naval business, Wicksell said the company has perceived an increased need to expand the command-and-control part of the business, especially with regard to the ability to develop an underwater situational picture and to command and control unmanned or autonomous vessels in combination with manned vessels.
“To lay out this entire puzzle in the naval domain, we have a benefit from both: we see that we have a growing market and increased business opportunities, but also that we can create a more complete solution for the customers, both the command-and-control components in a multi domain environment, but including both manned and unmanned vessels as well,” Wicksell explained.
One side effect of Saab’s naval consolidation is that the brand of Kockums – which has a manufacturing history in Sweden that goes back to the 1840s and built its first naval vessel, a steam-powered torpedo boat, in 1875 – will be lost.
Kockums is currently building two Blekinge-class (A26) submarines for the Swedish Navy, which are planned to be commissioned in 2031 and 2033, and has been selected by Poland to provide three A26 boats to replace the Polish Navy’s current Russian-designed ‘Kilo’-class submarines.
Asked when a Polish contract for the A26s will be firmed up, Wicksell replied, “We are currently in negotiations with the Polish Armament Agency. That process is ongoing according to plan, to schedule, with the intent … to sign a contract in the second quarter of this year.”
Kockums has had something of a strange history over the past few decades or so. Having been purchasing by German shipyard Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) in 1999, Kockums then became part of Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) in January 2005 when TKMS acquired HDW. Then, however, began a series of conflicts between Kockums’ only Swedish customer, the FMV, and Kockums’ German owners.
In outlining how those conflicts panned out, Wicksell first noted the climate around the late 1990s and early 2000s, which were marked by a general decline in defence spending as various countries sought to capitalise on a ‘peace dividend’.
“Sweden thought that they wanted a way to share submarine building with someone, and there was an interest from German industry to buy Kockums,” Wicksell explained, “and at the time the purchase went through and development was continued: joint development between the Swedish side and the German side, aiming to address new markets and so on.
“But of course, with a decline in the market, I think the Germans opted to focus on the existing products they had, which meant less design work in Sweden. … But at the end of the day, when Sweden wanted to buy a submarine that was fit to operate against the Russian threat in the Baltic, and the Germans wanted to sell a product that was built for something else, it came to a difficult situation for Sweden.”
Wicksell noted that Sweden then secured the intellectual property (IP) rights to submarine system designs in a business deal with TKMS.
“Meanwhile, Saab was contacted, tried to recruit competence within this area, and was contracted to come up with a new concept designed for the Swedish submarines,” said Wicksell. “When that happened, TKMS didn’t really have much value left in the Swedish part of the business, so Saab made a bid for it and was able to buy Kockums from TKMS.”
That deal was finalised on 22 July 2014, spurred on by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March of that year, which added a strategic imperative for Sweden to retain a sovereign submarine-building capability.
Yet prior to the sale of Kockums to Saab being finally agreed, there were extraordinary scenes at the Kockums shipyard in Malmö. Such was the Swedish government’s hostility towards TKMS by this point that on 8 April 2014 two military trucks escorted by armed troops entered the Kockums yard to forcefully repossess all materiel belonging to the FMV, including equipment and design blueprints. A capability that 20 years before was withering on the vine was now a strategic necessity.
