From AI to Autonomous Systems: Inside Saab’s Innovation Push

But the speed of technological change also raises difficult questions. What happens when AI advances faster than organisations can adapt? And how can the technology be deployed in safety-critical systems, where security, reliability and human control are non-negotiable?

These are questions that Elias Julin, AI Strategy Lead at Saab, works with every day. For him, the pace of change makes AI both an extraordinary opportunity and an urgent challenge. 

“I actually think AI is the most exciting thing that has happened in my lifetime. There are very few places where you get to work on such big questions while the technology is developing so quickly. When generative AI started to take off, I got a very strong feeling that we needed to act quickly. That this would change everything,” he says.

AI is already being explored across Saab's operations, from code generation and design support to autonomous-system development. At the same time, the company is looking at how AI can contribute to future defence capabilities.

“We have already flown Gripen with AI and are working with autonomous vehicles. The technology is no longer science fiction. An important part of our work is both about understanding autonomous systems and being able to protect ourselves against them. Here, AI is not just about productivity. We operate in a high-risk industry, which places very high demands on responsibility, control and how the technology is used, he says.

But, in defence, autonomy cannot simply be measured by how much human involvement can be removed from a system. It is also about understanding when and how autonomous capabilities should be used, how they can be controlled and how they can be defended against when they are used by an adversary. For Saab, this creates a distinctive innovation challenge: moving quickly enough to harness advances in AI and autonomy while maintaining the security, robustness, reliability and accountability demanded of safety-critical defence systems.

Creating a startup inside Saab

Elisa Stuart, Deputy Head at The Rainforest, Saab's internal startup for transformative innovation, also stresses the importance of speed. 

“We are experimenting not only with technology, but also with working methods, processes, how we work together and what culture we want in the team. The rainforest has the ability to work with shorter development cycles and faster iterations than is often possible in traditional development programs. The goal is to develop systems that can be rapidly further developed and adapted to new needs and threats,” Elisa Stuart says.

That ability to iterate quickly is becoming increasingly important. In a traditional development programme, a system can take years to move from concept to operational capability. By the time it enters service, however, the technology around it – and potentially the threat it was designed to address – may have changed significantly.  

“We try to build systems that are more flexible and modular, because we know that the future will require change. It is important to enable that change from the beginning,” Elisa says.

The Rainforest is also driven by an idea of minimising the cost of change. One example of this is additive manufacturing. 3D printing gives engineers greater freedom to experiment with structures and components without being tied to the same tooling and manufacturing constraints associated with conventional production.

“Among other things, we have chosen to 3D print the internal structure in aluminum, which not only results in one of the world's largest flying 3D printed structures, but also gives us greater freedom to quickly develop and adapt the design over time,” Elisa says.

As per Senior Strategy Director at Saab, Jenny Gardner, one important area that clearly shows how new technologies are changing modern warfare is drones. "It is perhaps one of the biggest changes we have seen in recent years. We are talking about millions of drones being produced and there is no indication that development will stop. Now a threat that is cheap must be met with a countermeasure that is also cheap. Otherwise you end up with a poor war economy," she says.

Another big change that Jenny Gardner sees ahead is that defence capabilities will be built less and less around individual platforms. In the past, the focus was on aircraft, ships or other larger systems. The future, however, looks different.

“What we are seeing now is that we are moving from platforms to more distributed systems of systems. We will continue to have large platforms, but also many smaller systems and everything will interact and communicate with each other to a greater extent,” she says.

Axel Bååthe, Head of The Rainforest, agrees. “At the Rainforest and at Saab, we see a big potential to complement manned vehicles with smaller, cheaper vehicles, which offer quite decent performance, are capable of flying in the entire subsonic envelope, but are unmanned and built with cheaper technology that enables scaling of assets much, much quicker and gives a competitive advantage to customers,” he says.

All in all, Saab's work points to a shift in what defence innovation increasingly means. The advantage may no longer lie simply in building the most capable aircraft, vehicle or sensor, but in creating an ecosystem that can adapt as threats, technologies and missions change. AI can make systems more intelligent, autonomy can extend their reach, and modular design can make them easier to evolve.