Saab announces world’s first software-defined aircraft fuselage with Divergent Technologies
Since the introduction of the OODA-loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) in the 1970s it has been well-known that the most important capability of any military force is to be able to see, understand and act, faster and more cost-effectively than the opponent.
For the engineers at Saab this has been our inspiration; to build cost-effective adaptable solutions and products that allow our customers to outsmart and outperform their opponents and thereby keep people and society safe. Driven originally by the wartime imperative back in 1937, Saab has been on that road ever since, with many milestones in aviation innovation along the way.
Most recently that has been demonstrated in the way we built our latest fighter, Gripen E. Within the “traditional” aerospace disciplines of aeronautical engineering, vehicle systems and mechanical design Gripen E is pioneering the usage of model-based engineering (MBE) methods, allowing all disciplines to have a common understanding of the current design through a common digital twin. This digital twin also extends into production, where 2D paper drawings have been replaced with digital 3D drawings that define every part and manufacturing operation, allowing for more complex and optimized designs. Using MBE allowed for early simulations and trade-studies of cross-functional systems, allowing for an improved system design from the beginning.
"Gripen E is also breaking new ground with its world-unique avionics system, with verifiably separated flight-safety critical and mission-critical software, together with an avionics platform that is computer hardware-independent."
Gripen E is also breaking new ground with its world-unique avionics system, with verifiably separated flight-safety critical and mission-critical software, together with an avionics platform that is computer hardware-independent. This breaks the cycle of painfully long and expensive upgrades other aircraft undergo whenever upgrading their software or the computer hardware underpinning it. This enables Gripen E to lay claim to the vision of Code in The Morning, Fly in The Afternoon. It also allowed Gripen E to be the first in-production fighter to fly with an AI agent on-board in standard avionics computers, demonstrating how agility, speed and ultimately combat lethality are no longer manifestations of the size, power or weight of your aircraft, but rather all about how easy it is to adapt and upgrade your aircraft.
The world's first software-defined fuselage. With AI-driven algorithms and additive manufacturing, Saab is redefining the future of aircraft production.
With this realization, that rapid upgradability and flexibility is, perhaps the most, important factor on the battlefield today, Saab’s engineers have continued to innovate. In The Rainforest, Saab’s internal startup for transformative innovation, engineers have been looking at how MBE-methodology can be combined with the learnings from Gripen E’s SW-defined avionics system to take aircraft design and manufacturing to the next level.
“We are asking ourselves the question – In Gripen E customers get a platform where they can code mission-critical applications in the morning and fly them in the afternoon. How can we give them the same level of software flexibility, but for actual hardware? We call this Software-Defined Hardware Manufacturing” said Axel Bååthe, Head of The Rainforest.
“In Gripen E we have, through model-based engineering, the capability to have a near perfect simulation model and understand quickly what must be done to improve the design. But to realize the improvement, the bottleneck is always in the adaption of the production system. Adapting current manufacturing is slow and static because you need to order and adhere to the physical tools, moulds, and jigs that are required to build a design. Software-defined manufacturing changes this. It brings us the same speed and flexibility that we have during design to our manufacturing.”
Axel and his team at the Rainforest have been busy exploring how Saab can use conjoining of the digital world to the ways and means by which we can build and make something we can touch and hold. Through their work on designing an autonomous airborne system, they have been exploring various technologies that allows for software-defined manufacturing, in an industrial setting, at scale, where the cost for changing hardware is not more costly than changing onboard software.
We envision that Saab’s future production factory is our most important product. We want to be able to give our customers freedom. We sum this up as ‘CAD in The Morning, Fly in The Afternoon’.
Back to Axel.
“We envision that Saab’s future production factory is our most important product. We want to be able to give our customers freedom. Freedom to not feel locked into a specific design, neither in hardware nor software. The production factory will be one that reconfigures itself instantly to build whatever our joint digital twin looks like, without being limited by expensive investments in new tooling. We sum this up as ‘CAD in The Morning, Fly in The Afternoon’.”
“This factory is of course not built in a day and will require substantial innovation in many different types of manufacturing, together with radical rethinking in everything from how we design aircraft parts to how we maintain aircraft. But we wanted to take the first steps on this journey here and now to show what will be possible. One of these first steps was to look at how we could reimagine how we build primary load-carrying structures in aircraft fuselages in a more Software-Defined way. This is how we came across Divergent Technologies.”
Saab has worked with Divergent Technologies to design and manufacture the world's first software-defined aircraft fuselage. The fuselage was developed and realized with no unique tooling or fixturing, instead utilizing Divergent’s software-defined manufacturing assets that combine industrial-rate laser powder fusion additive manufacturing with universal robotic assembly. The fuselage, at over 5 metres long and comprising of 26 unique printed parts, will be one of the largest additively manufactured metal structures that will have ever undergone powered flight.
“Many traditional truths in aircraft manufacturing were possible to challenge by the joint Saab & Divergent design team. With additive manufacturing load-bearing structures do not have to follow straight lines and right angles as ribs and stringers, but can rather, organically, follow the optimal load-paths. It is impossible to, as a human, draw these parts, instead they must be generated by optimization and AI-algorithms.” Axel says.
This innovative approach to industrial hardware manufacturing enables to rapidly produce, test, and iterate physical structures at speeds comparable to those of software engineering workflows. The lead time from design to finished product is no longer dictated by expensive investments in new tooling but is instead determined by the speed of design algorithms and print or robot time. This approach also reduces the cost of change, making redesign and implementing innovative ideas easier.
With this technology, the number of parts in a fuselage can be reduced by at least a factor of 100, replacing traditional riveted machine parts with organic, interwoven structures. This leads to dramatically lower lead times in assembly. This technology also enables more flexible weight optimization and functional integration within fuselage structures, allowing for the printing of wiring, thermal management systems, and hydraulic and liquid systems directly inside the structure, further improving performance.
“The fuselage has successfully passed its structural proof-loading and is scheduled to fly in 2026. The joint team has done an excellent job working to prepare for first flight and in paving the way forward as we advance towards our ambition of 'CAD in the Morning, Fly in the Afternoon'.