U.S. Navy, Coast Guard buys new Saab radars

The U.S. Navy has awarded Saab a $51.5 million contract modification to keep building the radar system it supplies to the Coast Guard’s newest patrol ships, with the Navy also picking up part of the bill for its own vessels.

Naval Sea Systems Command’s modification exercises a production option on an existing contract with Saab, Inc., covering more Multi-Mode Radar units, engineering support and spare parts. Work will be split between Saab’s radar facility in Gothenburg, Sweden, which handles 51 percent of the effort, and its Syracuse, New York plant, which handles the rest. The contract runs through an estimated completion date of December 2028.

Funding for the deal comes from four separate accounts. Coast Guard procurement, construction and improvement money covers just under half the total, at $24.8 million. The remainder comes from three Navy funding lines: $10 million in fiscal 2026 other procurement funds, $9.8 million in fiscal 2026 shipbuilding and conversion funds, and $6.5 million in fiscal 2025 other procurement funds. All of it was obligated at the time of the award.

The radar in question is Saab’s Sea Giraffe Multi-Mode Radar, a three-dimensional, electronically scanned phased array system the company originally developed for the Coast Guard’s Heritage-class Offshore Patrol Cutter under a contract first awarded in 2017. The radar tracks both air and surface targets simultaneously, giving a ship’s crew a single picture of threats ranging from low-flying aircraft to small boats, and Saab has marketed it as effective from open ocean down to crowded coastal waters.

Saab has since expanded the radar’s reach into the Navy fleet. A version of the same technology, designated AN/SPS-77, equips the Navy’s Independence-class littoral combat ships, and the company has delivered Sea Giraffe systems for the Expeditionary Sea Base ships operated by Military Sealift Command. That spread across multiple ship classes explains why this latest order draws on both Coast Guard and Navy funding accounts rather than one alone, though the announcement does not break down which specific Navy ships this production run will equip.

Saab has built its U.S. radar business almost entirely around this single product line, with the Syracuse facility handling final integration and testing for systems bound for American ships while the core radar technology comes from Sweden. The company has picked up incremental production orders roughly every year or two since the original 2017 award as the Coast Guard has continued taking delivery of new Offshore Patrol Cutters.

Deliveries under the contract will continue through the end of 2028.