Saab unveils a radical disruption in defense aerospace engineering: the development of the world’s first software-defined aircraft fuselage, produced through large-scale additive manufacturing. This breakthrough is not merely an improvement in production; it represents the crystallization of a new military paradigm aimed at reducing system development cycles from years to mere hours—an operational imperative as the era of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) approaches.

The innovation, driven by Saab’s internal incubator “The Rainforest,” follows the vision encapsulated in the phrase “CAD in the Morning, Fly in the Afternoon.”

Creating hardware as software

The software-defined fuselage

The structure is a five-meter-long fuselage—its appearance notably organic—which Saab highlights as one of the largest additively manufactured metal structures ever produced for a powered flight system.

The fundamental shift lies in the production methodology. By integrating the flexibility of software updates into the 3D-printed hardware design and manufacturing workflow, Saab seeks to minimize change costs and maximize adaptability. The company’s long-standing approach with the Gripen fighter, where mission software can be coded in the morning and flight-tested in the afternoon, is now being extended to the physical components of the aircraft itself.

According to Saab, the approach enables several key advantages:

  • Development agility: The concept drastically reduces timelines, shifting from months or years of design, prototyping, and testing to potentially weekly or even daily cycles, limited only by algorithmic design speeds and 3D printer throughput.
  • Integration and part-count reduction: Saab reports a reduction in the number of components by at least a factor of 100, enabling deeper functional integration within the fuselage while optimizing weight and overall structural efficiency.
  • Strategic application: Saab has confirmed that this fuselage is scheduled to fly on an autonomous aerial system (UAS) in 2026, directly linking the technology to the next generation of unmanned combat platforms

The global race for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA)

Saab’s development emerges within the broader context of Western air forces’ urgent need to counter accelerated technological obsolescence and strategic competition with peer and near-peer adversaries. Former USAF officials have repeatedly warned that Western air superiority risks being overtaken in numbers and capability by powers such as China. A central pillar of the response is the emergence of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and Loyal Wingmen.

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The CCA race has produced a fundamental conceptual split within the defense industry, shaping investment priorities around agility and cost:

  • Attritable / low-cost systems: Designed for mass production and replacement. These aircraft are intended to be expendable in high-threat environments, enabling saturation of enemy defenses. Mission survivability outweighs the survivability of any individual airframe.
  • High-performance / survivable systems: Higher-value unmanned aircraft characterized by advanced stealth, sophisticated sensor suites, and performance approaching that of a crewed fighter.

Saab’s strategic positioning

Saab’s software-defined, additively manufactured fuselage positions the company squarely as an enabler of attritable CCA concepts. By focusing on minimizing change costs and enabling rapid production of major structural elements, Saab aligns directly with the need for low-cost, highly iterative platforms that can be fielded in large quantities.

  • Attritable line: USAF programs are driving this philosophy. Industry players such as Anduril—selected by the USAF and partnered with Rheinmetall for autonomous systems in Europe—and General Atomics’ prototypes for the US Navy’s CCA program are pursuing agile design and mass-manufacturable UAS. The Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie remains one of the most emblematic examples.
  • High-performance line: Other competitors focus on survivability and individual lethality. Lockheed Martin’s Vectis concept and Airbus’ Wingman program pursue higher-value platforms designed to operate alongside crewed fighters.
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Saab’s project enables rapid payload adaptation and integration of new sensors or effectors into the fuselage within days. This represents a crucial deterrence factor: airpower superiority will depend not only on a platform’s initial capabilities but on the speed at which an air force can absorb, design, produce, and field new capabilities in response to shifting operational threats.

Ultimately, Saab’s innovation signals that the contest for air superiority will be won in large part through production agility—pushing design automation and additive manufacturing to their structural limits to meet the demands of next-generation unmanned military aviation.