Lack of Swedish Success Selling Submarines to Scandinavia and Poland, Japan?

Pete distributed Submarine Matters' Report to Donors, Germany’s Joint Submarine Order Won the Norwegian Order on February 6, 2017.

ONEIL PADILLA’S COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS

 After reading it this Report ONeil Padilla offered some comments and questions:

1.  “The Norwegians chose well but not hardly surprising because of their History with Germans subs has been a very positive one."

2. "I still think the Swedes are chance with their A26 for Poland because SAAB are throwing in everything into it, even local construction as an incentive."

3.  "Could the Dutch go Japanese? SAAB once again teamed up with Damen to get leg up or some interest in their A26 design from the Dutch.”

PETE'S RESPONSE 

1.  Indeed the Norwegians have long been customers for German built submarines:

-  This goes all the way to three A-class subs built in Germany and delivered to the Royal Norwegian
    Navy in 1914. 

-  Germany has continuously supplied subs to Norway since 1964 when Norway began
   commissioning West German Kobben class. Norway later resold some Kobbens to Denmark
   and Poland.

-  The German Ula class to Norway 1989 - present.  

2.  Sweden has not supplied many subs to its fellow Scandinavian countries or Poland. Sweden did
     lease a Nacken class to Denmark for four years. Sweden has done much better selling used subs to
     Singapore and the new Collins to Australia.

The Scandinavian Viking class project in which Sweden would likely have been main designer collapsed in 1990s-2000s.

The A26 built by Sweden's SAAB-Kockums would likely be very expensive because it is a wholly new design and Sweden has only two orders, for the Swedish Navy itself. The A26 would therefore have difficulty competing with the established TKMS 212A (known as the Todaro class in Italy) design. 

Ten 212As have been built and 4 more are planned (2 each for the German and Italian navies). With Norway's initial indication it will buy 4 this means 18 x 212s. This provides increased economies of scale, resulting in lower costs/lower price.

The main reason for lack Swedish success in European sales seems to be NATO alliance (see Members) political solidarity, push to equipment standardisation  and multi-decade strength of Germany's submarine industry:

-  Sweden's neutrality rather than joining NATO doesn't help Sweden.

-  Finland, though neutral, won't buy subs from anyone.

-  for submarines the great power political pressure and price competition from Germany and France
   towards European buyers seems stronger than the much smaller Swedish government and
   economy's

The NATO reason especially impacts Poland as Poland realises it is too geographically close to the common enemy of NATO, which is Russia.

3.  NATO country, the Netherlands would also likely buy from a NATO regional alliance country. Japan offers the Netherlands no equivalent regional alliance reason to buy from Japan - a Asia-Pacific power Japan.

Another reason why NATO countries buy from NATO exporters is equipment interoperability concerns. This includes having complex weapons systems (eg. German and future Norwegian 212s) with similar performance characterists under the usual joint command scenarios.

See Kevin's comments recorded in this September 7, 2015 article which seem to indicate the Netherlands may tend to buy subs from Germany.

BUT, Japan builds good submarines of the size the Netherlands may be interested in. If Japan offered subs for competive prices and terms Japan may have a chance.

Pete