Kockums Naval Solutions

Kockums AB is a shipyard in Malmö, Sweden, owned by the Swedish defence company Saab Group. While having a history of civil vessel construction, Kockums' most renowned activity is the fabrication of military corvettes and submarines.

Kockums worked with Northrop Grumman and Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW) to offer a Visby-class corvette derivative in the American Focused Mission Vessel Study, a precursor to the Littoral Combat Ship program. It competed with several other concepts, including Norway's Skjold class (part of a Raytheon led group).

The submarine conflict

Prior to 1999, Kockums was controlled by the Swedish state through the company Svenska Varv AB. Having implemented a highly advanced variety of the Stirling engine for low noise submarine propulsion, Kockums was considered to have strategic value for the Swedish Navy. However, in 1999, Kockums' main competitor on the submarine market, the German ship-building company HDW, acquired Kockums. In 2005, HDW was bought by the German industrial conglomerate Thyssen Krupp. The time after 1999 was beridden with conflicts between Kockum's only Swedish customer, the Defence Materiel Administration (Sweden) (FMV), and Kockum's German owners. The Swedish view was that the technical advancements made in collaboration between Kockums and FMV ought to be used to create a new generation of submarines for lucrative export: the A26 submarine. On the German side, the A26 project was said to be regarded as a high-risk project that could lead to uncontrollably growing costs. Superficially, the major source of conflict seemed to be that neither ThyssenKrupp nor FMV would accept carrying unforeseen development costs. As several technical innovations to be implemented in the A26 were kept in classified status at the FMV, ThyssenKrupp argued that the implied costs were too difficult to predict. This deadlock persisted for months until the FMV decided to cancel the order of the A26 submarines.