Defence Minister Jussi Niinistö authorised, on 13th June 2017, the Finnish Defence Forces' Logistics Command to send an invitation to negotiate and a preliminary invitation to tender to three supplier candidates for the Squadron 2020 project: Atlas Elektronik GmbH, Germany; Lockheed Martin Canada Inc, Canada; and Saab Ab, Sweden. The battle system to be delivered will consist of weapons, sensors, and command and control systems and their integration into vessels. The Ministerial Committee on Economic Policy was in favour of sending the invitation to negotiate and the preliminary invitation to tender.
The first round of negotiations will be conducted in the course of 2017 and the deadline to submit a preliminary tender is in autumn 2017. The second round of negotiations will be started already at the end of 2017 and it will be continued in winter 2018. The final round of tenders and the signing of the agreement will take place during 2018.
At the end of last year, the Finnish Defence Forces' Logistics Command sent requests to 12 companies to participate in the tender procedure to deliver the battle system for the Squadron 2020 vessels. Eight companies sent a request to participate; of these, three were selected for the next stage. The Logistics Command evaluated the requests in cooperation with the Navy, the Defence Command and the Ministry of Defence and an external actor verified the independent nature and quality of the request procedure. The following criteria were applied to select the companies: integration expertise, technical competence, project competence, commercial and legal requirements, life cycle expertise, industrial cooperation, quality and safety.
Minister Niinistö has now decided to establish an obligation of industrial cooperation for the Squadron 2020 project. The decision includes grounds for establishing the obligation and it supports the central objective in materiel policy: to ensure military security of supply in all situations. The obligation aims at ensuring that the domestic defence industry is an integrated part of Finland’s defence and security of supply while also promoting international cooperation of defence industries.
Inquiries: Project Coordinator Lauri Puranen, the Ministry of Defence, tel. +358 295 140 403, and Captain (Navy) Veli-Pekka Heinonen, the Finnish Defence Forces, tel. +358 299 800 (switch board).
