Squadron 2020 project tender process to begin this year

Defence Minister Jussi Niinistö on Tuesday authorised 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.

The suppliers are Atlas Elektronik GmbH, Germany, Lockheed Martin Canada Inc, Canada, and Saab Ab, Sweden, said a government press release.

The battle system to be delivered will consist of weapons, sensors, 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 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 will sent requests to 12 companies to participate in the tender procedure to deliver the battle system for the Squadron 2020 vessels.

Eight companies had 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. Integration expertise, technical competence, project competence, commercial and legal requirements, life cycle expertise, industrial cooperation, quality

and safety were the criteria applied to select the companies.

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.