Who has been the best customer?

[uk 75]

This site tends to focus on the producers of unbuilt or unsuccessful projects but we also find that it is the customer who can make or break a project.

This thread is looking for good customers either governments or private companies.

An example seems to me to be the Swedish Armed Forces. Draken, Viggen and Gripen are success stories.

 

[starviking]

With the Swedes, there is, I presume, a good deal of understanding as to what is desirable, and feasible in the budget, between SAAB and the RSwAF.

In the UK, the need for rationalization, AND the avoidance of major job losses was a key aspect for a large part of the postwar period. Desirable was sacrificed for whizz-bang pie-in-the-sky capabilities, probably due to both a need to compete with the other aircraft makers, a low understanding of feasibility on the part of the services, and no idea as to what the Treasury would or would not say ”Yes” to.

As a small nation, Sweden did not have to face those issues, and so had a good idea of all the goalposts almost right from the start of a project.

 

[uk 75]

Pan Am managed to give us the 707 and 747 while poor old BOAC never seemed to make up its mind. Perhaps if we had had a British Pan Am things might have been different.

 

[pathology_doc]

Opinion: SAAB was helped by being a single-source supplier (secondary to Sweden's desire to retain independence of its fighter manufacturing industry) and not having to look over its shoulder at the competition or fear arbitrary cancellation, while at the same time being kept in line by the sober knowledge that it had to get it right first time and could not afford expensive failures.

 

[publiusr]

Cultural differences may come into play here. Edicts of Jante’ kept Swedes from being gouged, though an Elon would not have thrived there.

 

[zjz]

Norway appears to fit right in, with Penguins and NSM/JSM .....