Montreal/Paris – Last month, a ghostly grey business jet took off from central Sweden and headed across the Baltic on a routine spying mission.
The converted Gulfstream, caught on a tracking website, was flown by the Swedish Air Force and patrolled an area thick with Russian radar signals off the militarized coast of Kaliningrad.
Apart from a couple of unobtrusive bulges underneath, Sweden’s two Gulfstream-based S102B Korpen spy planes look like any other sleek corporate jet.
But inside, the Swedish jets and a growing fleet of newer corporate aircraft contain the eyes and ears of a relentless intelligence war.
From the South China Sea to the Middle East and the Baltic, governments are eyeing “special mission” business jets capable of looking or listening at potentially lower running costs than converted passenger or military planes.
It’s the latest chapter for a discreet market worth an estimated $3 billion to a handful of corporate jet specialists and the Israeli, European and U.S. arms firms that supply advanced intelligence systems.
The rising demand for small jets with systems once reserved for bigger planes has energized a market led by General Dynamics subsidiary Gulfstream, with Canada’s Bombardier and France’s Dassault Aviation snapping at its heels.
“A key area for growth is in signals and electronic intelligence,” said defense analyst Francis Tusa.
“This is increasingly viable on smaller aircraft because of improvements in electronics and their reduction in size. It’s all about processing power and the size of electronics.”
‘Numerous opportunities’
The trend accelerated last month when Sweden’s Saab paired its new-generation GlobalEye early warning system, carried on Bombardier Global business jets, with Gripen warplanes in its bid for a crucial Finnish figh ..
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