Saab’s A26 is being billed as the world’s first fifth-generation submarine, and the claim comes with a neat pile of futuristic features. The Blekinge-class design trades old-school submarine thinking for a toolbox built to operate across sea, air, cyber, and information domains. The result looks like a stealthy jack-of-all-trades that can lurk, listen, launch unmanned systems, and even crouch on the seabed to hide in plain sight. Learn more from Saab here.
At heart, the A26 is a mission-flexible boat. It blends advanced signature reduction, an air-independent propulsion system that stretches submerged endurance, and modular payload bays sized for unmanned underwater vehicles and special operations teams. That modularity matters. Instead of a single-role submarine, navies get a platform that can switch between intelligence gathering, seabed work, and long-range strike roles with relative ease.
Stealth gets a lot of attention. Saab points to low acoustic, magnetic, electric, and radar signatures, achieved through hull geometry, coatings, degaussing systems, and an integrated sensor suite. The design also emphasizes seabed operations. The A26 can reportedly settle onto the ocean floor to mask itself from active detection, a tactic that changes the game for covert surveillance and protects undersea approaches or critical infrastructure like cables.
Unmanned systems are baked in. The A26’s payload bays can launch and recover a variety of unmanned platforms, giving the crew a distributed reach for reconnaissance and minesweeping without exposing the hull. That fits modern doctrine, which prizes attritable drones that reduce risk to people while keeping human crews in the decision loop.
Weapons and sensors also get upgrades. The submarine will carry modern torpedoes and could integrate cruise missiles, depending on customer needs. A comprehensive electronic surveillance suite promises to feed passive intelligence into allied networks, making the boat a sensor node as much as a strike platform.
Compared to today’s giants, the A26 is compact but potent. It relies on diesel-electric propulsion augmented by Stirling AIP, not nuclear reactors, trading top speed and near-unlimited endurance for lower lifecycle cost and easier logistics. For nations focused on regional deterrence, that’s a practical equation.
There are limits to marketing prose. The A26 program has faced delays and cost pressure in the past, and real-world performance will depend on software maturity, sensor integration, and crew training. No platform is magic, and seabed work introduces new logistical and maintenance demands.
Still, the A26 highlights the shift in submarine roles from pure attack to multi-domain operations. Whether it truly reshapes undersea warfare will depend on how navies use its modularity and unmanned tools. If engineers and operators nail the integration, the A26 could make quiet seas even quieter, and give littoral fleets a stealthy edge they did not have before.
