Keeping RBS 70 NG mission-ready for decades

How Saab designed lifecycle diagnostics into a next-generation air-defence system — with Diadrom.

Saab Dynamics and Diadrom developed OBELISK (now MAS), the off-board system that manages the RBS 70 NG sight across its entire service life.

• Business: Built to lower life-cycle cost (LCC) across a multi-decade service life — the metric Saab’s customers select on.
• Lifecycle: Diagnostics designed in from the concept phase, supporting condition-based maintenance across a 30-year-plus service life.

Why diagnostics became a design-phase decision

Advanced defence products are increasingly judged not on unit price but on what they cost to own and keep ready over decades. Across industry, moving from reactive or calendar-based maintenance to condition-based maintenance is documented to cut maintenance costs by roughly 18–30% and unplanned downtime by 30–50% (industry benchmarks, McKinsey and the U.S. Department of Energy). Defence is now applying the same logic to systems that must stay ready for a generation. RBS 70 NG — built to defeat aircraft, drones and missiles out to nine kilometres — is a clear example of that shift, and of why diagnostics has become a design-phase decision rather than an afterthought.

A combat-proven system goes digital

In 2011 Saab launched RBS 70 NG, the new generation of its combat-proven short-range air-defence system. The leap was as much digital as ballistic: the analogue sight became a networked digital one — with a thermal camera, night vision, video recording, built-in test sequences and calibration, and control units linked in a network. A more capable sight is also a more complex one to keep running in the field for thirty years and more.

Total cost of ownership decides the deal

For Saab’s customers, total cost of ownership is a decisive factor when choosing an air-defence supplier — and a digital, networked sight raises the stakes. How do you diagnose, configure, update and calibrate that system reliably, securely and affordably, in the field, across its entire life? Saab’s insight was that the answer could not be bolted on afterwards: the maintenance concept had to be designed in alongside the product itself, with diagnostics requirements brought in already at the design phase so the product could be managed efficiently across its whole life cycle.

A joint pre-study, then a product

Saab brought Diadrom in early — during the development of RBS 70 NG itself. The two teams ran a joint pre-study in which Diadrom carried two decades of automotive diagnostics rigour into the defence and security context: how to architect a robust, secure on-sight network, and how to design for condition-based maintenance from the start. Out of that work came OBELISK (now MAS), a PC-based off-board system that became — and remains — the way the RBS 70 NG sight is managed through its life.

Work was carried out in Gothenburg and Karlskoga, with Diadrom contributing front-end, back-end and full-stack developers, an embedded software developer, a software tester, a business analyst / requirements engineer and a project manager.

“We drew on Diadrom’s knowledge very early in the development of RBS 70 NG, which was extremely valuable. Together we developed the concept into a finished product. OBELISK is a highly effective tool for managing the product across its entire lifecycle — and a key part of our ability to offer innovative solutions to our customers’ challenges.”

For the engineers in the room

• System: OBELISK / MAS — PC-based off-board diagnostics and maintenance application for the RBS 70 NG sight
• Functions: Control sight status; read and update sight configuration and parameters; software download to the sight; trigger in-sight (built-in) tests; calibration and tests with external equipment; review engagement history, including graphs and video
• Architecture: Multiple control nodes networked on the sight (e.g. GBTE, MAC, MMEE, SCG, SCO, SMU, T1, VU), each running its own software and, where relevant, holding its own calibration data
• Transports: Node and sub-component links over RS232 and IP; connection to the off-board system over Ethernet through a firewall
• Maintenance model: Fault detection and remedy logging, boot-mode and heartbeat monitoring, and scheduled-inspection tracking (e.g. periodic sight inspections) in support of condition-based maintenance

What it changed

OBELISK gave Saab a single, consistent way to manage the RBS 70 NG sight from production through every year of field service — reading status, resolving faults, downloading software and calibrating, without bespoke tooling for each task. Because diagnostics were designed in rather than retrofitted, Saab and its customers can build new maintenance solutions on top — condition-based maintenance and remote services — that lower life-cycle cost, the metric their customers actually buy on. It is the same discipline, proven in automotive serial production, applied to a system that has to stay ready for decades.

“Diagnostics is no longer an aftermarket detail — it is a design decision that determines what a system costs to keep ready for thirty years. RBS 70 NG showed how much value sits in getting that right from the start.”

Advice to peers

The direction of travel is more condition-based maintenance and more remote support — the automotive-born model that RBS 70 NG helped prove out in defence. Saab’s own lesson generalises: the cheapest way to lower a product’s life-cycle cost is to decide how you will diagnose and maintain it before the design is frozen — not after it is fielded.

Details drawn from Diadrom’s published reference material on the RBS 70 NG / OBELISK programme. Industry benchmark figures attributed to McKinsey and the U.S. Department of Energy. Further information available to qualified parties under NDA.

This programme is part of Diadrom Autodefence — vehicle-proven diagnostics in defence service since 2012. The defence overview · How we work with standards