brazil spends only around $31bn on defence, that's about half of what the uk or france spends. i am not very sure brazil can afford more aircraft carriers. they have chosen gripen due to cheaper costs and these aircraft can't deploy on carriers as well.
Brazil has spent a lot of time and money improving their carrier capability.
They replaced their old vintage carrier with the Sao Paulo, which was the very decent Clemenceau Class carrier, Foch, from the French. They have now done a refit to her to get her through the next few years.
They have upgraded their A-4s to a much more modern standard and purchased and refurbished S-2 aircraft to perform the AEW role and the CODS role.
They will most definitley replace the Sao Paulo as it approaches the end of its service life.
My guess is that they will work with a builder (most likely the French, but perhaps others, including India) to design and build a 40,000 ton or so CATOBAR carrier in Brazil. And they will very likely operate Sea Gripens off of that carrier, which are going to be very effective and credible 4.5 generation aircraft. The fact is, the Sea Gripen could (and perhaps will) come aboard with Brazil before the new carrier because they can operate off of the Sao Pualo while she is still in service.
This would be a natural for the Brazilians who are already investing in the air force version of the Gripen from Saab. Saab and Brazil are already in talks to make the Sea Gripen a reality for Brazil.
And it will be a smart move...and as these things go, an economical one. In fact, one of the main reasons many analysts feel that the Gripen was chosen (among others, like technology transfer, cost, local design work, etc.), was because of the opportunity to go with the Sea Gripen for the Brazilian Navy.
Navy Recognition (whose owner is an SD member) has a good article about this:
