ERIN Digital & Phone net Tuesday April 30, 2024; Go Here for Current SOI
I must say that for me this day have brought very serious news indeed. A week or so ago there was much hallo about the fact that suddenly Sweden planned to buy 40-60 new JAS 39 Griffons of a heavily updated version together with the Swiss. This version has been called the Super-Griffon paraphrasing the Super-Hornet. Many of us in the defence forces reacted since we believed the government were just pampering our industry and that we would pay buy cutting back even more on army or navy. However, today news leaked out about a secret investigation that has been done by the three authorities who deals with defence, disasters and such. Each of them are seriously worried about several facts. The Defence forces memorandum is top secret but the others are not classified. They now see several risks for Swedens security in the near future. 1. Old mother Russia is very busy strengthening their western forces, conduct a large military exercise in Karelia, close to Finland, and aims to create a regional superpower status here aswell. 2. There are possibilites for a break-up of the EU and the EURO-crisis shows that the cohesion of the EU is not as strong as Sweden expected it to be. Sweden based our securty assessment assuming there would be aid coming from the EU in case of a conflict. Now, it might become contentious within EU itself. Sweden hav also given guarantees to Norway, Finland and the Baltic states that if they come under threat Sweden will aid them with whatever means aviable. These promises were given without any special conditions that we needed our own security guaranteed by others. Sweden assumed this would come naturally from EU and from the US. Now, this looks less certain. The US have refocused her capacity towards Asia and cannot give the amount of help even if they wanted too due to this. And many European nations are looking to spend less on their military. I believe we may see a swedish application to join NATO soon enough. At the very least it looks as if Sweden will finally realize the lull our politicans imagines for 20 years will be no more. Russia did not turn into the friendly teddy bear we hoped. Instead the old bear is licking her wounds and sharpening her claws. And since NATO will almost need swedish airspace to give air support to the Baltic states in a future conflict Sweden will probably be part from the first hour, NATO-member or not. But since the capacity of the NATO air forces was found less than impressive during the Libyan war, Sweden have deemed it necessary to take the step to upgrade her Air Force earlier than planned and as best she can together with Switzerland. Friends, if Sweden and Switzerland both consider there is a need to upgrade their Air Forces with new fighter jets I believe the world should pause and reconsider. Because I will honestly tell you this:I never believed our politicans would ever dare to even consider this move, to start upgrading our military capacity. When Swedish politicans start to worry about such matters, things are bad. I mean, last time was like a few years before WWII. And it looks as if the Government are contemplating uping the finance of the Defence to compensate for the cost of the new fighters. Man, if the Swedish government starts considering increasing the funds for the defence, you know it is serious!
