| Mako11 | 12 Dec 2014 6:04 p.m. PST |
Given all the sabre rattling of late, as well as aerial and naval incursions into sovereign skies and waters, and the takeover of Crimea, Sweden is planning to boost its defense spending: link Currently, they could only defend their country for a week, against an aggressor, should war break out. |
| Weasel | 12 Dec 2014 6:18 p.m. PST |
We laugh now, but soon, they'll be pulling a Gustav Adolphus and there'll be Swedish flags in Poland and Germany :-) |
| pmwalt | 12 Dec 2014 6:39 p.m. PST |
Perhaps time to reconsider the anti-submarine force |
| Lion in the Stars | 12 Dec 2014 8:08 p.m. PST |
We laugh now, but soon, they'll be pulling a Gustav Adolphus and there'll be Swedish flags in Poland and Germany Pretty sure Denmark would catch a piece of that, too. But any of them will object rather strenuously. How successful their objections will be is a different discussion. But with all the saber-rattling, a country would have to have an utter idiot in charge to not increase defense spending! |
| skippy0001 | 12 Dec 2014 8:14 p.m. PST |
I for one would welcome joint maneuvers with the Swedish Infantry. link |
| Weasel | 12 Dec 2014 9:13 p.m. PST |
Based on that picture, I'd forego the ancient Danish-Swedish rivalry and become a collaborator |
| tuscaloosa | 12 Dec 2014 9:32 p.m. PST |
If she wanted to leave the service, I'd give her a discharge! |
Tgerritsen  | 12 Dec 2014 10:28 p.m. PST |
Swedish, Danish, it's hard to go wrong with either set of ladies… |
| McWong73 | 13 Dec 2014 12:24 a.m. PST |
tuscaloosa for the win! Bet his discharge is dishonorable though. |
| Daniel S | 13 Dec 2014 5:02 a.m. PST |
Mako 11,
Actually the "defend the country for a week" is "defend a single limited area of the country for a week" and only when the defence plan "IO 2014" is implemented sometime after 2023 and only if defence spending is increased by several billion. The current goverment is not increasing defence spending at all, rather it is a question of moving money from column A to B within an existing budget while cutting funding elsewhere as well as increasing the costs of the armed forces by such things as activating the reservist without allocating new funds to cover the cost of calling up and training 7500 men. The truth is that after 20 years of neglect and poor political decisions the armed forces are in such a bad shape that it would require an increase of todays budget of about 40 billion SEK to 80-100 billion SEK to create a credible defence. Even implementing the already obsolete and much delayed IO2014 would require an annual increase of at least 5-10 billion and probably a one time spending of 20-50 billion to make up for all the equipment that was either scraped or cancelled because there was "eternal peace" in the Baltic. (For example the new Visby class corvettes never got their air defence missiles) No political party in Sweden is currently willing to spend that amount of money on defence, particularly when the recently elected goverment had it's budget defeated in Parliament and had to call for new elections in the spring of 2015. Hell they won't even stop executive order RB5 from early 2014 which requires the armed forces to cut 1600 regular soldiers & sailors by 2015 in order cut half a billion from defence costs. |
| Pictors Studio | 13 Dec 2014 7:33 a.m. PST |
Perhaps they could start selling calendars? |
| Mako11 | 13 Dec 2014 11:13 a.m. PST |
Wow, sorry to hear that Daniel. That is rather shocking. |
| Daniel S | 13 Dec 2014 12:28 p.m. PST |
It's a mess and a far more serious one than the average Swede understands since 200 years of peace has created a sense of security which is hard to shake. Last time it took Hitler and WW2 to get everyone serious about defence and that lasted almost to the end of the Cold War. I wonder what it will take this time and if the needed reforms will be in time… |
| Bangorstu | 13 Dec 2014 3:04 p.m. PST |
|
adds infantry to his Israeli force.
