Only minutes after Sweden becomes a NATO member – perhaps already in a few days – Swedish combat forces can behave like NATO. It is above all about incident preparedness in the air and at sea.
All year round, Swedish fighter planes go up and identify foreign aircraft in the immediate area, and the navy also has similar duties at sea. As of when Sweden becomes a NATO member, this will be done in a NATO context where close cooperation will take place with NATO command bases in Europe.
For the Swedish air staff, this means closer cooperation with AIRCOM in Ramstein, Germany. Together with the officers there, the Swedish Air Force will coordinate issues such as whether Swedish or, for example, German fighter planes should go up and identify an unknown plane.
The same applies to the Swedish Navy, which will intensify cooperation with MARCOM in Northwood outside London.
After membership, both the navy and the air force will have access to encryption keys from NATO – which opens the door to the alliance’s data systems for air and sea surveillance. With these situational pictures, Swedish military suddenly get a total overview, a situational picture, of NATO’s territory.
Something you previously only had access to during exercises.
Even when it comes to the Swedish submarines, a similar movement is taking place – and here the navy gets access to forums that were previously completely closed to non-members.
But in light of the fact that Sweden has long been closely cooperating with NATO, the differences in the daily work will not be huge, among military people there has long been talk about Sweden being “already integrated” with NATO.
The challenges will instead be about handling a barrage of new NATO information, and manning a large number of NATO staffs with officers, something that Sweden lacks.
Takes a long time
Some of the committees to which Sweden will recruit people are directly atypical for Swedish military know-how, such as the committee for nuclear weapons policy, the Nuclear Planning Group.
Here, too, a number of Swedes will participate, probably civilians, and it will be the Ministry of Defense’s task to appoint these.
Not until 5-6 years from now does the Armed Forces calculate that all Swedish seats in these various staffs will be occupied, a total of 250 officers are expected.
At the same time, Swedish authorities will begin work to inform the public about NATO. The lack of knowledge is probably large and the task of educating the Swedes is expected to go to the Swedish Agency for Community Protection and Preparedness, MSB.
Expect everything from information leaflets to memes on social media, on the theme of collective defence, deterrence and host country support. These are words that will be heard more and more often.