Today, Ukraine and Sweden signed two agreements on defense cooperation. Partly to protect information that is shared between the countries, partly to give Ukraine a faster track to Swedish military equipment.
What do these agreements mean in practice?
– It is about signing an agreement that you must protect the other country’s information in the same way as you protect your own. It is important if Sweden provides access to various types of materiel systems that contain secret software or hardware, says Joakim Paasikivi, lieutenant colonel at the Norwegian Defense Academy.
Why has an agreement been signed that Ukraine will be allowed to share in Sweden’s extra orders for defense equipment?
– There will be a kind of hanging agreement on the Swedish procurements, which means that the lead times will be reduced considerably. Instead of Ukraine making its own negotiations with the defense industry, the Swedish Armed Forces instead buy larger volumes and give the excess to Ukraine. It can also be associated with different types of confidentiality and therefore an agreement is needed to protect that information.
What happens if you break the contract?
– Handling confidential information is a trust industry. The punishment is not a punishment, but the consequence is that if you don’t trust each other, you dissolve the agreements and stop sharing information.
Why should Ukrainian pilots be trained on Gripen planes if we are not going to donate or sell them?
– The basic flight training can be done anywhere with school airplanes. Once it is ready, you can proceed with any type of aircraft in principle. The Gripen figured as a possible alternative to Ukraine before – almost in any case – a decision was made on the F16. The fact that we would let the Ukrainians receive training on the Jas 39 Gripen without them being allowed to use the plane afterwards is a bit of a fire for the crows, but that does not apply to general flight training.