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tim WCdCn’s ge°graphy has for a long nj 6 determined its strategic naval plan- §> its navy’s tactics, and the kinds of h'Ps >t has deployed.
°fud'Sh S*1'PS must cover a coastline ttie k naut'ca* rniles, made up of innu- p. . le fjords, inlets, promontories, and isla'nSU*aS and sheltered by thousands of oth S 3nd 's*ets separated from one an- str.er an<f from the mainland by sounds, Ca(aits’ and channels. Most of this intri- anC | eomposed coast faces the Baltic, and sea that has well-defined choke of‘nts for shipping. The strategic position e hig island Gotland is obvious.
Nav* ontbreak of World War II, the ins/’ 'ts sister services, was alarm- •ec/ S*10rt equipment that would prelaw neutra* Sweden’s territorial waters lari trade routes. This became particu- N J Worrisome when Germany invaded flee/3y 3nd Denmark in May 1940. The jll s mainstay, the old battleships, were Sw/'^d to eotmter the modem threat, i'nilt 611 a'S° ^ad a emiser, the Gotland, t° carry four seaplanes, which were
catapulted off her quarterdeck.
To compensate for the lack of surface ships, Sweden purchased four destroyers from Italy. Their voyage to join the Swedish forces proved to be somewhat adventurous, for they had to avoid hostile areas and, rounding Denmark’s Faeroe islands, they were temporarily requisitioned by the British. The designs for two cruisers also came from Italy. They were the last ships of this kind the Swedish Navy built.
Sweden was self-sufficient in submarines, which resembled the German VII Cs of the time.
Although the Swedish Navy of the early 1940s did not have to participate in a shooting war, the all-important neutrality watch demanded sacrifice.
From the end of World War II to 1957, Sweden continued to build new destroyers, the largest of which was launched in 1952 and displaced 2,650 tons. They were the first such ships to be fitted with a missile engagement capability. At the same time, two older destroyers were converted to frigates and given modem antisubmarine warfare (ASW) detection apparatus and armament.
In 1958, however, the political leadership had Parliament pass a defense doctrine stating that any future war would mean immediate escalation to nuclear level. A nuclear conflict would, of course, be extremely violent and short. Hence, there would be no need for maritime transport, or warships. Accordingly, 30% of the Navy’s budget was shifted to the strike air force. The proportions of the defense budget have remained unaltered. This proclamation had far-reaching consequences for the fleet, the Navy as a whole and, indeed, for Sweden’s ability to make her traditional neutrality respected.
This 1958 Swedish defense doctrine was so out of touch with international realities that it was obsolete from the very beginning. Already the Korean War in 1950 had led to the theory of flexible response, a way of thinking that the Cuban missile crisis confirmed in 1962, and which led to the buildup of combat fleets all over the world.
Far from seeing the implications of this for Sweden, the political leaders stuck to the 1958 doctrine. In 1972, when renewal of the shipborne ASW assets exceeded the budgetary framework, they declared that in case of an international emer-
Because the Baltic is hospitable to shore-based aircraft but not to large, valuable surface units, Sweden concentrates on small, guided-missile patrol boats, such as the Spica-II- class (left) with a Viggen, the Hugin-class (below, left), and the two-ship Stockholm-class (below).
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/
sub-
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less than a year later in the waters Horsfjarden, the main naval base
training center on Sweden’s east o Trails on the sea bed made it pla>n two full-sized submarines had been ^ ing simultaneously in the area, an midget submarine had departed tr .
sturdy
that
hid'
itself
traveled along in the depth just as do® battle tank ashore. The traces descry handsome turns round the rocks that been in the way.
oW
•g£
jve
The Landsort-class minehunter demonstrates both Sweden’s technical sophistication and its lack of political support for defense; the class is being built from funds originally allocated to run shore barracks.
gency, seaborne import trade would be attended to by other than military means. The responsibility for defending Sweden against submarines was thus left to ten helicopters.
In 1974, the kind of craft that would be instrumental in restructuring the surface force to a light fleet was shown to the press. It was the Spica-II-class guided- missile patrol boat, built in a series of 12 by the state naval shipyards at Karlskrona and Gotaverker. This class refitted in 1981-1985 with RBS-15 missiles and new electronics and in its present version displaces 230 tons. Its length is 43.6 meters and its speed is more than 40 knots. The propulsion machinery consists of three gas turbines. There is a crew of 27. One dual-purpose 57-mm. Bofors gun, two wire-guided torpedoes, two RBS-15 Saab-Scania missiles, and mine rails on both sides of the deck for a mine-laying capability provide the armament. Up to six torpedo tubes can be carried. The electronic equipment includes an Ericsson Sea Giraffe 50HC search radar, operations room system MARIS 880 weapons-control system, passive radio transmission search equipment, passive radar warning, navigation radar, missile fire control, torpedo fire control, A A fire control, and chaff launchers. The ships have been fitted with four Elma ASW rocket launchers but do not have a sonar.
The Swedish RBS-15 surface-to- surface missile has a range of more than 70 kilometers and a speed of more than 300 meters per second. It was developed in the early years of this decade, and its performance can be compared with that of the Exocet or Harpoon missiles.
Because one destroyer costs as much as five fast attack craft, this acquisition may seem to have made sense. But 12 Spica-class patrol boats did not make up for each of the frigates and destroyers that were deleted from the fleet.
The surface combat fleet was seemingly strengthened further by the delivery of 16 Hugin-class guided-missile patrol boats built in Norway. But in reality, these boats were replacements for torpedo boats previously in the fleet. The displacement of the //wg/n-class boats is 150 tons, length 36.6 meters, beam 6.2 meters, draft 1.6 meters, and speed 35 knots. It carries one 57-mm. dualpurpose gun and two to six Penguin surface-to-surface missiles. There are also
120
rails for as many as 24 small mines. Two solid fuel rocket motors provide the boat's propulsion.
What happened next had been going on unnoticed for some time. During fleet maneuvers off Ronneby in south Sweden in March 1980, a submerged submarine was found in the exercise area, well inside the Swedish territorial waters. The submarine was not Swedish. An attending ASW helicopter was actually able to pull its hydrophone along the submarine’s hull, damaging the hydrophone in the process. Statements made at official level were quite outspoken: “Our surveillance of our territorial waters below the surface is so poor that the detection of foreign submarines must be considered accidental.” “The resources of the Navy are quite insufficient to keep this sort of incident from occurring.” “To the superpowers this must seem a weakness—a lack of capacity to enforce our neutrality in wartime.”
It would soon dawn upon the politicians where their parsimonious attitude toward the Navy was taking the country. Meanwhile, however, the Soviet Union advocated turning Scandinavia into a nuclear-free zone and the Baltic into “a sea of peace.” Somewhat sourly, a Swedish Navy spokesman pointed out that the Soviets were operating six “Golf II”-class submarines carrying nuclear missiles in the Baltic.
On 28 October 1981, Sweden awoke to the news that the Soviet Whiskey-class submarine W-137 had run aground in the waters off Karlskrona naval base. The forward part of the submarine emitted radiation in a way that made it probable she was carrying some sort of nuclear warheads, which might even have been in a fairly unstable condition. Significantly, a fisherman first spotted the grounded sub.
that observed the next Warsaw PaCt marine to operate in Swedish inner ters, at the island of Uto, not far Stockholm. But by far the most sen® foreign submarine incident took P f
and oast- each. One of these had dragged along the bottom of the fjord, its ^ keel ploughing up a furrow in the m The other had been fitted with tracks ^
' d
Foreign clearance divers were th°uAn to be seen in the waters off Karlskrona February 1982, close to one of the sj1® ^ controlled minefields that are essentta the defense of Swedish naval instan tions. The likely purpose of those f°res submarine activities in Swedish 'va ^ was to knock out key functions in Swedish defense by landing SEAL 1 air-land) teams for wide-ranging sa • in the initial phase of a war situa .
On no occasion did Swedish AS w icopters disable or catch the foreign mersibles. This disappointing failure partly a result of the government r , laid down for engagement of subme b. foreign submarines. These rules s that when a foreign submarine was sP^t ted submerged, this submarine was ^ to be warned by a mere petard, an .j kilogram explosive charge. If the su not heed this warning, a depth c ' . dropped at a safe distance wouL- another more powerful warning- 1 „
intruder also disregarded this warn1 -
Proceedings / March
to build ships. This gave the Swedish Navy six modem minehunters, the Landsort class. Nonetheless, it was indicative of the austere budget situation that the first two of the class were built with the aid of general subsidies for the dwindling shipyard industry. A 1,400-ton electronic intelligence vessel, the Orion,
The Swedish Navy continues to modernize and to stress ASW with the addition of the new Vastergot- land-class submarines and the Goteborg-class coastal corvettes.
was also launched, and a ship for the cadets’ training cruises, the 3,300-ton Carlskrona, was supplied.
Sweden’s Navy also operates a powerful fleet of icebreakers.
Sweden’s democratic parties have always agreed that the number of submarines should never drop below 12. Perhaps this is because the submarines seemed to fit into the concept of the Swedish defense as a guerrilla warfare venture, an idea fervently backed by some radical political circles during the Vietnam war era. Consequently, the submarine-building skills of the Kockums yard at Malmb were not only maintained, but developed to the highest international level for conventional boats. Kockums, for example, successfully competed for an order of new submarines for Australia and recently experimented with increasing the conventional submarine’s endurance to nine days of operational duties without a single spell of snorkeling—an aim to be achieved by the fitting of Stirling-cycle external combustion auxiliary engines using liquid oxygen.
Currently, the Kockums yard is finishing three Vastergotland-c\ass submarines for the Swedish navy. These boats have a surface displacement of 1,070 tons, a length of 48.5 meters and a beam of 6.1 meters. Their new features are, among others, the reduction of the crew to only 20 and a hunter-killer ASW capacity.
There are no less than ten torpedo tubes and 18 torpedoes on board. They and other recent Swedish submarines are supposed to be able to operate at the greatest depth of the waters controlled by the Swedish Navy, which is somewhat more than 300 meters.
The Swedish Navy is not only a navy. It also comprises the Coastal Defence Artillery (whose personnel wear emblems and badges other than the naval ones). The batteries that the Coastal Artillery staff are of two kinds. One kind has heavily fortified permanent gun sites, which are considered to give more value for the money than mobile batteries. Permanent gun sites provide several advantages: the defense is already entrenched before an attacker arrives; all equipment is available for immediate use; crews can be rapidly formed, since they are recruited from the surrounding countryside; good defense can be mounted against conventional, biological and chemical, and nuclear weapons; and the guns can be fired very accurately early in the conflict.
The other kind of coastal defense battery is the 12-ccntimeter mobile gun. It is new and entirely automatic, so the gun sites can be unmanned.
The Coastal Artillery is also responsible for the permanent, shore-controlled minefields and for laying mines.
The Rangers that make up the Swedish Marine Corps are closely related to the Coastal Artillery. They are now being organized into amphibious battalions for:
► Mobile combat in the whole depth of an archipelago area.
► Counterattack to retake an enemy beachhead area in close cooperation with naval and land forces.
f 3
► Seafront combat for a day or pad 0 day against an enemy landing attemP About half of Sweden’s fleet is Per!^e nently engaged in training activities- staff vessel Visborg is the fleet’s and commands all training. The training flotilla is made up of the cru vessel Carlskrona and two mineswe ers. The 1st Submarine Flotilla is 1°* up of the submarine tender Alvsborg> submarine rescue ship Belos, and the and second submarine squadrons-" boats in all. The 1st and the 4th Sur 3 Attack Flotillas are each made up 0 four-boat Spica-II-class missile squadron and one or two three- to 1 boat Hugin-class patrol squadrons- mine clearance section usually keeps three- to four-strong minesweeper squ rons on active duty. Finally, the c ance diver squadron sails five vesS j, and two naval training squadrons e sail two or three vessels. ■„
There are about as many vessels of the same kinds at secret 11100 ^ places or undergoing overhaul or A separate unit, usually ready
immediate duty, is the submarine-hun ^
group. It is composed of at least coastal corvette with other combat c in attendance, helicopters, and one 11 ,|t wing aircraft (currently the Spanish- CASA 212).
A high degree of technical sophis ^ tion, provided almost entirely by -c country’s own industry, is a character - of Swedish combatant ships. But •■ (
ships do not exist in numbers to even minimum defense needs 3 2,700 kilometer coast. Foreign un fr0lti ter activities, ominously reported several different places at a time, tinue to occur in Swedish waters. Social Democrats and the Liberals, in^6 agreement to budget the Navy belovV ^ most basic needs solemnly stated by ^ same ruling Social Democratic P .js have just rejected proposals to mee ^ threat with a second submarine hun group.