Sweden dont care about Russian airthreat.

[Viggen]

During the night at 0200 on March 29´th.  Two Backfires escorted by four SU-27´s flew over the Baltic sea and turning towards Gotska sando and Gotland. They were now only 35km from the Swedish border when they held their exercise. Simulating attacks on Stockholm and other installations at the south in Sweden The swedish response was.........Doing nothing. However NATO reacted and sent up two Danish F16´s from Latvia as a response and tracked the aircrafts as they later returned to Russia.

Today the defencedepartment responded that we had them on radar all the time, knew what type of aircraft were involved and we did not see any need to send up Gripens to mark our presence or defend our airspace. 

Source: Its all over the Swedish news today. Take you pick!

[Viggen]

Here is an update:

The real reason why SwAF never responded was......All pilots were on holiday!!! We never had any aircraft or pilots on standby to intercept because they where all at home. 

Yes it is pretty shocking. Probably not just for a Swedish taxpayer, but for the rest of the world also, in the sense of neglecting a major priority of an airforces duty.

[shawn a]

Hi Viggen,
So, What SAMs does Sweden deploy?
Could SAMs have handled the threat?
Do you think the Russkies knew your pilots were on holiday, and just wanted to make a point?

[Viggen]

Hi Shaw!

SAM??? We deploy an outdated system based on American Hawk missiles. I dont think they could or can handle a threat on a larger scale. 

If they knew or not if our pilots were on holiday is pretty easy to figure out. They just decided to have an exercise and test our response time at this very moment. Turns out that their timing was perfect.   

Would US let Russian bombers so close to their border to hold exercises without a response? Or any other country in fact? I think not. 
US spent billions of dollars on the F-22 Raptor, not using it defeats it purpose and the airforces. Same here with Sweden, we spent millions of "dollars" on the Gripen. We sent them to help out in Libya but we cant protect/patrol our own country borders. Whats up with that? Protecting your country is supposed to be a 24/7, 365 days a year job. 

[shawn a]

Hmmm... no available pilots, huh?
Was this just some monumental bureaucratic screw-up, or does Sweden normally send everyone in the military home for holiday at the same time? Yeah, I thought that military preparedness was a 24/7/365 job also. Silly me.
Hawks?? Outdated?? I remember them from when I was a kid (1950s) and got a model of a Hawk battery to build. That's like a SAM from the Pleistocene! (but don't tell the iranians that)
The only foreign military the US would allow to conduct an exercise that close to our borders right now would be north korea--and there would be a "response".
One last thing..if your nickname is Viggen, Why is there a Draken photo with your username ID? (The Draken is one of the coolest looking planes ever!)

[Viggen]

The government tries to save money, armed forces get to suffer. I dont know what they were thinking, the big blame-game is on now. Nobody knows what really happened and are throwing the blame back and forth. They dont see the Russians as a threat is the main focus atm. But that is beside the point in reality.

Sweden used to have Bloodhound rockets also, think they are British made. Dont know if they were older then the Hawk-system. They are sitting in a museum now. Or at least one of them are. 

My nickname is chosen because i love the JA37 Viggen. Unfortunatly i dont have a photo of myself sitting in one. Just standing infront of one, but that photo is from 1994. This one is from 2009 and in a J35. 

Btw, might look like Sweden may join NATO after all. Thats what todays government want.

[Webmaster]

Great, so now we still don't know if those Backfire had their upgrades? Gjeez, at least send up a Argus to get a better picture of their attack profiles. Was it just the regular Kh-22 attack... or were they used different. Now we don't know.

On the SAM subject, so it's all left to the RBS 70 and 90 MANPADs now? You're kidding me. Are you sure? I mean the Netherlands got these new AMRAAM based systems, with little to no news coverage. It's always about the Patriots, then I noticed this SL-AMRAAM launcher (forgot official name, starts with NATO, built by Norway I believe) in one of the picture of our SAM base few years ago. To my surprise.

The difference between HAWK and Bloodhound may not be much in their "age". Sure, they had the original HAWK and both Bloodhound version. But Sweden later got the improved Hawk systems right, those were a lot newer than their Bloodhounds, new radar systems and ECCM. Also, Bloodhound improvements stopped at the end of the Cold War, with Hawk still evolving into the 1990s. I don't know how much upgrading Sweden did? But those HAWKs, even though retired, were not the same as those you saw as a kid. "a SAM from the Pleistocene!" is wrong idea there, Viggen, it's not just Iran that still have them.

March 2013 news:
"The Swedish Defence Material Administration has awarded Diehl Defence a contract to deliver IRIS-T SLS surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems for the country’s armed forces."
Not bad for Army use, but, limited range... it's not really for the air defense network.

If Sweden goes NATO, there's a good chance, they'll also procure this NATO SL AMRAAM.

[Webmaster]

Excuse my "on-the-fly" info there... Wikipedia was down for me, and seems Google is pretty useless in getting info quickly from other good sources. I'm sure though, if you research HAWK, you'll be surprised how much love it received until the end.

[Viggen]

Great, so now we still don't know if those Backfire had their upgrades? Gjeez, at least send up a Argus to get a better picture of their attack profiles. Was it just the regular Kh-22 attack... or were they used different. Now we don't know.

On the SAM subject, so it's all left to the RBS 70 and 90 MANPADs now? You're kidding me. Are you sure? I mean the Netherlands got these new AMRAAM based systems, with little to no news coverage. It's always about the Patriots, then I noticed this SL-AMRAAM launcher (forgot official name, starts with NATO, built by Norway I believe) in one of the picture of our SAM base few years ago. To my surprise.

The difference between HAWK and Bloodhound may not be much in their "age". Sure, they had the original HAWK and both Bloodhound version. But Sweden later got the improved Hawk systems right, those were a lot newer than their Bloodhounds, new radar systems and ECCM. Also, Bloodhound improvements stopped at the end of the Cold War, with Hawk still evolving into the 1990s. I don't know how much upgrading Sweden did? But those HAWKs, even though retired, were not the same as those you saw as a kid. "a SAM from the Pleistocene!" is wrong idea there, Viggen, it's not just Iran that still have them.

March 2013 news:
"The Swedish Defence Material Administration has awarded Diehl Defence a contract to deliver IRIS-T SLS surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems for the country’s armed forces."
Not bad for Army use, but, limited range... it's not really for the air defense network.

If Sweden goes NATO, there's a good chance, they'll also procure this NATO SL AMRAAM.

A KH-22 attack what??? Think you left me in the dust there, haha! 

Honestly, i hardly know anything about the Swedish SAM´s today.  2014 will be 20 years ago i was in the airforce. Much have changed since then and i have not read up on things. One thing i do know is that the Swedish population dont think we are going to be invaded by the Russians. As you said, the cold war is long over. But that does not change the fact that "we" handled the situation completely wrong.

For me it just proofs of how far and bad things have turned after all the cutbacks of the defense. All pilots home on holiday??? Is aviationfuel really that expensive! Maybe we should not build a new generation of Gripen fighters and try to export it to other countries.

Sweden really needs to restructure and rebuild its airforce from scratch. Because as it is now, it clearly does not work. 

[Webmaster]

Hehe, nvm about that, maybe they know enough from the radar and Gripens would have arrived too late to find out more. I agree with you though that not having pilots on duty is ridiculous, and a very bad sign.

[armchair general mode on]
I was just thinking this "simulating attack on south sweden and stockholm" by the papers must be speculation, right. SwAF wouldn't say that, having failed to intercept them. I haven't read all news. Plus they don't have to go that far to strike Stockholm with Kh-15 even. And Ronneby and Karlskrona seem a little too far for that one. To strike targets in the south of Sweden, a Tu-160 with Kh-55 seem to make more sense, not send two Backfires with 1 or 2 Kh-22 each, right. So is this about Sweden? I was first thinking that Gotland was just some imaginary target, and perhaps upgraded Tu-22M practised stand-off attacks using conventional weapons, which was why I was wondering if that would have been clear by shadowing them. But having checked out the Kh-22 specs again: a 600km anti-ship Kh-22M pretty much covers the Baltic Sea pretty well from that point, which is the furthest away from the NATO fighters at Siauliai they can go without crossing into Swedish territory. Say Sweden is of no interest, if NATO/Russia ever get into a little crisis what would be there beyond Gotland... how about a naval carrier group blocking Kaliningrad... in such a scenario, Sweden did what was expected, be a neutral onlooker or respond too late. NATO fighters came too late. Mission accomplished.

When Sweden joins NATO, it needs to put some 24/7 Gripens at Visby me thinks. 
[armchair general mode off]

[Viggen]

It took about a month for this incident to leak, so the news are a bit old. I dont know how Sweden knows what was targeted during the simulation/exercise. That might just been speculations. But the whole thing feels like its been taken out of a Monty Python movie - Too all aircraft out there. We are on vacation so no fooling around our airspace, we have radar! 

Now im going to speculate a bit. I think the only reason Sweden wants to join Nato is because it will be cheaper. A couple of American divisions of F-16´s based in Sweden, and we dont have to build so many Gripens or recruit as many pilots. Same goes for warships.  However the public wants to keep Sweden neutral. So will we ever join Nato? That is a hard question to answer because keeping our neutrality will cost large sums of money.

The General in cheif of all our armed forces made an statement during an interview saying that, the Swedish forces could only protect Sweden for about a week, and thats if we concentrate all our forces on one place. That did not go down well with our politicians, they want his head on a platter.

So without being too naive. I do believe our armed forces are in shambles, and we are not as strong as we once were in the 60´s and to the late 80´s. (For a small neutral country). But then some of our politicians think we shouldent have any armed forces at all. Sweden is too insignificant to be attacked by a foreign country. Maybe they are right, but i would not bet my life on it. 

[Drummond]

Lol, you Swedes are too nice.