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Sweden dont care about Russian airthreat.

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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 We deploy an outdated system based on American Hawk missiles.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.  :police:

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!)

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