Gunilla Edelstam, an associate professor of law, warns that the Swedish Parliament is trying to make it more difficult to change the Constitution and if it is voted through, it could be almost impossible for Sweden to leave the EU.
Text: Gunilla Edelstam | Photo: Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 4.0
Form of Government (RF) is the constitution that sets out the foundations of the Swedish system of government. Among other things, the RF sets out the basis for how the Riksdag governs Sweden through legislation. According to the current RF, which came into being in 1974, two parliamentary decisions are required to amend a constitution with an intervening election to the Riksdag. Half of the members of the Riksdag must then vote in favour of an amendment to the two Riksdag decisions.
Now the Swedish Parliament wants to make it harder to change the RF (Government Bill 2024/25:165). In the second decision after the parliamentary election, a qualified majority of two-thirds of the members of the Riksdag must vote in favour. Otherwise, the decision will fall and the proposed amendment to the Instrument of Government will not apply.
Parliament took the first decision on this change in October 2025. Parliamentary elections will be held in September 2026, after which Parliament will decide once more on this amendment. If the decision on the amendment is supported by at least half of the members of both parliaments, the Constitution will be amended.
Thereafter, any future amendments to the RF will require 2/3 of the members of parliament to vote in favour of a proposed amendment in the second round after a general election. This means that it will be very difficult to change the form of government in the future.’
Why do you want to make such a change?
The aim is said to be to strengthen democracy. Is this true?
Having a system where a majority (at least half) of the members of parliament must vote in favour of an amendment is perfectly reasonable, but making constitutional amendments more difficult by requiring a 2/3 majority for amendment is hardly democratic in a country like Sweden.
This means that a minority of 1/3 of the members of the Riksdag can prevent important changes to the RF. This does not strengthen democracy in Sweden. For example, EU membership is based on the fact that Sweden is a member of the European Union according to RF 1:10. This is thus laid down in the Constitution.
If Sweden were to want to leave the EU in the future, it would be sufficient for 1/3 of the members of the Riksdag to vote against. It will probably be impossible to leave the EU in the future if the proposal for a 2/3 majority wins through.
Membership of the EU means that legislation on issues such as the environment, electricity, forestry, competition, trade, agriculture and labour law can be decided by the EU. Decisions on such issues are taken by the European Parliament. Sweden's 21 MEPs out of a total of 720 cannot stand up to a majority of MEPs from other EU countries. EU legislation on electricity has instead led to an increase in Swedish electricity prices.
This is because Germany has the right to buy electricity from Sweden under an EU law. Germany buys a lot of electricity from Sweden. EU legislation has also had a negative impact on Sweden's forestry industry. Sweden has the most forest of all EU countries. About 63% of Sweden is covered by forest.
Forest industry representatives find the EU's requirements too tough, unrealistic and ineffective. This could hit Swedish jobs and export revenues hard. We could regain our sovereignty and self-government by amending RF 1:10 and leaving the EU, but with 1/3 of MPs voting against, it is unlikely that an exit will be possible in the future.
With regard to EU membership in particular, we could have chosen a different route to enable withdrawal if Sweden had had a constitutional court. If such a court existed, we could ask it to declare our membership of the EU invalid. The basis for this is the starting point in Chapter 1, Section 1 of the Swedish Constitution, which states that ”all power emanates from the people”.
This means that the Swedish people vote for their politicians in the Riksdag. These elected politicians then have the right to legislate in Sweden. We could demand that EU membership be cancelled on the grounds that the Riksdag never had the right to transfer legislative power to the EU. Legislative power only exists when the power emanates from the Swedish people.
The Riksdag consists of the elected representatives, i.e. the politicians elected by the Swedish people. The Riksdag's task is to legislate, but when the link to the Swedish people disappears, i.e. when legislative power is transferred from the Riksdag to the EU Parliament, this is a violation of RF 1:1.
The Swedish people have not voted for all the politicians in the EU, so the power exercised in the EU does not come from the Swedish people. We have only elected the 21 Swedish MEPs but not the other 699 MEPs in the EU.
The EU therefore does not have the right to legislate in a way that applies to the Swedish people. The link to the Swedish people does not exist for the EU Parliament. There is no legal right for the Swedish Parliament to transfer legislative power to the EU. This is the meaning of RF 1:1. We could therefore have EU membership declared invalid by a Swedish constitutional court. The problem is that we have no constitutional court in Sweden.
Limitation of state power is a characteristic of a modern democratic state. Limitations should be set out in a constitution such as the RF when it comes to the parliament's governance of the country, but if the parliament in future decisions (after the next parliamentary elections) accepts that 1/3 of the members of parliament in the future should be able to stop any attempt to change the constitution (for example by voting against any proposal to introduce a constitutional court), this may mean that it is not possible to limit important parts of state power.
There is a case for retaining the current more democratic possibility of amending the Constitution by a simple majority, where the votes of half of the members of parliament are required to accept a constitutional amendment.
Gunilla Edelstam Associate Professor, PhD, Team member of Swedish sovereignty and the EU, Law and order
There are many reasons for the democratic deficit that Sweden has suffered. One important reason is citizens' lack of fact-based and unbiased news information. As a result, voters do not have sufficient knowledge to make their own informed decisions, which is fundamental to a functioning democracy.
One important actor from which citizens obtain information and knowledge is SVT. SVT's mission is to be objective and impartial, but it is now a well-known fact that a large majority of SVT employees have left-wing political views and that this affects their choice of and approach to presenting news and highlighting social issues, which also affects a large part of the other programmes on offer.
There are also individual employees at SVT who have explained what forms this bias at SVT can take. One well-known example is the former programme host Janne Josefsson, who said that when he suggested that the other side of a social issue should also be allowed to speak in order to shed more light on it, his colleagues replied, "Yes, but then we let our political opponents speak, and that doesn't help our cause.
This lack of impartiality leads, among other things, to a growing number of citizens who stop watching SVT and want it to be cancelled, and instead seek information and knowledge from other sources, such as alternative media.
The same critics of SVT also find it outrageous that they should be forced to pay via taxes for SVT/SR's activities, which they also consider to have contributed greatly to the serious problems Sweden now has, and they also find it unreasonable that they should be forced to pay for an SVT/SR that they see as a political opponent engaged in political activism and indoctrination, which is considered to take place in a number of widely differing types of programme.
There are others who are very critical of SVT, but who still want to keep its activities, provided that they are radically changed to become more impartial and that the activities are also cut back, thereby reducing the tax money allocated to them.
Criticism of SVT/SR's bias has been around for many years and has increased in recent years. That this is the case is also evident from all those who, on alternative media, express opinions and demands that SVT should be closed down or that its operations should be greatly changed and downsized. During these years, various governments have come and gone, but no or very little changes have been made to SVT's activities, while its political bias has remained.
The need to change SVT and its lack of impartiality and objectivity is now obvious. One way of doing this is to divide the organisation into two channels, one with an explicit left-wing profile and the other with a right-wing profile. The management and staff of each channel are recruited in such a way as to ensure the two distinct channel profiles.
In this way, citizens will know in advance that when they watch each channel, the facts and perspectives in them may have different starting points and be presented in partly different ways, thus giving them a better opportunity to draw their own conclusions about what the reality is and what should be done.
Certain types of ”non-political” programmes, such as major sporting events, could still be shown in cooperation between the two channels.
However, it is not a given that each channel will present news and other facts in an obviously incomplete, inaccurate and biased way, based on a particular political agenda, rather the opposite, as the competition between the two channels is likely to lead to both being keen to present news and social issues in a factual and more multifaceted way, otherwise they risk losing the trust of viewers and thus their ratings will drop.
This division into two channels with different profiles would also provide an opportunity for innovation and competition in terms of new forms of programming and opportunities to allow others than those who for many years have been allowed almost exclusive rights by SVT to express themselves on various social issues. Political dialogue, social debate and ultimately democracy would benefit greatly from this.
The alternative to the above could be to make SVT more impartial through the appointment of board members and new recruitment methods/channels of employees. However, this would be a more complex and uncertain process than dividing the channels into left and right channels, thereby creating competition for viewers. This would ensure that the quality of the programmes is as good as possible, but also that completely new forms of programming are created.
Elsa Widding
Motions
Hereby notifies the undersigned Member of Parliament, Elsa Widding, the Minister for Defence, Pål Jonsson, and the Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, for knowingly acting unlawfully, or aiding and abetting unlawful acts, in connection with the exercise of their respective ministerial roles.
The Minister of Defence and the Ministry of Defence, representatives of the armed forces, as well as responsible representatives of SAAB are now preparing further deals with Ukraine that risk damaging Sweden both economically and through a deteriorating reputation as a rule of law in the world.
A sale of up to 150 JAS Gripen is being prepared for Ukraine, which, as everyone knows, is in a very difficult economic and political situation. This means that the financing of this project is very uncertain. It has been discussed that the JAS plan will be paid for by EU countries by borrowing on the market which will further burden the economy of EU countries negatively.
Furthermore, these loans are to be secured by the utilisation of the illegally confiscated (”frozen”) foreign exchange reserves of the Central Bank of Russia recorded in Euroclear, Belgium's central securities depository.
All parties involved know that this is a violation of verified treaties, including Article 2 (sub-paragraph 4) of the UN Charter, which requires respect for the sovereignty and assets of all states, including central bank reserves.
Sweden's sale of JAS aircraft thus requires Sweden and the EU to violate the UN Charter. The Swedish government and parliament are thus deliberately violating internationally recognised statutes.
Parliament's duty is now to ensure that the government does not act in contravention of UN treaties, according to Parliament's primary mandate under the Swedish constitution.
Elsa Widding
Member of Parliament and party leader of Ambition Sverige
Spokesperson for Swedish sovereignty and the EU, Environment and Climate
On 14 November, Pål Jonson arranged a new deal for SAAB by signing an agreement with Colombia for the sale of 17 JAS Gripen aircraft. The problem is that the US considers the Colombian president to be a drug lord.
Gripen is a unique and flexible fighter aircraft that can take off and land on a straight road just 500 metres long. Now 17 of these aircraft will be sold to Colombia, writes Government Offices.
Benjamin Dousa hails the $4.3 billion deal:
The sale of JAS Gripen to Colombia is one of Sweden's largest export deals ever. It is a deal that strengthens both Swedish security and economy, and demonstrates the clear link between trade and security.
Pål Jonson, who acts as sales manager in the deal, says in a press release from the Government Offices that the sale is ”a clear acknowledgement of the competitiveness of the Swedish defence industry”. He adds: ”I look forward to deepening defence cooperation”.
In other words, Mr Jonson wants to sell more arms to Colombia.
The question is what the Pentagon thinks about it after the US implicitly threatened Colombia (like Venezuela) with military action to stop Colombian drug cartels.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Maria Malmer Stenergard who visited Colombia in January and participated in the first high-level dialogue under the bilateral partnership between Sweden and Colombia, also praised the sale:
Sweden and Colombia have very good relations that go back a long way. I look forward to continuing to strengthen and broaden the co-operation between our countries.
The Swedish ministers who sell fighter jets to SAAB, instead of SAAB's own salesmen, are entangling themselves in the arms industry and ending up in a geopolitical loyalty soup because Trump also considers Gustavo Petro to be a drug lord in Central America.
The Atlantic, write on 5 November, 2025:
Last month, Donald Trump called Colombian President Gustavo Petro an ”illegal drug lord”. That gave Colombians cause for concern: the last country whose president Trump accused of running a drug business was Venezuela, and those accusations were used as justification to send a flotilla of warships to lie in wait off its coasts and blow up boats.
Torbjörn Sassersson, geopolitics
Photo: Pål Jonson on X
The sexual abuse and rape of young children are exceptionally heinous crimes that must be stopped. Through its Justice Policy Programme, Ambition Sverige fully supports Dumpen in its tireless work to prevent child sexual abuse.
So far it is not enough, unfortunately.
Young children are rapidly entering the digital internet world through mobile phones and tablets. There are social media with friends, films and music. But there are also dangers in the form of paedophiles.
Today, paedophiles and other offenders can easily seek out and connect with children via social media and after a period of contact, once trust has been built, they can then arrange to meet the contacted child. A meeting that unfortunately too often leads to rape and sexual abuse.
The consequences of abuse are far-reaching and costly to society. Dumpen's investigations show that, in addition to purely physical consequences, abused children suffer various forms of deep trauma and mental distress that in many cases have led to suicide.
The legal system in Sweden currently deals with child sexual abuse reactively, i.e. the police act when the abuse has taken place, in accordance with the law, but by then the damage to the child has already been done.
In addition, the problem of child sexual abuse has been downplayed in the mainstream media, as demonstrated by the repeated questioning of the Dump's hangings of documented paedophiles.
Sexual abuse can be prevented through preventive measures such as criminalising adults seeking to contact children for sexual purposes. Today, the police work in a similar way to identify terrorists before a terrorist act is carried out. The criminalisation of sexual solicitation allows the police to arrest the paedophile before the abuse of the child has taken place.
Recently, the Tidö government announced that the criminalisation of sexual solicitation will be introduced from 1 April 2026. This is very good and necessary, but it is not enough. Paedophilia needs to be discussed much more so that children become more vigilant.
The whole community has a responsibility. Parents, teachers and visiting police officers in schools need to inform children about the risks of anonymous contacts on the internet. And even outside the internet, for example in the world of sports and athletics, children need to be informed about the risk of sexual abuse.
Finally, the general media must also contribute by publishing and discussing more about both the risks and consequences of paedophiles' actions against young children. The discussion is absolutely necessary.
Half the job is almost done - through the criminalisation of sexual contact with young children - but society as a whole must step up its responsibilities. Parents, teachers, police officers in schools and the general media must help raise awareness of the dangers of paedophiles online and in society.
Preventing child sexual abuse is of utmost importance. Supporting Dumping and Ambition Sverige in the effort to give children a safer and better future - inform and discuss paedophilia more!
Signed
Bo Hansson, spokesperson Law and order for Ambition Sverige and
Danny Raucci, Regional Manager for Ambition Sverige Gothenburg
Photo: Patrik Sjöberg and Sara Nilsson and to the right Bo Hansson and Danny Raucci (top) from the Ambition Sverige party | Photos: Dumpen and private
Despite good returns, pensions are only growing marginally. The pension system has been turned into a political tool instead of a security for those who have worked all their lives," says Bo Hansson, deputy party leader of Ambition Sverige.
The Swedish income pension system should provide pensioners with better pensions. Instead, large parts of the pension capital have been used to fill holes in the treasury and to invest in risky, green climate projects. We want to make the income pension more self-owned and raise the basic deduction substantially - to two price base amounts - so that pensioners can get the reward for their work that they should be entitled to.
Pension provision The income pension is the employee's savings for their own pension. Each month, a salary-based sum is set aside and the capital is then managed primarily by the AP funds' portfolio managers - but then politics comes in.
The income pension capital of the AP funds grows with the return on the funds' securities investments, but the actual return is not passed on to pensioners - because the amounts paid out in pensions are determined by a given formula based on an income index and not on the return itself.
During the period 2001-2024, employees' inkomstpension capital grew on average by about 6.3% per year. What was paid out to pensioners increased by an average of 3.1% per year. The difference between the two? It remained in the buffer funds and could be used for policy initiatives.
Ambition Sverige wants to make the national income pension more owner-occupied and increase the basic deduction substantially - then Swedish pensioners will get their rightful reward for their work.
The premium pension, measured on the basis of AP7's Såfa fund, grew by an average of 7.8 per cent per year during the same period. The difference lies in a larger proportion of equities, but also the absence of politically driven investments in utopian green projects such as Northvolt - which cost pensioners nearly SEK 6 billion. The premium pension provides higher earnings, which in turn increases pensions.
Ambition Sverige wild that the self-owned premium pension share in the income pension system should increase to at least half of the 18.5 per cent set aside for pensions each month. Today, 2.5 per cent of the 18.5 per cent is allocated to the premium pension. With half in premium pension, both the pension capital would grow more and the risk of large losses in politically controlled green risk investments would decrease.
As the change to an increased premium pension would probably take a few years to implement, we propose a faster income improvement for pensioners. Looking around at other countries, it appears that Germany, for example, has a significantly higher basic deduction (Grundfreibetrag EUR 12,096 for single people, equivalent to around SEK 132,000) for pensions. Sweden should be closer to this and therefore it is reasonable to increase the basic deduction for pensions.
Raising the basic deduction on pension income to two price base amounts - instead of the current increased SEK 65,300 for low incomes - would increase pension income by almost SEK 1,500 per month after tax. Such an upward adjustment makes a real difference and could be implemented quickly, if the political will exists.
Thus, Ambition Sverige wants to make the national income pension more self-owned and increase the basic deduction substantially - then Swedish pensioners will get their rightful reward for their work.
Bo Hansson, Pensions Policy Spokesperson & Deputy Party Leader Ambition Sverige | Montage of photos from Depositphotos.com and T. Sassersson
Beatrice Karlsson did everything right. She bought out the family forest and planned a sustainable harvest, taking nature into account. She wanted to invest the money in renovating the family farm. Instead, she became the target of a media circus, starring Greta Thunberg. Beatrice was left with shut-down machinery, cancelled plans and a looming financial crisis.
What was the offence? That she wanted to farm her own forest, according to Swedish law.
This is the reality in Sweden today. Activists with no local connection, no knowledge of forestry or ownership can storm in and stop a felling that was already approved.
They chain themselves to the machines and then carry out their own inventory to “detect” traces of red-listed species. And that's enough. A private landowner's activities can be frozen indefinitely, regardless of any prior authorisation or consideration given.
Beatrice Karlsson is not an exception. She is an example of how landowners have become society's scapegoats in the ”fight for the climate/environment”. It is always easier to argue with a single forest owner than to tackle real environmental problems. Standing in front of a forestry machine makes for better pictures than arguing in favour of changing consumption patterns or fighting against environmental toxins.
Greta Thunberg calls her action in Arjeplog a ”last resort”. But what does she and the other international activists know about forestry? She didn't even know that a private person owns the land. Nor did she know that consultations had been held, or that parts of the forest had already been excluded for nature conservation reasons. But it didn't matter. The show must go on, pictures must be taken and headlines must be made.
The most bizarre thing is that activists are allowed to act as if the forest were a lawless land. In reality, it is just the opposite. Forest owners in Sweden have some of the most regulated conditions in the world, with forestry laws, species protection rules, consultation with authorities and samebyar. They have obligations, responsibilities and take all the risks.
But when conflicts with ideologically driven environmental activists arise, it is as if our fine regulations no longer apply. Then it is the activists' agenda that rules.
Now society has to put its foot down, we can't have this in a state governed by the rule of law.
It is not a question of being for or against environmental concerns, but that environmental protection must be done within the law, and not at the expense of individual landowners. The right to ownership and use should take precedence over vocal activists and their hunger for attention.
It is high time to call things by their right name. What Greta Thunberg and her entourage did in Arjeplog was not civil courage, but an intrusion on private property and in a person's life. There must be consequences, even if the alleged intention was to ”save the environment”.
Marina Eriksson, spokesperson for Rural areas, Ambition Sverige and Anders Hedberg, spokesperson for Agriculture, Ambition Sverige | Photo: Ambition Sverige and Marina Eriksson
The Swedish income pension system should provide pensioners with better pensions. Instead, large parts of the pension capital have been used to fill holes in the treasury and to invest in risky, green climate projects.
Ambition Sweden wants to make the income pension more self-financed and raise the basic deduction substantially - to two price base amounts - so that pensioners could get the reward for their work that they should be entitled to.
The pension contribution to the inkomstpension is the employee's savings for their own pension. Each month, a salary-based sum is set aside and the capital is then managed primarily by the AP funds' portfolio managers - but then politics comes in.
The income pension capital of the AP funds is growing with the return on the funds' securities investments, but the actual return does not benefit pensioners - because the amounts paid out in pensions are determined by a given formula based on an income index and not on the return itself.
During the period 2001-2024, the inkomstpension capital of wage earners grew on average by about 6.3 thousand tp3 per year. What was paid out to pensioners increased by an average of 3.11 TPA3 per year. The difference between the two? It stayed in the buffer funds and could be used for policy initiatives.
Premium pension, measured on the basis of AP7's Såfa fund, grew over the same period by an average of +7.8 % per year. The difference is due to a higher share of equities but also the absence of politically driven investments in utopian green projects such as Northvolt - which cost pensioners nearly SEK 6bn. The premium pension provides higher earnings, which in turn increases pensions.
Ambition Sweden wants the self-owned premium pension share in the income pension system to increase to at least half of the 18.5 % set aside for pension each month. Today, 2.5 % of the 18.5 % is allocated to the premium pension. With half in premium pension, both the pension capital would grow more and the risk of large losses in politically controlled green risk investments would decrease.
Since the change to increased premium pension would probably take a few years to implement, Ambition Sweden also wants to implement a faster income improvement for pensioners. When you look around among other countries, it turns out that Germany, for example, has a significantly higher basic deduction (Grundfreibetrag EUR 12,096 for single people, equivalent to about SEK 132,000) for pensions. Sweden should be closer to this and therefore it is reasonable to increase the basic deduction for pensions.
Increasing the basic deduction on pension income to two (2) price base amounts - instead of the current increased SEK 65,300 for low incomes, would increase pension income by almost SEK 1,500/month after tax. Such an upward adjustment makes a real difference and could be implemented quickly, if the political will exists.
Thus, Ambition Sweden wants to make the general income pension more owner-occupied and substantially increase the basic deduction - then Swedish pensioners will get their rightful reward for their work.
Bo Hansson
Pension policy spokesperson and deputy party leader | Montage of photos from Depositphotos.com and NewsVoice
The war in Ukraine is coming to a head, with Russian forces facing less and less resistance and Ukraine struggling to find both soldiers and armour to send to the front. Foreign support has fallen by 41 % over the past year. Independent experts such as Professor John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercourios, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Professor Glenn Diesen and many others agree that Ukraine's army is breaking down and the war is rapidly coming to an end.
JAS to Ukraine
In this critical situation, our Minister of Defence Pål Jonson and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, together with Volodymyr Zelenskyj, step forward to present a ”Letter of Intent” under which SAAB will sell 100-150 JAS 39E to Ukraine. The delivery is planned to start in three years, which raises questions. Do we not need to rejuvenate our own air force when many of the oldest JAS aircraft are now beginning to show their age? Nothing in these far-fetched plans seems to have any ground contact.
Russia's objectives in the war
Since the start of the invasion, Russia has declared the following objectives: to keep Ukraine out of NATO, to demilitarise the country and to ensure that Ukraine's military does not pose a threat to Russia in the future. At the moment, there is no indication that Russia will not have its demands met in the near future. The US, realising that the war is largely lost, has more or less withdrawn and seems to have no plans to supply Ukraine with more weapons. Despite this, Europe's leaders, including Pål Jonson, are apparently convinced that the war will continue for at least another decade, because that is the time SAAB needs to deliver these aircraft starting in early 2029.
SAAB and the government live in a fantasy world
By the time the planned JAS delivery begins, it is highly likely that the war will be over and Russia's demilitarisation demands already implemented. To think that Russia would accept Ukraine acquiring an air force of 100-150 JAS 39Es at that point is nothing more than childish wishful thinking.
Financing plans
How this whole dream project will be financed is even more baffling than the project itself. Pål Jonson stated in Aktuellt that Ukraine would be able to pay for the aircraft when the war is over. But how can a shattered country afford to buy fighter jets for around SEK 120 billion? There is also talk of possible export credits, which means that taxpayers will once again have to foot the bill for a massive state project. Even more serious are plans to use Russian frozen assets in European banks to finance this project, in effect pure theft. The European Commission plans to issue bonds with the Russian assets as collateral, which Sweden hopes to benefit from. So Russia will accept that their money is used to buy weapons to be used against them. Pål Jonson's plans are not only unrealistic, they are morally reprehensible. One day, the Russian money will be demanded back with interest under international law. Already now, the freezing of Russian assets is illegal because no European country is formally at war with Russia. The European Commission is acting as if the EU were a state, while seeming to forget that the EU is made up of many sovereign states with their different views on debt and decisions to declare war.
Marketing Yippee?
Pål Jonson and the government's spectacle, which took place in Linköping on 22 October, increasingly appears to be a publicity stunt commissioned by SAAB and its owners to promote the new JAS 39E Gripen. The new JAS aircraft is an absolutely world-class product and something we can be proud that our small country has managed to produce. But the marketing ploy launched by Pål Jonson and SAAB leaves a bitter aftertaste in that they are exploiting a desperate Mr Zelensky, who represents a country that is falling apart. For the government to engage in such activity is not only misguided; it goes against all norms of a civilised society. This is another example of the offensive cooperation between the state and capital, a so-called ”public-private partnership”, which definitely deserves to be scrutinised by the Constitutional Committee.
Ulf Gabrielsson
Major and former fighter pilot and spokesperson for defence issues, Ambition Sverige (A)
Sweden's defence has been dismantled since the Cold War. What remains largely follows the same thinking as then, both strategically, tactically and materially. While the modern battlefield has developed at breakneck speed, Sweden seems stuck in yesterday's solutions. So warns Göran Reuterdahl, a former intelligence officer and battalion commander in the navy and national defence forces.
Text by spokesperson Göran Reuterdahl, former intelligence officer and battalion commander in the Navy | This article was previously published in NewsVoice and Epoch Times (behind paywall)
The Ukrainian war has shown that classical military doctrine is dead. War today is no longer about large tank formations, company assaults or air dominance by air forces. Drones, UAVs, missiles/rockets and satellite surveillance have revolutionised the nature of combat.
Both Russia and Ukraine now utilise small, mobile units supported by drone technology. An artillery system, a tank or a gathering of soldiers is detected and engaged almost immediately, regardless of the weather or time of day. Traditional units are simply too vulnerable.
This does not just mean a technological shift, it requires a total re-think of how we think, organise and train our forces. Continuous innovation, tactical adaptability and rapid transfer of experience must become the norm.
Sweden's defence currently consists of two mechanised brigades. By comparison, at the end of the Cold War in 1991, Sweden had 26 brigades. Today's 10,000 soldiers are barely enough to defend half of Gotland.
The Swedish Armed Forces must be restructured from the ground up.
Our equipment is also outdated. The 122 (Leopard) tank, the Archer artillery and other Western systems sent to Ukraine have largely proved ineffective or outright unsuitable on the modern battlefield. The German armoured officer who compared the Leopard 2 in Der Spiegel to something better suited to a parade than to combat was painfully honest.
At the same time, Sweden has invested in the Patriot system, four batteries of around 100 missiles. These are not adapted to meet the kind of massive missile and drone attacks we are now seeing in Ukraine (and Israel), where Russia at times sends up to 700 projectiles per day.
For each incoming threat, 2-4 Patriot missiles are required, an unreasonable ratio both technically and economically. A missile equivalent to Shahed (about 50 kg payload) costs about USD 20 000, while a Patriot missile costs up to USD 4 million. Moreover, Patriot was originally developed to counter aeroplanes, and the system has great difficulty in dealing with missiles that are hypersonic.
The Swedish Armed Forces must be restructured from the ground up:
- Focus on UAVs/drones, missiles (including hypersonic), electronic warfare and information superiority.
- New tactics with small, mobile and decentralised units.
- A highly developed intelligence service with the right skills.
- A defence industry that values innovation over administration.
- An officer corps that promotes entrepreneurship and innovation, not just tradition.
We live in a new era, but with a defence force and security policy thinking from another time. It is high time we asked the hard questions, questioned our assumptions and renewed Sweden's security policy from the ground up, with a mandate from the people.
Text: Göran Reuterdahl, former intelligence officer and battalion commander in the Navy, spokesperson for the Ambition Sverige party