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[PEMM]

Swedish Social Democrats would increase the number of conscripts to 20 000 per year and ask for help from Finland for training.

There is a slight issue with the idea that Finnish officers would be training Swedish units. Namely, that there is no extra personnel. Rather there were manpower cuts to hired personnel in the 2010's. Which also causes issues in training larger amounts of Finnish reservists annually. Maybe they could bring Swedes to be trained in Finnish units, but you can't really just expect trainers to handle more and more troops... Swedish speaking Finnish officers also are a small number.

The Swedish government has decided to increase the number of conscripts from 8,000 to 12,000 by 2032. However, the goal has been postponed by two years because the Swedish Armed Forces consider it unrealistic.

The opposition party, the Social Democrats, would increase the number of conscripts even more than decided, reports the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. It proposes training 20,000 conscripts annually.

The Social Democrats propose transferring the academic part of officer training so that officers can train new conscripts more quickly. The party has also turned its attention to Finland.

– Swedish-speaking officers from Finland could help us train our troops. I believe that it is also in Finland's interest that Sweden can train more conscripts in the short term, former Minister of Defense, Social Democrats' defense policy representative Peter Hultqvist says in Dagens Nyheter.

The party also proposes increasing the number of refresher exercises and brigades.

Ruotsin sosiaalidemokraatit lisäisivät varusmiesten määrää ja pyytäisivät apua Suomesta

Sosiaalidemokraattien Peter Hultqvist ehdottaa, että suomenruotsalaiset upseerit voisivat kouluttaa ruotsalaisia varusmiehiä.

yle.fi

 

[PEMM]

Europe is seriously lacking behind Russia in production of missiles. Missile expert from University of Oslo calls this a near criminal neglect by European leaders.

Over the past weeks, I have written extensively about European missile production, focusing in particular on the shortcomings of European missile industrial output. In my view, this is one of the primary areas of rearmament — if not the main area — where European decisionmakers have failed to take the necessary steps.

Ukrainian intelligence estimates that Russia is producing roughly 1,200 land-attack cruise missiles per year, 400 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, 6,000 Shahed long-range drones, and plans to add an additional 10,000 decoy drones annually to help saturate Ukrainian (and European) air and missile defenses.

Competing with Russia in the missile domain therefore requires deep missile arsenals. The fact that Europe’s combined land-attack cruise missile production barely reaches 100 units per year, while ballistic missile production stands at zero, amounts — in my view — to a case of near-criminal neglect.

Russia is Preparing for the Next Missile War — Are We?

Some final words on Europe's missile conundrum

missilematters.substack.com

 

[skaw]

Europe still like turning from left to right after the alarm went off for the first time.