![]() Sea Surveillance Co-operation Baltic Sea (SUBCAS) comprises most of the nations bordering the Baltic (as well as the UK’s Royal Navy) and is focused on the provision of general maritime data boosting situational awareness leading and leading to a safer and more secure maritime area for all users. “My main mission is to build the threshold effect of the armed forces”, said RADM Nykvist, who is currently helping to oversee a number of international partnerships involving the Swedish Navy. Although the armed forces are returning to conscription the Navy will not largely participate in this next year (except for a few special positions). Manning has been reduced to around 40 personnel on corvettes and 35 on submarines, virtually all professionals, with the result that “our personnel take a lot of responsibility”. The surface and subsurface navy is mainly structured around two corvette naval warfare flotillas, a submarine flotilla and a mine clearance squadron. The main tasks that are regularly practised include maritime surveillance and reconnaissance to ensure territorial integrity, the protection and sustainment of civilian maritime shipping, and finally coastal defence operations “if someone is attacking us”. “We have high availability in the Navy, we are professional and we are ‘out there’ to show how we operate”, confirmed RADM Nykvist. The Swedish defence stance is to create a ‘threshold effect’ which balances credible military capability, with good force availability and international cooperation. Minesweeping is a regular task undertaken by many nations in the region. In addition to protecting sovereign waters, the Swedish Navy addresses economic factors such as pollution and over-fishing, together with a non-inconsiderable threat from mines, of which there are still around 50,000 in the waters that remain from the wars of the late 19th Century through to the two World Wars. The Baltic is characterised by being very shallow, with an average depth of around 65m (to a maximum of 465m), with a rocky seabed on the western side going to a more sandy bottom towards the mainland European coast making it challenging for submarine operations. ![]() He said that Russian naval activity had increased in the small Baltic Sea area that witnesses between 2,000-4,000 maritime vessels in the region at any one time. Petersburg where that country brings in around ’40 percent” of its imports. “We see more importance in the region but also uncertainly”, said RADM Nykvist, largely indicating the Russian presence from Kaliningrad and St. The exercise also provided an opportunity to test the initial operational capability (IOC) of the new Swedish-Finnish Naval Task Group. This year was particularly busy as it was managed by the Swedish Navy and involved 50 ships from a wide variety of nations and included the patrol ship HSwMS Carlskrona, as well as two Visby Class stealth-corvettes, HSwMS Karlstad and HSwMS H ärn ösand. NOCO is a multinational exercise for NATO, Partnership for Peace and EU countries, which has been conducted annually since 2007 in the Baltic region. These were largely centred around two exercises – a mainly national exercise bolstered by US Marines as well as international Special Operations Forces (SOF) called Exercise Aurora 2017 which focused on the Island of Gotland and territory north of Stockholm, and Exercise Northern Coasts (NOCO) 2017. Looking back to September, he said that he could not recall a time when there were more warships in the Baltic Sea. ![]() “The Gotland was cut in two we put 20 new systems identical to the A-26 into it thus mitigating the risks to the A-26,” said Mr. RADM Nykvist is an ex-submariner with 15 years “spent below the surface” and was in command of the Swedish attack submarine HSwMS Gotland when it began a one year bilateral training exercise with US Navy anti-submarine warfare forces in June 2005.
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