A Nordic army - Nordic Battle Group offers model for regional force

The potential for building a centralised pan-Nordic Army could gain ground as regional governments prepare to cut defence budgets and military chiefs push for collaboration in large-scale equipment procurements.

The governments of Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway have all directed their respective militaries to implement spending cuts and create smaller, more mobile and efficient armed forces with a reduced territorial defence capability, but a greater capacity to engage in international military operations.

Military chiefs in Norway, Sweden and Finland have called for closer defence collaboration, and some, in a view increasingly shared within defence industry circles, see the Nordic Battle Group (NBG) as the possible model for a Nordic Army.

“Sweden is talking about having closer defence cooperation with Norway,” said Gen. Sverre Diesen, the head of Norway’s defence forces. “We would not oppose enlarged talks with Finland or Denmark, but right now the focus is on achieving a cross-border agreement with Sweden. We believe that closer military collaboration will become more important in the future and will play a role in both lowering defence operating costs, and helping the military to afford better equipment.”

Finland is clearly interested in joining the Swedish-Norwegian defence loop.

“Weapons costs are rising 8 percent a year, and Finland is ready to look at other options, including closer cooperation with Sweden and Norway regarding equipment purchases,” Finnish defence chief Adm. Juhani Kaskeala said.

Diesen, Kaskeala and Gen. Håkan Syren, Sweden’s supreme commander, have stopped short of proposing the creation of common armed forces units or a Nordic Army.

However, Diesen and Syren have indicated that the ongoing cooperation talks have covered the potential advantages of synchronizing their primary procurement programs to secure interoperability of equipment. In addition, the two nations are looking at sharing air and naval operations and engaging in joint exercises.

“The shrinking nature of defence budgets in all the Nordic states will hurt the defence industry regionally,” an official at Stockholm-based Saab said. “Industry sees a closer degree of cross-border cooperation as potentially promising for new orders. This commonality of equipment platform would give industry a basis for hope at a time of widespread defence budget cuts. For the Nordic countries, it would mean they could assess the most modern defence systems while sharing the cost.”

The Saab official described the prospects for the creation of a Nordic Army as “desirable but unlikely in the short term.

“Ten years ago, the notion that the Nordic countries could be prepared to merge armed forces units, share assets or cooperate in new weapons purchases would have been regarded as fanciful,” the Saab official said. “Yet this is precisely what is happening now. The idea of a Nordic Army may seem like a wild and whimsical notion at this moment in time, but three years from now, it may become a very real possibility.”

Saab is one of the leading industrial suppliers to the NBG. The group is developing the Skeidar V-150’s fixed-wing UAV design and hopes to have an operational version available to the NBG by 2011. Saab is also supplying a primary communications network, with integral command-and-control functions, to the NBG’s helicopter support unit.

“Virtually every major Nordic defence company is benefiting in spinoff contracts from the NBG, from Saab, to Patria in Finland, to Terma in Denmark, to smaller defense technology companies like SWE-DISH and software house Sectra,” the Saab official said. “Even Konigsberg has been contracted to supply a Ground Based Air Defence (GBAD) Operation Center to NBG. It is having a real impact across the region.”

The future prospects for closer cross-border cooperation between the defence forces of Norway and Sweden were outlined in a joint positional statement delivered by Diesen and Syren when the two defence heads met to discuss the issue in August.

“It is important that Norway and Sweden can cooperate, especially in the area of purchasing military equipment. Potential areas for future collaboration may include joint purchasing of submarines, battlefield tanks and other core land forces military equipment,” Syren said.

Diesen observed that cooperation between the Swedish and Norwegian armed forces intensified when both states agreed to establish, along with Finland and Estonia, the European Union-aligned NBG in 2004. Ireland has since joined the NBG.

Sweden is the Framework Nation of the NBG, which comprises a light mechanized infantry battalion of about 1,500 soldiers as its core unit. The NBG is one of 18 European Union battle groups and consists of 2,700 soldiers, with Sweden contributing 2,200 troops.

The NBG, which is set to be deployment-ready from Jan. 1, uses a modular organization with a mechanized infantry battalion at its core structured around the Swedish Army’s Skaraborgs Regiment.

“The NBG’s support and logistics functions are incorporated into the battle group, and a framework ex¬ists for the integration of additional resources such as artillery, air defence, logistical, special forces, intelligence, even naval support. The NBG may just be a battle group, but it presents a seriously good model for a pan-Nordic Army,” a Stockholm-based defence analyst said.

A future pan-Nordic Army structure could utilize the core strengths of each of the four participating armed forces, with Sweden providing the hub of the unit’s manpower and battlefield capacity, the analyst said.

“Sweden could bring the most modern battlefield systems, communications equipment and an infantry backbone,” the analyst said. “That is Sweden’s strength. Norway’s and Denmark’s strengths are its engineering and logistics units as well as special forces. Finland can bring a lot to the table, including very sophisticated network-enabled defence technologies, battlefield command and data transfer systems, mortar, mine clearing and CBRN units.”

Although the NBG has created an ideal platform from which to launch a pan-Nordic Army, it remains to be seen if the close ties that have traditionally served as a faithful and robust bonding agent between the Nordic states are strong enough to overcome what would inevitably be, even for these Northern European states, a gigantic step forward in cross-border collaboration.

Source: G. O'Dwyer - DefenseNews.com

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