The Swedish government has decided to form a new regiment on Gotland. From the beginning the regiment will count 350 soldiers but that number is expected to grow successively, reports svt.se. The headquarters for the new regiment will be in Visby. This is the first establishment of a new regiment in Sweden since World War […]
Archives for December 2017
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Estonia receives Javelin anti-tank missiles
Estonia has received the first delivery of Javelin Block 1 missiles. Javelin is a man-portable fire-and-forget anti-tank missile that is produced by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. That announces the Estonian Ministry of Defense. The missiles will replace the old MILAN system in both the army and the voluntary Estonian Defense League. Last year Estonia received […]
Finland will buy large corvettes
Finnish chief of defense general Jarmo Lindberg to Defense News: [In] the defense report that was finalized in June last year, the government stated that they are willing to fund strategic procurement programs first to the Navy, where six ships are going away, and they’re going to be replaced by four multipurpose corvettes of about […]
Latvia more vulnerable to disinformation than other Baltic States
Latvia scores lower than the other Baltic States on the Disinformation Resilience Index (via icds.ee): Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania: who is better equipped to counter disinformation? Estonia developed noticeably higher quality of systemic responses to disinformation campaigns than the other Baltic States. Lithuanians are much less exposed to Russian media environment as Russian-speaking part of […]
Poland’s love-hate relationship with the EU
Tuula Koponen has a very interesting account of Poland’s troubled relationship with the European Union in Diplomaatia.ee. It seems like a love-hate relationship where Poland is in opposition to almost everything that the EU stands for, yet the EU is extremely popular among Poles with an 88 percent approval rating. Kaczyński’s policy in Poland is […]
Ocean capable corvettes could be affordable force enablers
Yesterday the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Soobrazitelnyy, a corvette from the Baltic Fleet, had passed through the Suez Canal from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean. This was the latest in a series of press releases covering the journey of two Steregushchiy class corvettes and an auxiliary vessel from the Baltic Fleet. The […]
Why don’t Russians revolt?
Aimar Ventsel asks the reasonable question Why Don’t Russians Revolt? on Diplomaatia.ee. He gives a good account of the deteriorating socio-economic situation in Russia and some interesting explanations why this does not lead to a revolt, including: Vladimir Putin has a magnificent image as a benevolent leader. The notion is that the president is not […]
Finns like NATO less and Russia more compared to last year
Every year the Finnish Advisory Board of Defence Information conducts a survey of the public opinion on defense related issues. Pauli Järvenpää from ICDS has found a few interesting results: [M]ore and more Finns seem to believe in common defense through the country’s EU membership. This year, as many as 70 per cent of those […]
Why does Russia lie about sizes of military exercises?
Lee Litzenberger in War On The Rocks on the possible reasons for Russia to avoid foreign observers at military exercises: Russia pursues this destabilizing behavior, possibly out of a belief that its interests are served by being provocative. There may be several reasons for this. First, Russia may believe that the lack of transparency keeps […]
US approves sales of Guidable MLRS and air-to-air missiles to Poland
The American Defense Security Cooperation Agency has approved the sale of the HIMARS rocket system to Poland from Lockheed Martin. This will give Poland a potent ground-to-ground missile system capable of hitting targets at ranges up to 300 kilometers. Poland intends to equip three divisions with the high-precision missiles which will be installed on Polish […]