A Flexible and Resilient Nordic Air Base Concept, stratagem.no

Robin Häggblom, Finnish defence blogger, Anders Persson, Brigader General and Per Erik Solli, Seniorrådgiver ved Nord universitet og militærrådgiver ved NUPI

[…] Regarding dispersal the Finnish Air Force did not abandon the concept after the end of the Cold War. In the current geopolitical and military situation Finland has a robust and resilient approach to passive air defence. The Finnish basing system is built around a hub-and-spokes system with aircraft, in times of crisis, dispersing to secondary bases that include both civilian airports and road bases. To be able to support these deployments, road convoys with dedicated trucks bring the ground equipment needed, including fuel, munitions, spares, and, in the case of road bases, mobile control towers. To ensure enough personnel to maintain this spread-out organization and to protect these numerous smaller bases, the Finnish Air Force relies heavily on conscripts to beef up both the ground crews as well as to set up wartime base protection units which can deploy with the road convoys to protect the satellite bases. […]

The purpose with the Swedish Air Force basing concept is to generate a higher number of effective sorties than the enemy. The key attributes in the Swedish base operations concept are movement and dispersion. The system is more or less the same as in Finland even though it has been greatly reduced after the Cold War where it had more than 100 different possible runways spread around the country. The ultimate goal in the Swedish approach is to remain as mobile as possible, temporarily open up airfields and then move on to the next base. Therefore, always operate inside the enemy’s decision-making loop, challenge their tactical intelligence and degrade the opponent’s situational awareness. Sweden has a few mountain hangars to protect the aircraft before they disperse to the bases in wartime. The current Swedish Air Force lacks a GBAD system to complement dispersal. Läs artikel