At home in the forests: Swedes are building NATO’s future flagship tank

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Was standing: March 10, 2024, 5:09 a.m

From: Karsten Hinzmann

PressSplit

The Swedish version of the Leopard is the best-protected NATO tank. Now he is being pimped up to take away Putin’s interest in Scandinavia.

Stockholm – Sweden’s last large-scale military expedition spanned just around 1,300 meters; Then the pride of the Swedish military sank on its maiden voyage in the harbor of their capital, Stockholm. The magazine yacht describes the warship Vasa as the greatest military misconstruction of modern times. The country is now the 32nd and youngest member of NATO – and is strengthening the military alliance with possibly the most advanced land warfare device that Vladimir Putin’s troops would have to deal with in an emergency: the Stridsvagn 122 – an upgraded Leopard 2A5 ; which is expected to become even more threatening from 2028 onwards.

At the time of Vasa, Finland was part of Sweden; Estonia and most of what is now Latvia were in Swedish hands. The king and client Gustav II Adolf of Sweden saw not only Russia and Denmark, which had long been rivals for supremacy, as enemies. On July 6, 1630, Sweden entered the Thirty Years’ War – the last major military conflict among the Scandinavians besides the Swedish-Norwegian battles from 1814. Now, however, they find themselves drawn back into a simmering multi-national conflict and are attacking it armed to the teeth.

The Stridsvagn 122 is an individualized Leopard 2A5 for Swedish conditions – its terrain is forests and urban environments, but it has received stronger overall armor at the front as well as protection against cluster bombs – bomblets – on the turret roof, as well as individualized chain blinds and a new smoke system . This passive reinforcement is intended to minimize its vulnerability to attacks by infantry with portable anti-tank weapons in terrain with dense vegetation or buildings. The memories of the digital fire control computer were expanded to accommodate several types of ammunition and the engine cooling system was made more resistant to the suction of fuel charges.

Camouflage, deceive, win: The Stridsvagn remains invisible to Putin’s troops

Using aprons and our own camouflage net technology, its heat signature is to be blurred and the contours are to be dissolved as much as possible. The Swedish Leopard may derive its combat value from this: Whoever camouflages themselves better will win the battle, Major General Karl Engelbrektson emphasized to the magazine European Security & Technology. The commander of the Swedish army is counting on being able to act quickly while the enemy is still collecting information and is speculating on the technology from Saab, the manufacturer of the multispectral Barracuda camouflage solutions.

Thanks to developments in sensor-based signal and signature recognition, measures aimed at purely optical camouflage are now technically outdated. Today we tend to talk about signature reduction. The aim is not to be invisible, but rather to make it more difficult for the enemy to find them – this ranges from the contours of the vehicles to their heat radiation and even their smell. Saab Barracuda’s Mobile Camouflage System (MCS) has been widely used in the Bundeswehr since 1996 Soldier & Technology reported. In the Bundeswehr, the MCS is referred to as the Multispectral Mobile Camouflage Set (MMT) and has been introduced for the Leopard 2 main battle tank, the self-propelled howitzer 2000, the Marder infantry fighting vehicle, the GTK Boxer, the Bergepanzer 3 Büffel, Wolf, Fennek and is in development for other vehicles.

With their 120 main battle tanks, the Swedes expect to constantly have to act from a numerically inferior situation and attach great importance to their expanded fire control system – they hope that this will give them a decisive hit with the first shot as well as a speed advantage when attacking several different targets in a row. What makes Sweden important for NATO is not just the number of soldiers, but above all their training and equipment. “In contrast to accessions in recent years, Finland and Sweden are two states with modern weapons. “They could make a massive contribution to the security of NATO states from day one,” said political scientist Carlo Masala last year t online.

Invest, recruit, modernize: Sweden is planning to deploy 50,000 soldiers

Sweden wants to reach NATO’s target of two percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) for defense spending this year, according to the think tank Atlantic Council analyzed. To this end, the Swedish government announced in 2023 that the defense budget this year will be increased by 28 percent or 2.28 billion euros to ten billion euros. This is part of a broader Swedish effort to increase the defense budget to rebuild defense capabilities after decades of austerity. However, since the allies at the NATO summit in Vilnius defined the target of two percent of GDP as a lower limit and not an upper limit, the government in Stockholm has maneuvered itself into an obligation to deliver.

Sweden’s active-duty armed forces have declined from 180,000 soldiers at the end of the Cold War to 14,700 professional soldiers and 11,400 reserve soldiers in 2022. Since compulsory military service was reintroduced in 2017 to 2018, the number of conscripts has gradually grown to around 6,000 women and men, and this is expected to increase to 10,000 recruits per year between 2030 and 2035. An army of up to 50,000 soldiers is planned.

Past, present, future: Sweden’s army will continue to rely on its Leopard

The Scandinavians therefore also want to invest in their tank fleet, as the Swedish procurement office has now announced: Sweden has decided to invest around 300 million euros in the modernization of 44 of its Stridsvagn 122 main battle tanks because of the war in Ukraine. To carry out the project, Sweden signed a contract with the German company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann. This marks the start of the most extensive modernization of the Panzer 122 since the tanks were purchased in the early 2000s in order to adapt the vehicles to the requirements of the coming decade.

After modernization, the combat vehicles will receive the designation Stridsvagn 123A. For example, the upgrade includes replacing virtually all electronic components in the mount to ensure compatibility with other armed forces’ more modern Leopard 2 tanks. The combat vehicles will be equipped with the L55 cannon, which allows the use of programmable ammunition. They also get a new rifle scope, thermal imaging cameras and a tracked platform.

Group up, roll up, ram: the tank receives a new task in battle

Experts agree that the Stridsvagen will have its job. The tank will still have to tailor its new role – the war will become more asymmetrical, but will also remain vital in its classic form, as Ralf Raths explains – the historian is director of the German Tank Museum in Munster: “The time of tank battles and operational breakthroughs are over. But given the use of tanks in Ukraine or Syria, it quickly becomes clear that tanks are instead returning to their original role: they are increasingly being used in small numbers and in a tactical context: as battering rams in small battles, as anchor points for the infantry or as artillery deployment over long distances in direct fire,” he told the World.

The Stridsvagn 123A will then probably be the most modern and strongest tank fleet in the Western defense alliance and will start their maiden voyage back to Sweden as future NATO flagships in 2028 – over a longer route than the Vasa.