Elisabeth Braw is a senior associate fellow at the European Leadership Network, an adviser at Gallos Technologies and a regular columnist for POLITICO.
The Baltic Sea may soon become what devotees of the North Atlantic Alliance label a “NATO lake.” But this small ocean is far from peaceful.
Indeed, as the harm recently caused to its undersea infrastructure demonstrates, Baltic waters are growing more dangerous by the week, yet no NATO member country has a major navy there. That means Sweden’s famed navy, which has a proud five-century history, needs to expand in order to better protect Swedish interests and those of the alliance.
The Swedish Navy has a long tradition of skillfully defending its country in the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia. But while it still has skilled sailors and submariners, today the Swedish Navy is hopelessly undersized in waters where it’s likely to encounter infrastructure saboteurs and hostile operators harassing merchant shipping. Indeed, the Swedish Navy also has to defend Sweden against a rapidly growing Russian Navy, which will receive 30 new combat ships this year alone.
Sweden is similarly making serious investments in defense too. For the past decade or so, previous governments made incremental additions to its defense budget, and this September, the current government added a whopping 28 percent. The majority of these new funds, alas, has gone to the army and the air force.
Thus, at the moment, the Swedish Navy has a fleet of seven corvettes (including five in what’s known as the Visby class), two patrol vessels, half a dozen minesweepers and four submarines. The oldest of these naval warhorses is approaching 40 years of age; the youngest is almost 20.
And though the navy has been promised another four surface combat vessels and four tugboats, none has yet been delivered, though it received a signals intelligence ship last month. “The Swedish surface navy basically only has the Visby class, which is designed and fitted to operate inside the Baltic Sea under a land-based air defense umbrella,” said retired Rear Admiral Nils Christian Wang, a former chief of the Danish Navy.
“Joining NATO, the Swedish Navy really needs to boost its air defense capability and acquire surface capability that will allow it to also operate outside the Baltic Sea. As a NATO country, Sweden will be at the front line in the Baltic Sea and in the rear off the [Swedish] west coast,” he said.
Indeed, when Sweden does finally join NATO, its navy will face additional responsibilities because none of the other Baltic Sea countries in the alliance have a particularly sizeable navy. “The Swedish Navy has always been seen as very competent, but it has also been very small because as a non-aligned country, Sweden didn’t need a blue-water navy [one capable of operating across open oceans],” said Jim Townsend, a veteran Pentagon official who most recently served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy.
“Sweden may not need a blue-water navy now either, but it needs to play a role in the Baltic Sea — especially since the German and Polish navies are very small, and so is the Danish Navy. Politicians haven’t been paying much attention to their navies, and that has been the problem. Poland has bought a lot of equipment, but it hasn’t been focusing on the Baltic Sea,” he added.
The German Navy, which is NATO’s largest in the Baltic Sea, currently possesses just six corvettes, 12 frigates (one size larger than corvettes) and six submarines, along with various support vessels — hardly a fleet that would deter Russia or its increasingly close friend China.
This doesn’t mean the Swedish Navy will be asked to look after the Baltic Sea on its own once Sweden finally joins NATO, but the Baltic Sea is where Sweden is particularly well positioned to make a contribution to the alliance. “At some point, the NATO planners will go to Sweden and lay out what they need,” Townsend said. “Sweden has its own needs, but NATO will also have requirements.” Last month, for example, the Joint Expeditionary Force — a grouping composed of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the Nordic and Baltic nations — agreed to have some 20 vessels patrol the Baltic Sea and parts of the North Atlantic.
And NATO’s requirements may well include the escort of merchant vessels. The Baltic Sea and the North Sea are home to busy shipping lanes, and merchant vessels are becoming targets for geopolitically motivated attacks. In recent months, China has demonstrated its willingness to disrupt shipping in the Taiwan Strait, and Iran has harassed so many merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz that the United States felt compelled to dispatch a 3,000-strong force of sailors and Marines there in August. Even the Yemeni Houthis have taken to attacking merchant vessels in the Red Sea.
Russia is thus likely to conclude that the harassment of merchant vessels gets results — which means the Swedish Navy will need to lead other Baltic Sea and North Sea navies in providing such strong protection that the Kremlin fails.
Moreover, once inside NATO, Sweden will be part of an alliance with naval responsibilities far beyond the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia. “As a NATO nation, Sweden also has to be able to operate elsewhere,” said retired Vice Admiral Andrew Lewis, who until 2021 commanded the U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet and NATO’s Joint Force Command Norfolk.
“Joining NATO doesn’t mean that NATO will come to Sweden’s rescue in the Baltic Sea. Sweden still has to look after its interests there, and that’s where [it] has the most to contribute to the alliance,” he explained. And those desired contributions also include the increasingly urgent protection of sea-based infrastructure.
The allied expectations on the Swedish Navy are so pronounced because it’s seen as a service that is capable of taking on more responsibility — and also because its diesel-powered submarines are much better suited to the Nordic-Baltic region’s waters than the larger, nuclear-powered submarines operated by the U.S. and Britain. Indeed, Lewis added, Swedish submarines will be needed for alliance duties beyond the waters immediately surrounding the country: “We need more diesel-powered submarines not just in the Baltic Sea but in other waters like the Mediterranean. What NATO needs from Sweden is some blue-water capability.”
It’s highly unlikely the Swedish Navy will receive promises of blue-water capability in its next defense budget. But allocations for a few corvettes and submarines wouldn’t just be the right thing for Sweden in the long run, it would also demonstrate that it’s a country NATO allies can depend on. Such competent, serious nations are prized in NATO headquarters and national capitals alike.