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Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark Joint Air Defence Intent

I read somewhere that that org may ask US and Canada for help, either setting up or contributing.

OUTCAN to their HQ in Stockholm/Oslo/Copenhagen/Helsinki, anyone?

Excuse Me Reaction GIF by Laff
 
Finland brings more than a few extra Jets to the fight.

Western Europe’s strongest artillery and a huge reserve army: What Finland brings to Nato​

With defence a priority ever since the First Finnish-Soviet War, its membership will strengthen the Alliance’s Baltic Sea presence

ByMatthew Day5 April 2023 • 5:17pm


Finland formally became the 31st member of Nato this week, ditching decades of non-alignment to join the military alliance in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The country has spent decades building and maintaining a fighting force to guard its 832 mile frontier with Russia and deter any invasion.
With hundreds of tanks, dozens of aircraft and the ability to call on large numbers of reservists, the Finnish military has long been one of the most powerful in Europe and is now one of the most capable in Nato.

Every male Finnish citizen aged between 18 and 60 is liable for a call-up

The legacy of the Winter War still casts a shadow over Finland.
The conflict, also known as the First Finnish-Soviet War, saw Finland’s armed forces inflict monumental casualties on a vast invading Red Army during the bitter winter months of 1939/40. The war, which resulted in territorial losses for Finland, taught the Finns the need for an army capable of deterring Russia from ever invading again.

Attack Finland, the logic goes, and its armed forces will, just like they did in the Winter War, savage your army.

This is why Finland has built its armed forces on defence. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the country did not, as so many others did, pivot to establishing a small mobile army suited for expeditionary warfare. It preferred to maintain a large defensively orientated force.

“Finland’s defence policy has been very conservative
in the sense that unlike other European states, it has never tried to trim its forces so they can undertake international crisis management operations,” said Tuomas Iso-Markku, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. “The main focus has always been on defending Finland. So in that sense, it’s definitely true that Finland is quite different from most European states.”

One difference is that it kept conscription. Under the Finnish constitution, every male citizen aged between 18 and 60 is liable for call-up, and each year some 22,000 men join the army. This means that Finland’s tiny standing army of around 19,000 can quickly grow to 280,000, while thousands more could also be mobilised in a time of national crisis.

Conscription also remains popular in Finland
; built upon a broad societal understanding of the need to maintain national defence. A poll from December 2021, for example, revealed that 84 per cent of Finns were willing to defend their country to the best of their abilities.





From CIA World Fact Book


(Edit: Population of Finland in 2021 - 5.541 Million (Population of BC - 5.071 Million)

Age structure

0-14 years: 16.25% (male 466,311/female 446,015)

15-64 years: 60.5% (male 1,726,110/female 1,670,981)

65 years and over: 23.25% (2023 est.) (male 575,259/female 729,895)


Military service age and obligation

at age 18, all Finnish men are obligated to serve 5.5-12 months of service within a branch of the military or the Border Guard (length of service depends on the type of duty), and women 18-29 may volunteer for service; there is also an option to perform non-military service which lasts for 8.5 or 11.5 months; after completing their initial conscript obligation, individuals enter the reserves and remain eligible for mobilization until the age of 50 for rank-and-file and 60 for non-commissioned and commissioned officers (2023)

note 1: the military trains approximately 21,000 (20,000 Army) conscripts each year; as of 2019, women made up about 4% of the military's full-time personnel

note 2: Finland has had conscription since 1951)

FI_popgraph2022.jpg


With a population of 150,000 men in the 15 to 19 age bracket and a conscription requirement of 22,000 annually that means that roughly 2 out of 3 high school boys will receive military training of some sort.

In line with this defensive posture, Finland has invested heavily in big guns, giving it one of the strongest artillery forces in Europe. It now has some 1,500 weapons, including 700 howitzers and cannons and 100 heavy and light rocket launchers.

It also boasts a tank force of around 650 armoured vehicles, which includes 200 German-made Leopard 2 main battle tanks, putting it on a par with any army in Europe, including Britain.


Reacting to the Ukraine war, Finland has boosted its defence budget. This year the country is due to spend 1.9 per cent of its GDP on defence, while two years ago it spent 1.3 per cent. The increased spending has allowed it to purchase F-35 fighter aircraft from the US, to complement the country’s already bristling, and high-tech, air defences.
The Finnish Air Force will help defend Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Encompassing a vulnerable and narrow peninsula of Nato territory bordered to the west, for the most part, by Russia or its subservient ally Belarus, the three Baltic states have long been a source of worry for Nato planners.
But Finnish membership will help ease these concerns. The Alliance’s reach now extends north and east of the Baltic states, changing the security landscape of eastern Europe.

Finnish membership also enhances Nato’s presence in the Baltic Sea, and, crucially, now means the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, which is just 43 miles across, is dominated by Alliance states, with Estonia to the south and Finland to the north.

 
I don't know if this has been posted elsewhere but it seems that Denmark has decided to go with the "Skyranger Turret"


The Skyranger turret is equipped with a powerful 30mm automatic cannon and anti-aircraft missiles, of a type that will be decided shortly.

The Danish Skyranger turrets will be mounted on the Army’s Piranha 5 armored personnel carriers, as this vehicle is standard in the Army and meets requirements for mobility and protection.

The overall air defense system will also include search radars, fire control centers and communication systems. The Danish company Terma is responsible for integrating all the mentioned elements into an integrated air defense system and delivering this to the Army.

The exact design of the Danish turrets has not yet been determined, which is why they may differ from existing models

From a procurement standpoint this is kind of interesting. To my mind it shares a projecting philosophy with the Danish Navy's Stanflex, Flyvefiske and Absolon/Huitfeldt projects.

They are explicitly NOT resolving all the issues before committing to Courses of Action. Instead they are doing something NOW that can be modified to suit LATER.

They have a platform Flyvefisken and Diana Patrol Boats, Rasmussen OPV, Absalon or Huitfeldt for the Navy and Piranha V (LAV) for the Army.

Into those platforms they can drop modular armaments.

For the Navy the modules are the Stanflex Modules.

For the Army they are looking at systems they can drop into the basic LAV,

such as the ESLAIT A3MS (Advanced Automated Autonomous Mortar System)

or drop onto the LAV

such as the Rheinmetall Skyranger.

The Danes bought 309 Piranha V LAVs in 2015, 8 years ago and have been taking delivery at a steady considered pace ever since.
With that decision behind them, and having secured a supply of armoured mobility they then started working on cargo.
The basic unit could function as a TCV carrying troops and cargo.
It could carry stretchers.

It could be upgraded with an electrical system with a generator and batteries.
That would permit the stretcher carrying vehicle to be upgraded to an ambulance.
It would also permit the carriage of radios and computers - necessary for all vehicles but would enable C2 vehicles and Sensor vehicles and powered weapons systems.

After that everything else is up for grabs.
Witness the Mortars and the SkyRangers.

With the decision made about the power supply and the comms buses, then the search for suitable modules became simpler. The decisions made restrict the future decisions. Your choices become more limited and hence simpler. You have to buy what is available and what works.

Once that is done you are ready to start operations, accepting the limitations resulting from your decisions. You act now.

The secret is in leaving space in your designs to handle a broad range of current an future solutions. Surplus usable volume, physical space. Surplus batter capacity will take up a chunk of the available physical space as will surplus fuel storage capacity for longer ranges and heavier loads. Surplus generator capacity to power more systems with heavier demands. Surplus engine capacity to move the vehicle regardless of the terrain and loads. Surplus internal comms capacity in your buses. Surplus PLC capacity to control the whole beastly mix. And modular PLC construction to shift your I/O and comms demands.

And move fast in your decision making. Or as Musk reminds us - "Fail fast".


This little video describes the development of a new drone for the RAF, apologies to @dimsum but it seems to be common usage these days,


The base platform was designed to carry courier packages in the Comoros Islands to a range of 60 km. An all weather electric copter.

"We decided to make the Jackal on 29th of December, 2021 and she first flew early March of the following year. 6 weeks in total from deciding to make the aircraft and having its first flight." 6 weeks or two months - it is still a very fast fielding.

On its first flight four pilots separately flew it. That suggests to me that it is a largely operator independent vehicle meaning short training times. The third flight it toted an underslung load (35 kg) around their university campus.

In another six weeks the platform was designed and two vehicles built, certified and available for a demonstration firing Air-Ground-Missiles (Thales Martlets)

Weeks, not years or even months.
 
Related to the above - a defence of modularity, despite the US Navy's inability to grasp the concept.


Of course, it’s important to note that when it comes to modular ships, there are several types of modularity at play, explains retired Rear Admiral Nils Wang, director of Naval Team Denmark, and former chief of the Royal Danish Navy. With the LCS, the modularity in question was what Wang would refer to as “functional modularity” – namely, it involves “modules in some shape or form that become a functional entity on board the platform by being integrated”.

“Design modularity”, on the other hand, is when a navy can choose between several variants of the same ship – such as with the German-manufactured MEKO frigates, different versions of which have been sold to a number of countries. With design modularity, once the variant is chosen, the ship is a fixed model and can’t be changed within its lifecycle.

The subject of functional modularity might be a hot topic now for navies across the world – as we’re seeing with the UK’s Type-31 frigate and with the Constellation-class in the US, in particular – but for the Royal Danish Navy, it’s been par for the course since the early 1990s, in the form of its StanFlex containers. “It was a brilliant idea, but we were the only ones who had it, says Wang. “And we didn’t have it because we were brilliant – we had it because we were poor, and we had to figure out how to put more into a reduced number of platforms.”

Poverty generates also sorts of great ideas. Ideas that can then be exploited by rich people with lots of money because the money they save can be spent buying lots more of those cheap systems created and built by poor people. Money generates waste. Poor people scratch for pennies.
 

This Bulgarian article says that the chosen gun is the "full length" 30x173mm version. It repeats that the SAM has not yet been decided.

It also has a video.

Even if the turret isn't fully integrated with the platform, or with the complete AD system, it will still supply the troops with a gun that can be used line of sight to take on air and ground targets.
 
Yet another inter-platform module transfer.

This time from the USMC. The same 8 round package of Hero-120s mounted on both the Marine Green LAV and the Navy Gray LRUSV.

Marine Green in both cases.

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