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Battle Groups

The Government is establishing a new focus for Swedish defence in its Bill "A functional defence" 2008/09:140, published 19 March 2009. The army will consist of permanent and contracted units. Only a small proportion of the soldiers will be employed fulltime. It should be possible to organise most of the army's forces in battle groups (seven of them). A battle group will be put together around a manoeuvre battalion, which comprises the core of a unit. Based on actual needs and tasks, the manoeuvre battalion will be built on, using different parts of other units, such as artillery, engineering or air defence units. The navy and air force should be able to strengthen the battalion when needed, for example, for support and transports.

Battle groups should be able to conduct independent operations and be part of a larger unit, which may also be multinational. These combined battle groups will be highly mobile and will be able to move rapidly throughout the country. On the other hand, it will take longer time for particularly heavy materiel such as tanks. In order to have good standby capability on Gotland, a company of tanks will be stored there. Outside the operational organisation, a reserve unit of four mechanised battalions will be available.

The battalion combat groups that will form the core of the Army's forces will be more mobile and flexible than at present, and will have high operational effectiveness. Like our naval and air defence forces, they can be rapidly deployed for missions in Sweden, the immediate region and beyond.

Mission specific, predefined battalion combat groups will make up the Army's main operational units. The structure of the battalion combat groups, based inter alia on experience gained from the Nordic battlegroup, provides the flexible conditions needed to ensure the usability and accessibility of the operational organisation.

A battalion combat group is assembled around a tactical operations battalion equipped with reinforcement resources from usable units such as tank, air defence, engineer, logistical and intelligence units. Reinforcement resources from other forces should also be made available as and when needed. The tactical manoeuvre battalions and usable units should also have undergone joint exercises at different levels and have a well-developed interface in order to ensure high usability, accessibility and good unit morale.

The present model - characterised by a national operational organisation, a special, regularly employed task force for foreign missions, special units listed for service with international forces, and a battlegroup mustered every three years and kept on standby for EU-led international crisis management missions - will be phased out. It will be replaced by an operational organisation in which the units will be retained, while personnel within the units will be rotated individually. Experience will be preserved within the units, while a large proportion of the units that will take part in joint or combined operations will train and conduct exercises together. The increased flexibility of Army forces will facilitate a transition from today's heavier units to a higher proportion of lighter units backed up by modularly designed reinforcement resources. Tanks belonging to a tank company will be placed in depot storage on Gotland to facilitate early access to heavy equipment.