Four Nordic nations, including Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, have decided to establish a unified 300-fighter Nordic air defense force to counter Russia.
In response to the mounting threat from Russia, the air force chiefs from Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark announced on March 24 that they had signed a statement of intent to establish a unified Nordic air defense force to “fight the conflict.”
This force’s mission is to foster more interparty collaboration. Major General Jan Dam, the commander of the Danish air force, told Military Cognizance that the decision to reunite the air forces was made in response to Russia starting a military operation in Ukraine in February of last year.
According to Dam, “our combined fleet is comparable to a sizable European country.”
The country of Norway now has 57 F-16 and 37 F-35 jets, with 15 more already on order. While Denmark has 58 F-16s and 27 F-35s on order, Finland has 62 F/A-18 Hornet fighters and 64 F-35s. More than 90 Gripens aircraft are in Sweden. The four countries’ combined fleet currently numbers more than 300 units, and when orders are fulfilled, that number will rise. How many of the 300 aircraft are still in use is unknown.
In November of last year, the Nordic air forces started talking about collaborating more closely.
We wanted to investigate if we could better integrate our airspace surveillance so that we could share each other’s surveillance systems’ radar data, said Dam.
Airspace monitoring, training, force deployment, integrated command and control, and operational deployment are all areas where cooperation will be practiced. The particular timing for fulfilling the cooperative goals is uncertain.
