The Future of Sweden's Military with Chief of Defense Michael Claesson
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You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. In this episode, I sat down with General Michael Clausen, who is the chief of defense staff of Sweden, a post that he took last fall. Hope you enjoy the conversation. I sure did.

What made you join the military? It's a long story. It started with my own interest for history. I started to read books on history at a very early age, eight, nine years old. And history coincides a lot with the military business. So that sort of sparked off the interest. And we have in Sweden also a kind of a voluntary youth organization for military activities.

life firing with rifles and so on and so forth. So that got me also to increase and expand my interest for a military career. Did you have any heroes or role models maybe in your family that had a military background? No, they were all civilians. But as soon as I entered into those organizations and got to meet officers, career officers working with us, youngsters, of course, I got a few role models emerging from that. What did your family think when, how did they react when you first told them that you were joining?

I would say generally positive, not very knowledgeable. Of course, my dad has done his mandatory military service, but other than that, no one had really a clue about what it means to become a career officer. Before you became a general officer, what was your favorite job in uniform? I have to say that the deployment to Afghanistan, the environment was very nice in that regard, but in terms of being committed to unity,

being with the unit, the pre-deployment training, the interaction with the men and women in my organization. It was a battalion-sized battle group in northern Afghanistan. So I would say that that was my absolutely favorite job. And, you know, you write for public consumption, which is not, I would say, typical among most senior military officers, especially in Europe. What got you into writing for broader audiences as an officer? My younger co-writer, Sabalon Kalanda. Yes, we'll blame him.

No, but that was really good because I was contributing to one of the books that he edited. It was an anthology about Swedish defense in general, Swedish defense from all angles.

And I wrote a chapter on the Swedish Armed Forces. And then he approached me later and said, well, how about writing a book together? And that got me into writing. And I like to write. I just needed someone to push me the last couple of meters to actually make it come into a book. We all do. We all do. So Sweden's been in NATO for about a year now. Before that, though, Sweden was already very closely aligned with NATO, practically speaking. So how much...

Especially for those listening who might not be that closely familiar with European military affairs. How much did that actually change for Sweden joining NATO? Most Swedes would probably say and state not much. But I still claim that, yes, it changed a lot because it really forces you to zoom out and understand what collective defense means.

and not only being a member of an alliance, but to come in with the right focus, both in terms of what kind of capabilities you need, but also the mindset to defend the country or to defend the alliance from different parts of the alliance's territory. And of course, we had a lot of experience from international crisis management and peacekeeping and stuff like that, but really to build warfighting capability and deploy it to other countries.

Within a year, we have contributed mechanized units to Latvia. We have air policing units in Poland, and we are contributing

contributing with the mine cleaning vessels to the standing naval forces of NATO. So I think we have really shown that we are capable of being a security provider. And it has been an objective in itself for me to make sure that we have all three regular services committed to NATO missions within a year. But still, I think it's a way to go to understand the complexity of all other Allies' security concerns. Before...

Joining NATO, Sweden and Finland obviously had a very special security relationship as two non-NATO countries that were nevertheless Western aligned increasingly as the post-Cold War era became much more tense.

Is that still a very close and special relationship just now inside of NATO, or have there been any changes? No, that's the core part. We are where we are geographically. So all the, let's say, regional cooperation activities, they still create a kind of a fundament for operational planning. And now with the kind of a NATO umbrella instead of only the bilateral or trilateral types of cooperation. But it fits well into the NATO planning. So there is no conflict in that. They are complementing each other, so to speak.

Sweden's made some big changes, not just in the lead up to joining NATO, but also since joining NATO and especially in the last few months announcing, I believe you're going to get up to 3.5% GDP by 2030. Is that right? Correct. Obviously, that's one metric. Tell us more about what's happening in terms of expansion of the armed forces. You mentioned consolidation earlier, major acquisitions programs. We'd love to hear what Sweden's doing to get ready for this next era.

One thing that probably helped motivate this is when Secretary Hegseth came to Munich and said that the United States will no longer serve as the conventional backstop, which I imagine got quite a lot of attention in European capitals. Let me put it like this. In the coming couple of years, depending on the security situation in general, I will put a lot of effort on consolidating the warfighting capabilities of the Swedish armed forces, basically with the existing organization as a fundament.

What does it mean? It means, of course, like in so many other cases, to make the organization more robust, increase sustainability by building stocks, simply. If we haven't learned that earlier, we have learned it again through observing what is happening in Ukraine. With 20-25% combat losses over time, we need to build reserves. Looking at the attrition rates in terms of material and equipment, this

This is something that has to be consolidated. So this is a kind of a preparatory phase with the focus on consolidating. The next phase would be to expand the organization, not massively, but in some cases, changing some of the perspectives and some of the missions for some of the units to encompass supply enablement in a NATO context.

by making sure that we have facilitating forces, both territorial forces and also logistics, beefing up logistics in many ways. We are re-establishing the divisional level, which is a continuous issue for us to work on all the capabilities needed to replicate a NATO standard mechanized division. We have all the commitments to, as I mentioned previously, different NATO missions in the context of deterrence activities.

so-called vigilance activities, so on and so forth. It's built on the existing force. We have quite a lot to do with the increase of the naval forces. We are buying four new corvettes, basically for the role of air defense, medium-range air defense, which is to be built into the NATO integrated air missile defense system. We have to eventually make quite a few dramatic strategic decisions.

on where to go on the next generation fighters, fighter jets, next generation also in terms of how we integrate new technology and where we are supposed to go on autonomous systems. Let's talk a bit about that because Sweden has quite an advanced defense industry. It just hasn't been asked to build at scale, great scale.

I've actually been a critic of NATO enlargement expansion, however you want to describe it, in the past to countries that don't bring a lot militarily to the table, whereas I think Sweden actually does bring quite a lot. It's a rich country that has a very advanced defense industry and some high-level capabilities, especially when it comes to air power. We've seen this move towards autonomy and everything from FPV drones on the front line to higher-level long-range systems.

And we'll talk about Ukraine more specifically in a moment, but how are you asking industry in Sweden to adapt to this new era?

We're doing it through experimentation, asking them to build and contribute with demonstrators. That builds up to support, at the end of the day, my decision-making, making it possible for me to give my military advice to the government on where to go on the next generation fighter jet capability, the next generation subsurface capability, the next generation land forces, and so on and so forth. So we're in a constant dialogue with the defense industry, both the Sweden-based but also international companies, to work on innovative projects, to

to see what kind of new features that could be integrated into existing capabilities, but also those more disruptive and groundbreaking types of technologies that we need to integrate in the next generation of the Swedish Armed Forces. The Trump administration announced the F-47, which may be the last manned fighter aircraft that we produce.

at least highly sophisticated new generation. What is your thinking about man versus unmanned in terms of these larger exquisite systems into the future in the sixth generation? Of course, it's difficult to make any absolutely clear statements on that. But basically, I do support the idea that the next generation

would probably have to be at some extent manned, but then complemented through swarming technologies, loyal wingmen, integration of autonomous systems to that manned platform, if you wish. And that doesn't go only for the air component, but also as well land and maritime. I think this is

probably the way we'll have to go. But at the same time, I do not exclude fully unmanned type of system. When you were moving towards this much higher technology force in the future, I mean, Ukraine's interesting in that it's sort of an example of how the future is here. It's just unevenly distributed. And we see that along the front in Ukraine, where it's almost World War I-style trench warfare combined with these autonomous systems. When you're asking for a force to be very adept at these higher technology systems,

How does that fit with Sweden's model of mobilization, conscription, recruitment? That's going to be one of my biggest challenges, because how do you storage a digitalized unit? Obviously in a different way than we used to do. I think we will have to work very profoundly on finding new methods and new ways to deal with how to keep a new technology updated, basically.

And we can't just put it away in a storage and wait for the mobilization order to come. So this has to be built on systems representing open architecture, robust solutions, which is actually one of the most important expertises of the Swedish Armed Forces and Swedish defence industry. Because we have had since ages a mobilization type of armed force where we still have conscripts working on very complex systems.

So making them robust, making them easy to handle and also easy to update will of course have to be implemented in also the next generation of Swedish Armed Forces. What about training for people that

are going to serve, they need to be adept in these higher technology systems, which take longer to learn and become expert at, of course. I think that the existing system could be relatively easily adapted to that because the system is built around the possibility to update by calling in people for refresher training, not only big live exercises and stuff like that, but also to be updated on equipment updates

Together with that, of course, to update whatever type of digitalized command and control system, etc. I don't see that necessarily as a problem. And I also think that we are underusing modern technology to reach out to our soldiers and the possibility to actually train and educate through basically internet-based types of solutions. I totally agree. It's been interesting to learn about how different countries, in Europe especially, are learning intentionally from what's been going on in Ukraine.

Some countries have battlefield observer programs that are secret but leaked to the media. But I want to ask you to comment on those other countries. How is Sweden learning deliberately from what's happening in Ukraine and then incorporating those lessons in its own force generation process? We are learning a lot and we are learning fast. I'm not really happy about our ability still to connect the dots. We have to be much more coherent and much more deliberate in taking the knowledge we have

the knowledge we get from different sources into the requirements side of the house in a much more coherent and comprehensive way. And I think that's probably not unique for Sweden, but to just collect a lot of data, a lot of information without being able to process it into something useful, both for the update of existing capabilities and systems, but also to build a fundament for putting up relevant requirements for new systems.

What have we seen in terms of... You could speak about changing Russian maritime behavior. Obviously, this is a very important issue to Sweden because of geography and its own security.

We've seen all this stuff about pipelines and telecom links, and I still don't know if we know the full stories about all these things. But beyond these specific issues, just general concepts of operation, methods of operation, what have we seen change from Russia in the last few years in these maritime passages close to Sweden? We have seen a kind of a posturing. I mean, basically, I would say if you refer to the Baltic Sea,

It's still a kind of a business as usual type of scenario. We have around 4,000 ship movements per 24 hours going in and out of the Baltic Sea. 50% of the Russian merchant shipping is going in and out of the Baltic Sea. Thus, a big chunk of, let's say, their economic

interests is going in and out of the Baltic Sea. For obvious reasons, I guess that Sweden and Finland's NATO membership was the mother of all unforeseen consequences for Mr. Putin when that occurred. So obviously it's quite frustrating for the Russians to see the Baltic Sea not turning into a kind of a modern Ostrom. It's not really what's happening. I mean,

The international waters are big enough to allow for a coexistence, if you wish. But of course, it's more sensitive. Yeah, but now Russia is surrounded on all sides there by NATO, ISR and forces whenever it goes in. Yes, that's basically the truth. And I would assume that we will see some changes in terms of posturing, especially if there is a ceasefire, if there is a peace agreement in Ukraine and they have the possibility to redistribute their forces. Do you think Sweden has a role to play in a peace agreement? No.

I know this is more for the political level, but I'm sure you've been privy to some discussions about this. I would say yes. Would probably like to have a role in one way or another.

Obviously, all the discussions ongoing are quite hypothetical until we have a real agreement in place. But without speaking for my government, I think that we do have military capabilities that would and could play a role in such a scenario. What have you learned from, obviously, you've gotten the opportunity to see Swedish military equipment perform in high-level combat now. What has been some of the learning from that? What we see is that the equipment that was developed basically in the 80s and the 90s to counter

Then Soviet attack or Soviet conflict involving the Soviet Union. That equipment is working very well, generally speaking. Of course, there are some aspects that you already alluded to in terms of FPVs. Well, basically drones in general terms as a relatively new feature on the battlefield.

at least when it comes to mass and density that we see in Ukraine. But other than that, I would say that Swedish military equipment is performing well. These are, of course, my comments are made based on information that we get in direct dialogue with our Ukrainian friends. I'm a big supporter of supporting Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia. However, I am concerned the extent to which provisions for Ukraine, particularly certain munitions, have drawn down magazine depth in this country.

Is Sweden dealing with similar problems in terms of it's obviously supported Ukraine and in doing so it treated its major potential adversary? Yes, of course. I mean, it's a balance all the time. And I'm in full support of the government's decision to support Ukraine. However, I've also been very clear that there are, of course, a kind of a balancing act trying to build the force, consolidate and expand the force and simultaneously support Ukraine to the extent necessary.

So what we have concluded together with the government is that we are trying to make a shift from donation to production, meaning that as we build the Swedish Armed Forces, we are trying to extend the orders to defense industry from which we can obtain equipment that we then donate directly to Ukraine. And also to increase a so-called Danish model to increase our own investments in Ukrainian defense industry to make it possible and sustainable for them to produce whatever they need themselves.

What's a book that had a big impact on you at some point in your career, either early on or more recently, that you'd recommend to some of our listeners? Going back to the Swedish-Finnish relationship, there is one absolutely classic book called Unknown Soldier by a Finnish author called Veinu Linna. And it's about the Second World War. And what it is really about and what really put its hook into me was how it expands on leadership.

tactical leadership and the role of leaders and commanders at the tactical level. You've been a leader at every level, obviously. One thing I've noticed in getting to know different general and flag officers in our own system is watching how some are more successful and some are not.

Even though they may have been excellent at tactical and operational leadership, some struggle at the more strategic level. And it's hard to select for these senior leaders based on how well they do earlier in their career sometime because it becomes such a different job as you yourself are living. How do you think about these issues? Because one part of your role is, of course, to select the next generation of the most senior leaders in your military.

Diversity, education and career management in the positive way. There's always a negative tone to career management. What I mean is that you really have to make sure that

individuals who will or might be eligible for selection for higher posts need to follow a certain program, making sure that they have the bandwidth at the end. And what often lacks in our system is military officers without experience from working at, say, the government level and being sort of knowledgeable, not experts, but knowledgeable about how policy and politics are being made. Because it's like mission-oriented leadership.

Auftragstaktik. You have to know to a relevant extent, two levels up and two levels down, to put yourself into context and make the best out of the position you're in, understanding your role. So that's probably my advice. And how much longer do you have in this role? My mandate, if you wish, ends by the 30th of September, 2030. All right. So you got quite a while to go. We're looking forward to having you on the show again, maybe sometime in Sweden. Thank you so much.

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