Nordic Air Force Takes Flight.
Does the idea of a Nordic Air Force sound crazy? It doesn’t to the Nordic countries.
With Sweden aiming to enter NATO around the time of the 31-nation alliance’s annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July, all of the Nordic states would be in. And they have an ambitious plan to centralize command of about 250 combat aircraft across four countries under one command-and-control system.
“The plans for the northern part of the alliance will be much easier to develop, whether it’s the closeness to the Baltic States, or the fact that, beforehand, it was a very short border between Norway and Russia,” said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary-general. “The working assumption was that the other two might be out of the conflict, if a conflict were to happen. And now you have a much, much more coherent group in the north.”
And it will be a major test for the troubled U.S.-made F-35 fighter jet, which will comprise the bulk of the Nordic air fleet. Finland put in an order for 64 of them in 2021, Denmark has ordered 27, and Norway will grow its fleet to 52 in the coming years. These aircraft haven’t seen action in Ukraine, but they patrol the skies over Eastern Europe and have been seen as a better option than European-produced aircraft for countries trying to upgrade aging fleets of U.S.-made F-16s. Even militarily neutral Switzerland announced a $5.5 billion deal for the F-35 in 2021.
There is some historical precedent for such an alliance-within-an-alliance, too. Even though Finland and Sweden have long been on the outside looking in at NATO, it wouldn’t be their first rodeo in coordinating joint air operations. Sweden previously participated in the 2011 NATO-led air campaign over Libya, and Finland just began sending out air rotations for the massive Air Defender exercise that took place earlier this month.
Source: Foreign Policy
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