In recent days Denmark, Finland, Norway e Sweden revealed that they laid the groundwork, during last week’s conference at the air force base Ramstein in Germaniafor the establishment of a sizeable unified air fleet with the aim of operating as a single force by creating a Nordic model for process-based cooperative air operations Nato. In practice, one is born regional air force with firepower – 250 combat aircraft available in fact, 400 potential – comparable to that of the France or of the Türkiye and higher than United Kingdom. The collaboration will include cooperative airspace monitoring, training, flexible force deployment, integrated command and control, operational planning and execution.
The numbers tell us that it is not a small thing: the Norwaywho is also a member of the Nato, has a fleet of 37 fifth-generation F-35 fighters, with an additional 15 F-35s arriving by 2025; there Finland, close to joining the alliance, currently has 62 F/A-18C/D multi-role fighters and has ordered 64 F-35s, expected to arrive in 2026; there Denmarkfounding member of the Nato like the Norwaycurrently has 58 F-16s and has ordered 27 F-35s, with the first set to arrive in 2023; SwedenFinally, it has nearly one hundred Saab production Gripen C and D fighters and plans to upgrade to an updated version in the near future.
All this was made possible by the renunciation of the neutrality policy by Helsinki e Stockholm: we can say that it is the first fruit. As the former commander of US forces in Europe predicted, General Ben Hodgescon Sweden e Finland, the Atlantic Alliance gets two providers – and certainly not two “consumers”- of security for the Old World e Washington: their entry entails a drastic change in the geometry of the defense of the Nato in Northern Europe and Eastern Europe due to their geographical location, but also an improvement in air and missile defense capabilities for the alliance, as well as the potential for counter-offensive operations, should the need arise.
The project for a joint Nordic air force does not come suddenly, but is the result of a dialogue that began as far back as the 1990s, to which the non-aligned status of Sweden e Finland it had always prevented us from moving on to an operational phase.
Stockholm, whose accession to Nato still vetoed by Türkiye e Hungary, with this move it strengthens its security so as not to depend only on the military guarantee of the United Statesalso in consideration of the fact that in the recent past the then president Trump had questioned the commitments of the United States in Europa.
Even if the declaration of Ramstein does not refer to Russia, Mosca he is the stone guest: after all, three months ago the Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu had stated that “given the desire of the Nato to increase its military potential near the Russian borders, as well as to expand the alliance by adding Finland e Swedenit is necessary to take measures of retaliation and create an adequate troop regrouping in the northwest of the Russia”. Helsinki and other countries certainly could not wait to see the color of the Russian soldiers’ eyes to take adequate countermeasures. On the other hand, the words of Shoigu they represent only the culmination of a decade in which Nordics have seen the strengthening of the base of Kaliningrad and to its filling of nuclear missiles, to the simulation of bombing nuclear power of Sweden during the Russian exercises of 2013, to repeated cyber attacks and a trickle of violations of the airspace with aircraft from hunting e bombersnot to mention the war of aggression against the Ukraine.
This move confirms, if any were needed, that i Leading countries of Europe, France e Germania, as written by Politico a few months ago, have fallen in the wake of the Poland and of the Nordic and Baltic nations in an attempt to lead the European agenda. But it also reveals the will of many States not to be unprepared in the face of concrete threats to safetysurrounded by allies unreliableas happened to Czechoslovakia e Poland in 1938-39: for this, the northerners with their unified air fleet and the same Poland with its maxi military investments they have decided to “help” themselves, instead of waiting for protection from Washington and promises from Berlin e Paris. The cultural closeness between the four Nordic democracies and the presence of a common threat did the rest.