Sweden abandons compulsory draft

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Herr-Berbunch

Does that mean the subs have airbags and side-impact protection?

Don't know, but it is fair to say they are leaders in naval surface stealth designs. At least from what I read some years ago. their Gotland submarines with air-independent, vibrationless Sterling engines are top class and are said to play easily in the same league like the German Type-212s/214s. It is practically impossible to detect them (a Gotland trained with the US Navy from 2005 until 2007, running circles at will around the Yanks, so it was reported, without being detected once).

I also remind of their famous Draaken, Viggen and Gripen fighters, all of which were amongst the very best designs at the time of deployment. I repeatedly read comments by historians and pilots saying that the true multi role modern fighterplane is a Swedish invention.

For tanks they bought German Leopards - with additonal features making the Swedish Leopards (STRV-122) one of the two most heavily protected versions of the Leo-2 in service (the other is the Spanish Leo-2E). They also use own-developed SABOT-rounds on that thing, that roughly equal the top notch German designs and US DU-designs (at ranges below 3000m).

Maybe they don't do stuff on many occasions, but when they do, it tends to be something extremely nice. After learning it in SBP, I did research on the CV-90xx series of IFVs, and found out that these are the preferred choice of many insiders and professionals, if they would have the choice.

You could have much worse equipement than Swedish one, I think.