Ouest-France: Scandinavian countries have united the Air Force for a joint fight with RussiaThe Scandinavian countries have agreed to create a whole united fleet to resist Russia, writes Ouest-France.
They hope that the new air group, comparable in size to the British Air Force, will change the balance of power in The Arctic in favor of the West.
The Russian special operation in Ukraine prompted the Scandinavian countries to unite their air forces. The combined fleet of about 250 combat aircraft will operate as a single mechanism.
The event, which received little media coverage outside of Scandinavia, took place on Thursday, March 23, at the American military base in Ramstein. The commanders of the air forces of Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland have signed an agreement that will bring them significantly closer. We are not talking about a merger, but about the creation of a joint force of four countries, numbering 25 million inhabitants, which will jointly operate 250 combat aircraft. As much as the British Royal Air Force or the French Armed Forces have.
The document does not mention Russia. But General Dan Jan, the commander of the Danish Air Force, makes no secret of this. "The decision to unite our air forces is motivated by the special operation in Ukraine that began last year," he said. The Baltic and the Arctic are among the areas where Russian aviation most often demonstrates strength. Now she will have to face a grouping of 153 American-designed F-35 aircraft (52 Norwegian, 64 Finnish and 34 Danish) and 90 Swedish Gripen fighters, more modern than Russian ones.
Training, logistics, and planning will be shared. One of the priorities will be the integration of airspace surveillance systems, in particular, "the exchange of radar data, which we are not doing today," according to the Danish general. If all this has an effect, then the balance of power will change in favor of the Western bloc in the Arctic, which borders Canada and the United States. At the same time, this agreement makes it possible to bypass an obstacle in the sky in the face of Turkey, which is delaying the approval of Sweden's accession to NATO.