"In March 2014, an IL-20 came within 300 feet of a Scandinavian Airlines aircraft, and there was a similar incident in December," Major General Micael Byden, head of Sweden’s air force, said, according to Defense News. This is just one of several Swedish accusations leveled against what Byden calls "very dangerous" Russian air tactics.
The Swedish solution to overcrowded airspace is, evidently, buying more aircraft. The government plans to purchase 60 Gripen E jets by 2022. After being repeatedly delayed, the air force is also set to finally receive a NH90 helicopter, the first of 18.
Even stranger is the purpose of those helicopters. Outfitted with light torpedoes, the helicopters are designed for anti-submarine warfare.
"We have not been pleased with this program, it is very late," Swedish procurement chief Lena Erixon said at the Paris Air Show, referring to the NH90’s delays. "With what is happening in the Baltic, it is very important."
But what, exactly, is happening the Baltic? Last October, Swedish authorities reported sighting a mysterious submarine within in its territorial waters. Based purely on a photograph, which shows two grainy vessels far off in the distance, Sweden announced that the objects were submarines.
Based on that same photo, authorities went on to announce that the alleged submarines belonged to Russia.
Russian officials were quick to dispel the rumor, calling the sighting and subsequent manhunt "mindless."
"This was done, as far as can be judged, to ramp up the anti-Russian hysteria and give a propagandist boost to the myth of a 'military threat' from the East," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
And in April, Ola Truedsson, commander of the naval division of Sweden’s armed forces, released a statement confirming just how wrong the accusations were. The investigation found that the supposed Russian submarine was no submarine at all, but in fact a civilian fishing boat.
"It was not a submarine. We are completely sure of that," Truedsson said in his statement.
"We are doing this to clarify what was perceived to be a submarine in a photograph, but what we know with certainty was a civilian working ship," he added.
Yet despite the government’s admission that the submarine sighting was little more than hysteria, it is still spending millions of taxpayer dollars on anti-submarine helicopters which will likely see little to no use.
One can only hope the helicopters aren’t airborne during the next instance of Swedish panic. Trigger-happy pilots could launch a boat-load of mackerel into the stratosphere.
