In an update ahead of the Paris Air Show which is taking place this week, the Commander of the Swedish Air Force Major General Jonas Wikman confirmed on 15 June 2025 that the service will implement an operational concept known as Agile Combat Employment (ACE).
The ACE strategy involves scattering combat air units across home bases and geographically dispersed locations, which ensures flexibility and survivability. The concept poses dilemmas for the adversary, complicating their targetting processes, while the small footprint minimises the risk to the overall force when stationary.
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Nato has similarly adopted the concept as countries move away from the privilege of aerial supremacy in bygone counter-insurgency conflicts and towards conventional armed conflict with peer nations where airspace is contested.
In February 2024, French Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets deployed to a Swedish base to practice ACE.
The success of Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine’s covert drone strike on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet at the beginning of June, demonstrates that no target is too far away anymore. The Russian Aerospace Forces can no longer hide their assets in one place, deep inside its landmass.
Logistical challenge
“Moving your forces long distances is very tricky, of course, because you will have long logistics chains. You will have to be able to support them even in high level conflict,” Wikman acknowledged.
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By GlobalDataIt takes a level of coordination politically as well as militarily, as countries will need to lean on one another to supply their scattered units across the continent. This was demonstrated in the French mission to Sweden, in which a Lithuanian C-27J supported the endeavour, ensuring airlift of the required crew and material for the Mirage jets last year.
“That is a different challenge than our previous challenge, which was to disperse into the woods – or just disappear, to survive – which is different [to] moving and dispersing your forces,” Wikman described.
F-35 sustainment
Exceeding one million flight hours, and delivering more than 1,185 aircraft globally, the F-35 Lightning II is fast becoming the common combat aircraft in Europe, even despite ongoing transatlantic tensions. But even in the Nordic region, never mind Nato, Sweden is one of very few countries to operate the platform.
In a briefing the next day, on 16 June, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for F-35 business development, J. R. McDonald, suggested it makes sense if Sweden would be interested in pursuing certification to sustain the world’s most sophisticated aircraft.
In truth, this would be an essential part of Nato’s ACE doctrine. Sweden will need to be able to host the popular platform on its territory as we can expect to see allies that operate F-35 maintain a forward presence in the the alliance’s North-Eastern periphery, close to Russia. And this goes beyond Sweden, McDonald said.
If the Swedish Air Force eventually do decide to obtain certification to sustain the US-made aircraft down the line, which is conceivable McDonald noted, it would only be agreed as a bilateral arrangement rather than an alliance obligation. However, this will detract from any rapid response that could be mustered as the process hinges on a a plethora of government-to-government agreements.
