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Finns probably have low trust in anything Swedish I would assume
No, I think we trust the swedes more than anyone else. Their defence is well integrated to ours, but they are not well equipped to handle the threat scenario we worry about.
Sweden’s current rate of conscription is very low: about 4% of age group. Their fieldable military size is about 80k people.
For comparison, Finland has a field army size of about 300k people and an additional 650k trained men in reserve. We have bunkers for 4 million people, 1500 artillery pieces and 900k assault rifles. 25 000 people spent 140 000 days in voluntary defence training last year. That’s not including mandatory trainings. That’s nearly the full size of the Swedish reserve, in a country half the size.
Sweden has a lot of naval and air power, but Finland is prepared for a large scale land invasion and this is what we think about when asked about military preparedness.
With this said, Sweden’s and Finland’s militaries are complementary and serve different purposes. We have the 1000 km land border, and they need to worry about keeping supplies coming by securing air and sea, which I’m sure they will, if need be.
Why only 900,000 assault rifles? That is perhaps enough for the fighting-age men. What are the women and children to be armed with, pistols?
Well, the assumption is that when we lose a fighter, they don’t always ruin their rifle, so the tertiary reserve can reuse them. Of course the women and kida are brave enough to pick em up in the battlefield.
I gotta say, we have maybe 300k nice assault rifles, most of em are kind of… Better than nothing.
The Baltics look at Sweden and Finland in a similar way, in that, as a combined force they offer superior support force.
Harsh, but fair.