Hunting a submarine

For the seventh day running, the Swedish Navy is trying to identify an unknown underwater object off the country’s coast near Stockholm. On October 19, Rear Admiral Anders Grenstad even showed reporters a fuzzy picture depicting some object which had been filmed from a distance. “The picture’s low quality makes determining the identity of the ship impossible,” Grenstad stressed.

As soon as two days after the unsuccessful search, the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces General Sverker Goranson said that the main objective of this operation was “to send a clear signal that Sweden and its armed forces are capable and willing to act whenever they feel that this type of activity – we are talking an unknown object here – is violating our borders.” He added that the goal was to force it to the surface, and the use of armed force was an option to effect it.

However, the general admitted that submarines were “too hard” to detect and Sweden had never been able to track down and capture one in the past. “Neither had anyone else,” he added.

Indeed, as noted by observers, Sweden never managed to catch any submarine in the 1980s and early 1990s, a decade of hunting Russian submarines, with the exception of 1981, when the U137 ran aground a few miles from Sweden’s largest naval base, causing a diplomatic confrontation with the USSR.

While the object still remains unidentified, most observers believe that it is a Russian submarine. The Russian side, as usual, made a statement denying the presence of its submarine in the area. Oskar Jonsson, a Swedish researcher of the Russian methods of warfare working at King’s College London, believes that “the object in the picture looks like a Triton-type submarine when it surfaces, but it is not enough to definitely determine its type.”

People are still asking what the submarine is or was doing inside the Swedish territorial waters. Expert of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Johan Wiktorin told The Local in an interview that there were three possibilities: “First, it could be making an underwater map, to assure passage into the Swedish waters in the event of hostilities. Secondly, it could be installing equipment, such as sensors that could monitor or watch our units in the field. And thirdly, they could also be gathering intelligence on our (defense) systems,” he said.

Observers point out that Sweden was not that ready for this submarine hunt situation, which has involved 200 people and a lot of rubber boats. As junior researcher at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs Ingmar Oldberg told The Day, “Sweden is not ready for a war, but we are ready to detect and prevent violations of our sovereignty. Over the past 20 years, Sweden has not focused on territorial defense, being rather more interested in participating in international UN- and NATO-led missions in Afghanistan. As for the threats emanating from Russia, Sweden will confront them, firstly, by strengthening its cooperation with Finland and NATO members, and secondly, by enhancing the defense capabilities of our own, including, in particular, setting up production of our submarines.”

It seems that the new Swedish government is drawing the right conclusions from this incident with an unknown underwater object. In particular, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has promised to increase defense spending and take this into account in the budget that will be submitted to parliament on October 23. By the way, Sweden’s defense spending at the moment is 1.2 percent of the nation’s GDP. “We have a broad-based consensus in the Swedish parliament that we need to strengthen our capabilities, I mean, to allocate more resources to defense,” he said during a visit to Tallinn.