Sweden during second half of 1960s to early 1990s had as one main task to protect sweden against Soviet sea invasion.

Sweden considered the invasion to come to 2 places, Gävle och Nyköping, north and south of Stockholm.

For killing off this Sweden invested heavily in submarines and the airforce using its E1.

Considering the different periods 1960-1985 with RBS04 and 1985 to 1995 with RBS15, 1960 to 1985 using 150 Saab A32 and AJ 37 Viggen and 1985 to 1995 up o 400 AJS, JAS Viggen how is the chance that sweden would have killed the invasion at sea?

olle wrote:

how is the chance that sweden would have killed the invasion at sea?

Nil. The Pact would have used nuclear weapons.

They had plans for getting their Baltic fleet into the North Sea. It involved fighting their way past Sweden and Germany, bombarding Denmark into a molten and highly radioactive pile of glass as an example to the rest of the world, and possibly bombarding a channel through Jutland using nuclear weapons in order to bypass blockading NATO fleets in Skagerak.

I also doubt that Sweden would have done anything in a conventional war. Look at how inept they were at finding the Soviet submarines that were constantly operating with impunity in Swedish waters. You only ever found one because it ran aground right outside the biggest naval port in Sweden, and even then it took the Swedish forces several hours to react to a fishermans report about a beached submarine.

While the Swedish AF was a quality force, there were never enough numbers to maintain air superiority for longer than hours at best.

As for nukes, Russia had to know that their use would leave their fleet vulnerable to naval nuclear strikes. Using nukes is always a zero sum decision.

VSMUT wrote:

You only ever found one because it ran aground right outside the biggest naval port in Sweden, and even then it took the Swedish forces several hours to react to a fishermans report about a beached submarine.

The majority of sightings ( not on the rocks ) seem to have been NATO subs posturing as red ones.
Quite often the swedish military seems to have been in on this but not the swedish civil government.
( the mechanism of leverage is rather obvious, isn't it?)

Nothing planned so the RockExhibit was a bit of a surprise.

VSMUT wrote:

olle wrote:

how is the chance that sweden would have killed the invasion at sea?

Nil. The Pact would have used nuclear weapons.

They had plans for getting their Baltic fleet into the North Sea. It involved fighting their way past Sweden and Germany, bombarding Denmark into a molten and highly radioactive pile of glass as an example to the rest of the world, and possibly bombarding a channel through Jutland using nuclear weapons in order to bypass blockading NATO fleets in Skagerak.

I also doubt that Sweden would have done anything in a conventional war. Look at how inept they were at finding the Soviet submarines that were constantly operating with impunity in Swedish waters. You only ever found one because it ran aground right outside the biggest naval port in Sweden, and even then it took the Swedish forces several hours to react to a fishermans report about a beached submarine.

I guess you have no facts to base your claims but just want to bash the Swedes.

The chances of Sweden to resist depend on what kind of military context the attack takes place. If there were no other war, and the Soviet would have attacked only Sweden with all its forces, Sweden would not have resisted very long. Would there have been other tensions that would not have allowed the Soviet to concentrate their forces against Sweden, Sweden might have been able to resist quite well. Most of the Soviet fighters were designed to fight above their own territory and their bombers were less numerous and less capable than generally believed. The Soviet would have succeeded at the end, but they would have paid a high price on it.

We do not know the true capacity of neither Swedish or Soviet military powers then. After WW2 the Soviet/Russia never ever attacked any advanced western country, only countries where they expected little resistance.

I do not believe that the Soviet would have started with nuclear weapons.

YIMBY wrote:

I guess you have no facts to base your claims but just want to bash the Swedes.

I do not believe that the Soviet would have started with nuclear weapons.

Nope, you guessed wrong. BTW, my opinion on my own country's plans for a 3rd world war is very similar.

Regarding nuclear weapons, the Soviet plans have been out in the open for ages. There is no believing required.

YIMBY wrote:

I guess you have no facts to base your claims but just want to bash the Swedes.

I don't think there's much argument to be made that Sweden on their own could have lasted long against a concerted effort by the Soviets to neutralize them, and I don't mean that as any sort of insult against Sweden. It's just a simple matter of the limited size of their forces. On the other hand, why would the Soviets make any move against Sweden except as part of a conflict involving NATO? In that case, the airspace and coast of Norway, as well as Sweden are strategically valuable to NATO. Sweden, of course, was not part of NATO, but once Soviet aircraft start overflying Sweden to hit Norway and better reach targets in the Atlantic, I'm really not sure they'd be able to stay out.

I'm more intrigued by VSMUT's portrayal of the Soviets as suicidal fools willing to go nuclear out of the gate despite having no real hope of mitigating the US Triad, as well as the British and French nuclear arsenals.

I'm certain the Soviets did draw up plans based around initiating tactical nuclear exchange, but in any attempt at a realistic war game, the problems with such a strategy would show up quickly. I'd be really curious to see some compelling support for the suggestion that doing so was their main plan and remained so for the duration of the Cold War.

Nuking Denmark or any other major objective geared towards shifting the naval balance in the North Sea would effectively be a decision on the Soviet's part to neutralize their own fleet, as Murmansk, Severomorsk, and Polyarny then get likewise destroyed, leaving the northern fleet with minimal support.

VSMUT wrote:

YIMBY wrote:

I guess you have no facts to base your claims but just want to bash the Swedes.

I do not believe that the Soviet would have started with nuclear weapons.

Nope, you guessed wrong. BTW, my opinion on my own country's plans for a 3rd world war is very similar.

Regarding nuclear weapons, the Soviet plans have been out in the open for ages. There is no believing required.

Believing is required to take all publicly disposed military plans and strategic exercises seriously. The Soviet leaders were no lunatic, and would not have put their existence in risk just for getting burned land (even though they made serious errors elsewhere). Any plans for nuking Europe is just an alternative fact, while the true fact is that the Soviet never used their nuclear bombs at a war, and not even credibly threatened with the first strike. Neither did the US or any other nuclear country, after WW2, though a tactical nuclear strike was openly declared as a countermeasure for a massive conventional attack. As far as I know, the only time when a first nuclear strike was seriously proposed was in Korean war, and that proposal was readily rejected, bringing not much glory to the proposer. There were cases when a nuclear strike might have been accidentally provoked, but that is another story.

Perhaps 2 variables here is that until around 1970 Sweden planned to create its own tactical nuclear weapons both as torpedo to explode underneath invasion fleet second to bomb the Soviet harbors when they loaded.

In 1970 Olof Palme agreed with USA that US should do the nuclear bombin instead, as long as sweden protected its submarines.

VSMUT wrote:

They had plans for getting their Baltic fleet into the North Sea. It involved fighting their way past Sweden and Germany, bombarding Denmark into a molten and highly radioactive pile of glass as an example to the rest of the world, and possibly bombarding a channel through Jutland using nuclear weapons in order to bypass blockading NATO fleets in Skagerak.

More or less fantasms.
( for geosculpturing you need _underground_ nuclear explosions.)

What in contrast was doctrine as a reaction pattern to a Soviet conventional attack
was to contain that via nukes and nuke mines. Valid until after the Harmel-Report and
the change over to "flexible response" doctrin.

WIederling wrote:

What in contrast was doctrine as a reaction pattern to a Soviet conventional attack
was to contain that via nukes and nuke mines. Valid until after the Harmel-Report and
the change over to "flexible response" doctrin.

A popular snarky comment at the time here was:

"Besser tot statt Rot."

Being the "sacrifical lamb" buffer area for a foreign power isn't really what one would describe as protection.

As I understand it around 1980 when the "strategic" nuclear bombs often bigger then the hiroshima bomb came the war games showed when they were used within 2 days a full nuclear war normally was a fact. So even the Soviet recognized usage of them soon meant a Moscow and Leningrad in ashes.