It was the first ship of the Gotland-class, which was the first operational submarine class in the world to use air-independent propulsion in the form of Stirling engines which use liquid oxygen and diesel as the propellant.

[6][7] Gotland was loaded on board the Norwegian semi-submersible heavy-lift ship, MV Eide Transporter, on 10 May 2005, for a month-long voyage over the Atlantic Ocean and through the Panama Canal to Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego, California, where it arrived on 27 June 2005.

[16][17] In 2001, during the exercise JTFEX 01-2 in the Caribbean Sea, the German U24 of the conventional 206 diesel-electric class "sank" the carrier Enterprise by firing flares and taking a photograph through its periscope.

[19] In the early morning of 8 April 2014, the Defence Materiel Administration, known as FMV, with the help of the Swedish Army, raided the Kockums shipyard in Malmö, Sweden, then owned by German defense giant ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems.

The goal of the mission was to confiscate material belonging to the Swedish state, especially hardware relating to the Stirling engines used in HSwMS Gotland.

After Kockums employees locked the gates blocking FMV's exit with the confiscated material, a long drawn-out negotiation ensued.

Since FMV was only interested in the hardware rather than the blueprints, the show of force was more likely part of a long political confrontation between the Swedish state and the owners of Kockums, rather than an attempt at discouraging espionage.