Military on Gotland

During the 20th century, infantry, artillery, air force and naval elements were stationed on Gotland as part of Sweden's defence system, until all permanent military units were stood down in 2005.

[14] After the standing down of the original garrison, a battalion of the Swedish Home Guard is based on Gotland for emergencies as part of the Eastern Military Region (MR E).

The unit, 32:a Gotlandsbataljonen (the 32nd Gotland battalion, also known as the Gotlandshemvärns bataljonen) acts as a training/reserve element of the regular 1st Marine Regiment (Amf 1) based at Muskö island, itself part of the Swedish Amphibious Corps.

[14] Although, the "new" garrison was just the latest in a long line of Swedish military forces protecting the island, and consequently the rest of Sweden, continuously since the 1640s.

[14] This command structure continued relatively unchanged until the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, when Milo Ö was stood down in 1991.

[6] In practise this meant the MDG was responsible for overseeing the Army garrison units remaining on the island, along with coordinating with any reserve and civil defence elements still in place.

[24] For Gotland, this meant that the naval units based out of the island by the 1970s were mostly light combatants such as FACs with relatively short range, though there were still a few larger corvettes mixed in.

[24] By the early 1980s, flaws with the "FAC based doctrine" had become impossible to ignore, with incidents such as the so-called Whiskey on the rocks confrontation proving that the Swedish Navy had become outgunned in the Anti-surface warfare arena, and that even in areas where it should have had a local advantage in such as Anti-Submarine Warfare it was materially outmatched by potential aggressors,[24] with intruding submarines able to breach Swedish waters almost at will.

As a result of this reduction in class size being decided on in the late 1990s, plans for some of the Visby-class corvettes to be based out of Gotland were scrapped.

[24] Those cutbacks apparently also led to the cancellation, just prior to the disbanding of all coastal defence units on Gotland, of plans to install elements of the KAFUS coastal/underwater surveillance network[b] in and around the island.

In some respects, this flexibility made the air force more capable than most NATO member airforces who, especially before the advent of such aircraft as the Harrier and the A-10, were arguably over reliant on permanent airbases and long concrete runways, unlike their Soviet foes, who put in at least as much effort as Sweden into being able to disperse and operate their tactical aircraft from semi-prepared airstrips and other temporary or semi-permanent locations, including those based around specially strengthened stretches of road.

In the event of an all out war, the airspace of neutral Sweden was seen by both NATO and Warsaw Pact planners as a possible handy shortcut for the flight paths of cruise missiles that both sides were developing, and in the case of the United States had already deployed, during the 1980s.

[43] A particular worry in Sweden in the early 1980s was that the US would program some of their new nuclear armed cruise missiles to fly through Swedish airspace on their way to targets in the Soviet Union.

This was seen as a violation of the country's neutrality, so Sweden officially stated that it would be obliged to shoot down any such missiles that were fired over Swedish territory in wartime.

[44] Late 1980s plans to reinforce the air cover over Gotland, including one for the reactivation and deployment to the island of an additional J 35 Draken squadron to take place in the early 1990s,[45] were to be overtaken by world events such as the Revolutions of 1989 and the Soviet dissolution.

After the end of the Cold War, the air force's presence on Gotland had rapidly diminished to practically nothing by 1992, with the final withdrawal of deployed elements of the Bråvalla Wing (F 13) including a Saab 37 Viggen fighter detachment from Visby Airport.

This was a direct result of the initial cutbacks by Swedish politicians seeking the peace dividend in order to, among other things, to fund increasingly costly social programs in an economic downturn (in part caused by the fall of the Soviet Union).

[7] In the intervening years, the air force has been absent from Gotland, with only the occasional transport or support aircraft (such as ASC 890 Airborne early warning and control) making visits to Visby Airport as part of an exercise or similar.

[49] In the aftermath of this highly controversial failure to avert the intruders, the air force for the first time in many years deployed a detachment of four Saab JAS 39 Gripen fighters to Visby Airport.

By the close of 2014, Swedish public confidence in the government's ability to defend the country had dropped to 20% or lower, depending on the poll.

However, from the second half of 2014 onwards, there has been a marked increase in the use of the range, especially by armoured units (mostly company sized),[17] as tensions in Northeastern Europe have escalated.

[18] It is nominally responsible for overseeing the maintenance of military facilities along with related activities on the island, though in practice any real authority lies either with the Swedish Fortifications Agency or else the 1st Marine Regiment (1 Amf).

For work directly onsite, including oversight of any civilian contractors on long term contract or call, the job is again delegated to the Gotlandsgruppen, who have their offices in the range.

[65] In the meantime, before the 18th Battlegroup is ready for deployment on Gotland (originally scheduled to begin in 2018), it was hoped that a combination of an increase in training rotations by mainland based regular army units to the Tofta range, combined with some rather public exercises around the island by the Särskilda operationsgruppen since late 2015, would be enough to discourage any Russian adventurism.

Despite this though, neither air defence vehicles such as the Luftvärnskanonvagn (lvkv) 9040, nor MANPADS have been attached to the garrison battalion to take advantage of this local radar coverage.