Jorn Maddslien
Journalist
Saab
The boss of Saab’s Sweden, who makes Gripen Fighter, says it is now easier for him to earn NATO offers
War, cross -border conflicts and geopolitical upheavals are rarely judged good for business.
However, this seems to have been the impact of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on two of the neighbors of the aggressor to its west – Finland and Sweden.
Not directly, of course. It was rather the response of the two Nordic nations to the invasion that transformed fear into hope.
The two countries asked for membership of the Western Defense Alliance NATO in May 2022, about three months after the winter invasion.
Less than three years later, they are both full members and already harvest the advantages, in terms of national security and economy.
“We are no longer a country to whom we cannot trust,” observes Micael Johansson, director general of the Swedish defense company Saab, in reference to the previous historical neutrality of the country.
He underlines that during the year since Sweden joined NATO in March 2024, SAAB has already negotiated framework agreements with the NATO support and supply agency (NSPA). The NSPA is the body that organizes NATO’s order to defense companies.
Mr. Johansson adds that it is now much easier to better understand what is happening inside the alliance. “We couldn’t access NSPA before,” he said.
Jukka Siukosaari, Ambassador of Finland to the United Kingdom, agrees. “Being part of NATO brings us to an equal footing with all the other allies. It widens the possibilities for Finnish companies in the defense sector and beyond.”
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Mr. Johansson says that there is an increasing awareness that Europe must make more alone
Private companies will benefit from the commitments of NATO member states to increase defense spending.
Currently, only 23 of the 32 member states of the organization currently reach a target of defense expenses of 2% of GDP, but the ambitions have increased in recent months, only to increase in recent weeks and days in the midst of many turbulence within the Alliance.
In the midst of uncertainty about what NATO might look like in the future, there is no doubt that these higher spending commitments will remain and perhaps even strengthen whether Europe should decide that it could no longer rely on the United States.
NATO’s most recent expenditure commitments are already ahead of those expressed by several existing members. Last year, Finland spent 2.4% and Sweden 2.2% of their respective defense GDP, and both aim to increase this between 2.6% and 3% in the next three years.
Examples of new NATO initiatives on the northern flank of Europe include the creation of new NATO bases and efforts to establish joint defense forces in northern Finland.
In addition, the formation of the Nordic Air Command joint, which brings together Finland, Sweden, Norway and the 250 Denmark first -line combat aircraft under a attached command structure, with a flexible base and supported by shared information.
In addition, substantial investments will be necessary to reconstruct stocks of advanced weapons systems, including missiles and anti -tank systems, underlines Mr. Johansson.
And while the White House announced this week a break in American military aid in Ukraine, European leaders said they were there in the long term, so here too, we can expect substantial and continuous expenses in arms.
Air surveillance programs and underwater systems are also increasingly requested because the return tension between Russia and the West brings a new thrill in the Arctic region.
In these areas, the boss of Saab is impatient to promote his own solutions, such as the Globaleye’s alert and early control platform, and his wasp at sea, a controlled underwater vehicle that can neutralize explosive devices.
However, given Donand Trump’s strong accent on “America first”, it is unlikely that it will be satisfied with the European members of NATO who choose SAAB, or even any other European defense company with American rivals.
Europe will have to balance its desire to reduce its dependence on the United States with their obvious need to maintain American support.
European members will also have to consider the complexities and interdependencies of NATO defense systems. They often combine technologies and machines, weapons and ammunition, vehicles, crafts and ships, which are produced in several different NATO countries.
In a sense, therefore, the alliance is maintained together by complex supply chains and contractual agreements which could not be untangled during the night.
“The transatlantic relationship of Europe will always remain important,” explains Mr. Johansson, although he also underlines a “growing achievement in Europe that we must do more by ourselves”.
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Nordic nations, like other NATO members, increase their military spending
“The United States really protects its own defense industry, and we should do the same in Europe,” he said, while it welcomes “fierce competition” between commercial defense companies.
However, a large part of this competition can be between new arrivals relating to the defense industry.
Finnish Government Agency Business Finland has published a guide that offers advice to companies on how to do business with NATO.
Its authors predict that the armed forces on both sides of the Atlantic will have “new important needs for services and equipment, both hi-tech and low-tech”.
Many of these needs will have to be met by start-ups and established small and medium-sized enterprises, explains the guide, rather than exclusively by large established defense companies.
Johan Sjöberg, advisor in security and defense policy at the Confederation of the Swedish company, said that membership in NATO has opened doors to Swedish companies, in particular because “the prospect of other countries and businesses (towards them) has changed”.
Mr. Sjöberg adds that he promotes a “holistic point of view, that security is good for business, because increased security and stability offer long -term credibility”.
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NATO has increased its operations in the Arctic region
In Finland too, membership of NATO has created new opportunities, in particular for the plethora of small and medium-sized enterprises that the Siukosaari ambassador calls “Nokia-Sinofs”.
These should provide more and more advanced technologies, such as drones, sensors and digital surveillance systems for programs such as the Norway-Poland “drone wall” that six NATO members develop to defend their borders with Russia.
Indeed, as the nature of the war changes, the security of Europe can increasingly rely on cyberfense and the protection of civil facilities such as pipelines and seabed cables.
But perhaps the most revolutionary idea of emerging from the Nordic expansion of NATO is the concept of “total defense” of the region.
Also applied by Norway and Denmark, it considers national infrastructure such as Internet and telephony, energy production and distribution, road networks and secure food supplies, drugs as part of a total defense system.
Much of this may not be recorded as defense expenses in statistics, but at the same time, nothing is free.
Beyond the expenses of civil infrastructure, the national military service, for example, sometimes distances people from the economically productive parts of the economy, underlines the ambassador Siukosaari.
But maybe what they deliver more for the nation than the simple supply of products and services?
New NATO members believe that they could teach other allied countries one or two things about defense. They clearly offer new perspectives both on how defense expenses should be measured. And perhaps also on how civil society and private companies can play their games.
