
An artist's impression of ‘swarming drones', of the kind now being envisaged by the Swedish Armed Forces. (Getty Images)
The Swedish Armed Forces is to operationally field a ‘swarming drone' capability that has been developed at an accelerated pace, the country's defence minister said on 13 January.
Speaking at the Folk och Försvar (People in Defence) annual national conference in Sälen, Pål Jonson revealed that Saab has been developing over the previous 12 months the capability whereby a single soldier can autonomously control up to 100 small multicopter unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
“With these drone swarms it is possible to conduct both reconnaissance, positioning, and identification,” he said.
Jonson said that the ‘swarming drone' programme was part of a wider drive within the Swedish defence sector to develop and deploy new capabilities much quicker than had previously been the case. This, he said, was based on the ongoing experience of the conflict in Ukraine.
“Sweden is one of the world's most innovative countries, but the war has accelerated the pace. For this reason, innovative capacity in Swedish civil and military industry must become beneficial to our combat units much more quickly. This is a prerequisite for relevance on the modern battlefield. To achieve this, new and more efficient co-operation between authorities and businesses is needed, both here in Sweden and with our allies,” he said, adding, “In the past, political expectations for these areas have been low. Those days are over.”
Jonson added that the new capability will be trialled during the upcoming Exercise ‘Arctic Strike 2025', during which NATO will test new defence technologies in the High North region. Saab had not commented on the programme at the time of publication.
For more information on swarming drones, please see
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