Combined arms is a central and integral part of how Sweden’s armed forces choose to operate on strategic, operative and tactical level. Despite this fact the manuals, regulations and doctrine which Sweden’s armed forces rely on does not allow for tracing the military theory behind the concept. Focusing on Sweden’s light air assault battalion, which only have lighter weapons, the question arise on how they are to achieve combined arms. The study’s aim was to get an answer if combined arms also are applicable to airborne and air assult operations. To tackle this question this study used Robert Leonhard’s theory of combined arms and asked the question of how it can explain success and failure in two historic cases, operation Mercur 1941 and operation Market Garden 1944. The analysis focused on the initial three days of each operation.
The method used was a qualitative textanalysis of empirical descriptions of the events during the initial phases of the operations using indicators deducted from Robert Leonhard´s theory of combined arms.
The result was that combined arms was used extensively in operation Mercur and by quite a large degree in operation Market Garden. What the analysis show is that despite the fact that it was used to quite an extent during operation Market Garden it was not sufficient to achieve success, however in operation Mercur it played a big role in achieving success. The analysis on the operations showed that other factors played a role such as veterancy, differences in equipment and tactics but also a difference in numbers.