For several years, the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF), M. Bydén, has acknowledged the significance of digital security threats (Bydén, 2017). Even now, he continues to stress the importance of taking such threats seriously; ‘Sweden is attacked everyday by means that harm our society today and in the more long-term. We are not in a military conflict on and about Swedish territory, but we are in a conflict about the values we want to uphold and interests we want to be handled in a democratic way’ (Dagens Nyheter, 2022).
This article aims to discuss how a state could best use its resources in resisting an aggressor when joint operations have failed. Focusing on the potential role of special operations forces (SOF) in resistance operations, the article examines scenarios where small states are attacked by a superior opponent. Based on the example of Sweden, currently still a militarily non-aligned country that nevertheless has adopted a security policy based on cooperation with other states, we explore how a small state not belonging to NATO might plan and prepare for alternative scenarios. Not being covered by Article 5, Sweden needs to be prepared to fight the war on its own. A better, but less likely, scenario would be fighting together with partners, at home, or in the near abroad. Since Ukraine shares similarities with Sweden in terms of its status as an enhanced NATO-partner, it will serve as an additional, and highly relevant, point of reference in the discussion. The developments in this war indicates that for a non-NATO member the primary alternative will be to conduct the fight on its own. Based on the above, the article will go on to investigate a number of old truths from the late 20th century as well as flipped lessons learned from twenty years of counter insurgency, primarily in the Middle East, South Sahel and South East Asia. Small states tend to have very limited size SOF which indicates that mission prioritization will be a key factor for the utility of SOF in resistance operations. There are, however, ways of finding other relevant roles, than the traditional ones, for SOF in resistance operations.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military contribution to deter Russian aggression in the Baltic region should begin with an overall strategic concept that seamlessly transitions from deterrence through countering Russia’s gray zone activities and onto conventional war, only if necessary. NATO should augment its ongoing program to enhance the denial-based deterrence for the region with threats of punishment that demonstrate to Russian leaders they cannot achieve their aims at acceptable costs. Rather than forward-position military forces in the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), NATO should consider keeping forces further back to take advantage of strategic depth to limit vulnerability to Russian attack and increase operational flexibility. To support the overall denial-based deterrence concept, the Baltics must commit wholeheartedly to the concept of total defense including significant increases to their active and reserves forces.
In the modern business environment a greater number of organizations act worldwide and regularly meet with new cultures and environments. The change calls for a more rapid learning process than previously, in order to adjust to new situations. In order to prevent incidents from recurring, organizations put effort into collecting information after incidents. Learning from experience is often associated with incidents and accidents, however it can also concern positive occurrence. The purpose of the collection is to explore knowledge, analyse what happened and find the root-cause (basic contributions facts and circumstantial conditions) of the incident. If the root-cause is found, the organisation has possibilities to make changes in order to avoid similar incidents and to respond to crises. The collection is regularly done through pre-printed forms, but the reports are seldom sufficient as they often tend to lack vital information. We state, the answers in incident reports are closely related to the form design and the questions arising in the form. To improve the collection method, we designed a structured incident reporting form, using interview and questionnaire research and focused on the aim of the information collection. Our new form was compared to the unstructured form (at present used in the Swedish Armed Forces and NATO) in two experiments. Forty participants from the Swedish National Defence College were recruited to watch film sequences displaying incidents, and in the time that followed report and describe the incident they had observed in writing. The new structured form led to significantly improved results in both experiments. Structured incident reports, with a focus on the customers’ requests, appear to significantly improve after incident reporting. As incident reports become more complete, analysts have an enhanced possibility to find the basic contributing factors and circumstances and there will be a better possibility to learn in the organization and to avoid similar incidents in the future.
The world is rapidly changing and industrial war has been replaced with "war amongst the people" (Smith 2007, p. 267). Today many armed forces are faced with new responsibilities and are operating in new environments, necessitating a higher ability to identify and implement improvements more rapidly than before (NATO SG, 2008). The Lessons Learned (LL) process helps to suggest solutions to identify shortcomings and facilitates in making positive experiences durable (French Air Forces, 2008). In organizational learning, there is a pronounced need to get hold of important experience, to reduce repetition of mistakes and facilitate for highquality experiences in purpose to improve. Those experiences represent an important input to the LL process, which in the end produces results that will be instilled back into the organisation. A serious weakness in several organizations seems to be that numerous experiences are poorly reported. Unfortunately there is little research conducted in the military field. On the contrary, there is a huge need in several organizations to get a LL-process implemented. This paper will focus on the initial parts in the LL-process, observation, report and some of the early analysis. The aim is to compare group performances with individual performances and ask if groups produce more mature experience-reports than individuals. The study was conducted within the Swedish Armed Forces and all participants were Swedish soldiers earlier deployed on international missions. The participants were asked to report experiences (problems, difficulties) from their assignment, using two different methods. Would method 1, with conditions that facilitate a united effort to generate thoughts and a critical discussion, improve the progress to produce additional or more mature experience reports, compared with individual performances? The results showed that groups produced somewhat higher scaled and more mature reports than individuals. No indication was found that any of the two methods used in the experiment produced an increased number of reports.
A serious weakness in several organizations seems to be that numerous experiences are poorly reported. Unfortunately, there is little research conducted in the military field; on the contrary, there is an urgent need in several organizations to get a lessons learned process implemented. The aim of this paper is to compare group performances with individual performances and to determine whether groups will produce more mature experience-reports than individuals. The study was conducted within the Swedish Armed Forces; all participants were soldiers previously deployed on international missions. The results showed that groups produced somewhat better reports than individuals; however, individuals produced a higher quantity of reports per person than groups. It therefore appears to be pointless to report in groups, at least as was done in this study, since the extra effort it takes does not justify the small improvement.
Abstract—Collection of information after incidents is regularly done through pre-printed incident report forms. These tend to be incomplete; frequently lack essential information. One consequence is that reports with inadequate information, that do not fulfil analysts’ requirements, are transferred into the analysis process. To improve, we used theory in design science and designed a new incident reporting form, based upon witness psychology, interview and questionnaire research and with focus on analysts’ within safety science requests. We have previous conducted three experiments to evaluate the new form, built upon a design science hierarchy. The new form can capture knowledge, regardless of the incidents character or contex. The aim in this paper is to describe how design science viz. a design hierarchy was used to construct a new collection form, in purpose to improve a minor artefact frequently used in safety science.
It is generally maintained that learning should be a part of the daily routines of many organizations; this is often referred to as lesson learned processes. The purpose of organizational learning is to foster improvements that seek to both reduce incidents and accidents and reduce their consequences when they nevertheless happen. Safety work is widespread among many organizations, e.g. aviation, hospitals, process industry, fire departments and several armed forces. A considerable part of safety work involves accident prevention, and aims to investigate why and how previous accidents and incidents happened, in order to learn how to avoid them, or minimize losses when they do occur. The collection of information after incidents represents one of the first steps in a lessons learned process, and the result is crucial for further work. Unfortunately, incident reports often tend to be unfocused (they represent a very wide area of issues) and, for that reason, cannot be clustered. They also frequently lack by analysts required information. The overall research objective in this thesis was to develop a report structure that enables the individuals who participated in or observed an incident to provide more information that is relevant about that incident. The first research question seeks to identify whether the Swedish Armed Forces face the kinds of problems that have been identified in earlier research on attempts to learn from accidents and incidents. The second and third research questions aim to ascertain whether the scope and quality of collected information in incident reports can be improved and if the number of incident reports can be increased. The results agree with earlier research and show that many of the problems that are common in other organizations (e.g. aviation, hospitals and the process industry) can also be observed and are a reality within the SwAF. In addition, the results showed that both scope and quality of collected information can be influenced. Group reporting using a consensus process neither had an appreciable effect on the quality of collected information, nor on the quantity of the reports. On the other hand, the new reporting form, which was based on interview and questionnaire methodology, and to some extent witness psychology, significantly improved the quality of the information collected after incidents. The new form proved to be superior, regardless of the character and context of the incidents. The information collected was also in accordance with what had actually happened and, finally, the form proved to be useful when various military “real world” incidents were reported. Finally, the results also provide new insights into the problems and possibilities associated with acquiring useful incident reports. The problem seems not only to be that people may be unwilling to report incidents that they have participated in or witnessed; it is also that they may be unable to do so. Consequently, it may not be sufficient to change the culture of the organization into a learning culture to receive by analysts required information. It is also necessary to help people report what they actually know by means of an improved report structure.
Developing successful knowledge management (KM) processes is extremely difficult. In general, a large number of all KM projects end unsuccessfully. The aim of this paper is to summarize and study the attempts to take advantage of Lessons Learned in the Swedish Armed Forces (SwAF), focusing on international missions. Relevant reports, articles and literature have been studied. With the purpose of understanding the reasons for failure and the failure factors in SwAFs attempts at KM, Chua and Lams model for unsuccessful KM implementation has been applied to four cases from the organization. The results show that SwAF are aware of the importance of knowledge and have attempted to implement KM on several occasions. In most cases, however, the KM projects do not achieve widespread use and eventually end unsuccessfully. Furthermore, many of the KM tools that have been developed are no longer in use. The Swedish Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Demining Centre (SWEDEC) and the Swedish Air Force are notable exceptions.
Organizations which operate in changing environments ought to collect process and create new knowledge frequently, to make improvements and adapt. Due to a combination of international engagements and assignments of territorial defense in the Baltic Sea region, the Swedish Armed Forces is frequently exposed to new tasks, geographical territories and environments. The requirement to transform and adjust to new and, perhaps unknown, duties, give topical interest to organizational learning. The effort to reform and improve military organizations is not a new phenomenon, and is generally maintained as a part of the daily routines (similar to civilian organizations) and is often referred to as lesson learned processes. A learning organization is able to learn and improve through numerous of activities viz. safety board work, formal training, follow-up procedures, incident investigations, briefings and risk analysis. Organisational learning is achieved by the learning of its own members or incorporation of new members who will bring new knowledge with them into the organization. This indicates that it is most important to include the organisations members in a learning process, since the organization itself cannot know or learn anything.
The aim of this work in progress paper is to visualize and share a work in progress case, accomplished in cooperation between the Swedish Defence University and the Swedish Armed Forces. Our research involves is an attempt to actually develop and test a method for transforming individual experience into sharable and operational knowledge in the Swedish Armed Forces.
The current state of geopolitical affairs has radically changed the security environment for both small and large states. A changing strategic security environment has drawn many states, connected by treaty and other cooperative obligations, into conflicts that may appear to be distant from direct national concerns. The nature of many of these conflicts – terrorist tactics, indirect warfare, cyber attacks – has led many of these states to search for and develop different tools for their military toolboxes than had historically been emphasized. These and other changes in national security environments have led both large and small states to increase their dependence on special operations forces (SOF) proportional to other military options. However, smaller resource pools and different positions on the geopolitical stage may lead small states to use SOF differently than they are utilized by large states. This discussion will use a cross-national, comparative approach, looking primarily at the ways in which Sweden and the U.S. have strategically positioned SOF and organizationally configured special operations within their respective militaries. Examples from other states will be used as appropriate.
The rationale behind this paper is to explore and conceptualize the dynamics taking place when bottom-up influenced management meets top-down influenced management in spontaneous reactive first response operations. We employ an interdisciplinary approach based on theoretical perspectives from Systems science, Command & Control science, and Disaster sociology.
In order to stimulate a discussion on theoretical gaps and practical challenges, a model illustrating what we call Command & Control dynamics in spontaneous reactive operations is suggested. The model is applied as a conceptual tool for analyzing the response of the Swedish Police to a terror attack in Stockholm 2017. Both primary data from interviews and secondary data from official investigations are utilized as a basis for the analysis.
We then continue the analytical discussion regarding Command and Control dynamics, and suggest that spontaneous reactive operations give rise to quite different prerequisites for Command & Control compared to planned operations. There is a risk that both academic and practical discussions on how to improve capability do not acknowledge these differences.
Spontaneous reactive operations are likely to initially generate strong bottom-up influences in the Command & Control arrangement of a single organization. Initial decision makers will make rapid decisions and generate a direction that the superior commanders, who are not present from the beginning of the operation, must adapt to. We argue that the intent of the subordinates “restrict” the solution space for commanders on higher levels. Furthermore, we argue that in a spontaneous reactive response there is no specific Commander’s Intent from the start, only a doctrine. This leads us to suggest that the idea on mission tactics in civil operations must be problematized.
Artikeln beskriver ’Military’ Design Thinking från det perspektiv som lärs ut vid USSpecial Operations Command’s Joint Special Operations University (USSOCOM JSOU). Ambitionen är att besvara följande frågor: Vad är Design Thinking och vad är ursprunget till metodiken? Varför är Design Thinking aktuellt idag, och hur kan beslutsfattare nyttja metoden för att påverka komplexa problem? Vidare ger författarna förslag på hur Design Thinking kan nyttjas i ett svenskt sammanhang för att påverka de komplexa säkerhetsutmaningar som Sverige står inför. Sammanfattningsvis beskrivs Design Thinking dels som ett förhållningssätt, men också som en metodik vilken ökar en militär beslutsfattares möjlighet att förstå sig på (appreciate) komplexa problem. Denna fördjupade förståelse ligger sedan till grund för chefens inriktning av verksamhet. Design Thinking ersätter inte dagens metoder men möjliggör att "rätt" problem identifieras och löses.