Logo: to the web site of the Swedish Defence University

Denna essä tar utgångspunkt inom teoribildningen rörande ”Intelligence Failure” och hävdaratt det går att fastställa om en organisation har ”lärt av sina misstag” utifrån tre undersökandeperspektiv. Först kan man undersöka organisationens erfarenhetshantering, vilket gerunderlag av formell karaktär. Här lyfts exempel från Försvarsmaktens erfarenhetshanteringfram. Därefter kan man undersöka organisationens reformering utifrån olika utkast om”Intelligence Failure” exemplifierade av Zegart, Betts och Bar-Joseph & Kruglanski. Slutligenkan man undersöka organisationens prestationer över tiden och därigenom få underlag omeffekten av lärandet. Det finns dock flera historiografiska utmaningar med att dra slutsatserutifrån fallstudier och varje perspektiv ovan bidrar helt eller delvis med underlag, beroendepå det särskilda fallet. I kombination formar de emellertid ett stabilt ramverk för undersökningarsom kan påvisa om en organisation ”lärt av sina misstag”.

The 2015 Russian National Security Strategy aims to achieve autarky from Western influences on global security, the rule of law, and global trade. By applying a holistic mix of military, political, and economic means to weaken the West, Russia is working hard to strengthen its own role as a global player. Militarily, Russia makes good use of Hybrid War against its Western neighbors, as seen in its intervention in Syria and in its efforts to undermine NATO and the EU.

This article discusses a new form of war, ‘Hybrid War’, under inclusion of aspects of ‘cyber-terrorism’ and ‘cyber-war’ before the backdrop of Russia’s ‘Ukrainian Spring’ and the continuing threat posed by radical Islamist groups in Africa and the Middle East. It discusses the findings of an on-going Hybrid Threat project by the Swedish National Defence College. This interdisciplinary article predicts that military doctrines, traditional approaches to war and peace and its perceptions will have to change in the future.

This book addresses the challenges presented to the EU by an increasingly complex security environment. Through the interdisciplinary approach taken, researchers in economics, law and political science identify a range of problems relating to the multiple security threats that the EU faces, and present new means to address them within their respective fields of expertise. The contributions provide accessible and policy-relevant analyses of crucial challenges to the EU’s ability to function as a political union in the years ahead. 

The securitization of health concerns within the European Union has hitherto received scant attention compared to other sectors. Drawing on the conceptual toolbox of actor-network theory, this article examines how a 'health security assemblage' rooted in EU governance has emerged, expanded, and stabilized. At the heart of this assemblage lies a particular knowledge regime, known as epidemic intelligence (EI): a vigilance-oriented approach of early detection and containment drawing on web-scanning tools and other informal sources. Despite its differences compared to entrenched traditions in public health, EI has, in only a decade's time, gained central importance at the EU level. EI is simultaneously constituted by, and performative of, a particular understanding of health security problems. By 'following the actor', this article seeks to account for how EI has made the hunt for potential health threats so central that detection and containment, rather than prevention, have become the preferred policy options. This article draws out some of the implications of this shift.

This article revisits and revives the concept of ‘the Stranger’ in theorising international relations by discussing how this figure appears and what role it plays in the politics of (collective) identity. It shows that this concept is central to poststructuralist logic discussing the political production of discourses of danger and to scholarship on ontological security but remains subdued in their analytical narratives. Making the concept of the Stranger explicit is important, we argue, because it directs attention to ambivalence as a source of anxiety and grasps the unsettling experiences that political strategies of conquest or conversion, including practices of securitisation, respond to. Against this backdrop, the article provides a nuanced reading of the Stanger as a form of otherness that captures ambiguity as a threat to modern conceptions of identity, and outlines three scenarios of how it may be encountered in interstate relations: the phenomenon of ‘rising powers’ from the perspective of the hegemon, the dissolution of enmity (overcoming an antagonistic relationship), and the dissolution of friendship (close allies drifting apart). Aware that recovering the concept is not simply an academic exercise but may feed into how the term is used in political discourse and how practitioners deal with ‘strange encounters’, we conclude by pointing to alternative readings of the Stranger/strangeness and the value of doing so.

Frame analysis has been developed and applied across contexts in several disciplines such as policy analysis, where the perspective has proven fruitful to carve out essential differences in the construction of meaning and to understand the responsiveness of the strategic use of ideas. However, this article argues in line with other scholars that the analytical potential of frame analysis is not fully utilized in most empirical studies. The article addresses two points of critique raised against frame analytical perspectives: the limited view of the framing process and the limited understanding of frame effects. We suggest two analytical dimensions that help to develop the analytical potential of frame analysis in policy analysis and beyond: firstly, the institutionalization process of frames which can capture the struggle of meaning within policy processes and also distinguish between the varying influences of different frames over space and time. Secondly, the extension of frame effects that through a reconceptualization of frame effects can capture how a frame has an effect on actors other than the audience and beyond its immediate purpose.

Frågan om praktisk examination och hur man kan och bör examinera praktik är någonting som under en längre tid har varit uppe för diskussion på Försvarshögskolan (FHS). Denna artikel syftar till att diskutera möjligheter och begränsningar med praktisk examination. Fokus kommer att vara på utbildningen av officerare inom det ämne författarna verkar – krigsvetenskap. Artikeln tar sig an frågan med utgångspunkt i gällande rättsläge, högskolepedagogisk forskning- och praktik. Det övergripande syftet är att förstå vad man faktiskt får göra, hur det sker rättssäkert och hur det kan göras i praktiken. Artikeln diskuterar även vad som bör examineras praktiskt och hur detta då skall göras.

China’s direct investment in Sweden surged in 2017 and 2018 due to a number of large acquisitions, mostly in the automotive industry. At the same time, the public debate on Chinese investments has become more critical since 2017, when they were typically seen in a positive light. Throughout 2018 and 2019, a number of actors in government authorities, political parties, the media and civil society have described China’s investments as a potential security threat. Although less prominent in the public debate, business representatives have also become increasingly vocal about potential security risks associated with Chinese investment. The Swedish view of China seems to be aligning with what the EU has called its new “more realistic” approach to Beijing. Meanwhile, a number of policy processes have been launched which are likely to lead to the strengthening of existing legal frameworks to scrutinise Chinese investment and activity in Sweden, especially concerning critical infrastructure such as telecommunications networks, but also more generally concerning companies whose activities are regarded as sensitive from a security perspective.

There is an extensive and rapidly growing body of literature on armed Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) focused on the US War on Terror. However, smaller Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for military use, or what this paper refers to as tactical UAVs utilised by small states, have received much less scholarly attention ̶ despite their rapid proliferation in the last decade. In order to start rectifying this dual neglect of more limited UAVs employed by small states, the paper makes an empirical contribution to the study of tactical UAVs. Drawing on a substantial number of interviews and studies commissioned by the Swedish Armed Forces, the paper examines the Swedish UAV program, which is in certain ways representative of a smaller state’s efforts to incorporate UAVs into its armed forces. The paper argues that it is crucial to think in terms of systems rather than the UAV as a free-standing resource to be used on its own. If utilized along with other ISR assets, tactical UAVs may have a significant role to play in asymmetric conflicts.

This article addresses the inferior actor problem of handling a limited physical operational depth in relation to a superior antagonist. It argues that operational depth from an inferior perspective is better viewed as a source of power, a flexible asset constructed from available skills- and resources. It suggests that ambitions to create- or extend an actors operational depth is better approached in abstract terms from the angles: physical-, temporal, and cognitive, whereas the former two offers the more traditional perspectives, while the latter offers an auxiliary approach to better exploit possibilities from an inferior perspective beyond physical space- and resources.

This chapter specifically adresses a generally percieved underlying challange of any educational game, namely the issue of educational effectiveness. This question is, however, almost impossible to answer, since it is dependent on context as well as a myriad of variables such as learning objectives, student background and educational theory like belief in active learning. From this perspective, the inclusion of the issue of educational effectiveness in this chapter is thus based on the experience with the game design and subsequent implementation of the two Matrix Games of Bellum Balticia and the Fictive Republic.

Krigsspel är en fundamental del av militär utbildning. Likafullt är krigsspel kontroversiellt, med återkommande cykler av uppskattning och ogillande. Krigsspel kan definieras som en betingad interaktion med mänskliga spelare som påverkar simulerade militära aktioner. Syftet med denna text är att undersöka och förklara hur militära instruktörer mildrar sina bekymmer med att handha ett krigsspel. I texten analyseras relevanta skrifter om utbildningsspel för att belysa frågan om instruktörer och krigsspel. Denna metod kompletteras av ny och explorativ forskning, som inbegriper grundad teori, avseende det substantiella empiriska området krigsspel för militär utbildning. Militära instruktörer använder sig av tre strategier för att uppnå instruktörs-acceptans (instructor buy-in). En majoritet av instruktörerna verkar sträva efter att undvika explicit spelifiering (gamification). Detta undvikande utgör en förklaring till att vissa krigsspel inom militär utbildning förändras eller upphör. Av denna anledning är det vitalt att militära instruktörer har en förståelse för instruktörs-acceptans för att stärka praktiken krigsspel.

Wargaming has been part of military curricula for about 200 years since the introduction of Kriegsspiel, but it is still something of an art form. This thesis attempts to theorise the practice of military educational wargaming, and specifically to explore why such wargaming takes the form it does.

The thesis is limited to army educational wargaming for officers and officer cadets. Wargaming for analytical purposes, and political and strategic gaming, are excluded.  Instead, the focus is on army educational wargaming at the tactical level, which is arguably more comparable between countries. The research method combines an exploratory approach influenced by grounded theory with a comparative case study approach encompassing three successive levels of army officer education in five countries: Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan.

The research indicates the central importance of individual game directors. This is particularly evident when wargaming forms evolve. The main concern of the individual game director is how to achieve instructor buy-in. This core category encompasses control, credibility and comfort. Three methods, or strategies, were discovered regarding how to achieve instructor buy-in. Those three strategies are: innovative active learning, simple standardising and control & veiling. This discovery contributes to new substantive theory, as it explains how specific army educational wargaming forms commence, evolve and are discontinued.

This article will investigate the implementation of strategic communication at the lower segment of the military hierarchy in counter-insurgency (COIN) operations. It focuses primarily on the experiences of communicating strategically at the tactical level in manoeuvre forces, using Sweden in Afghanistan as a case study. Findings reveal that the tactical level often distances itself from the communicator tasks, arguing that this belongs to other units or personnel. However, the tactical level also pinpoints the vital role they play in shaping attitudes and beliefs in the area of operations. The results thus indicate a type of cognitive split in the perception of the communicator role among the manoeuvre forces. Furthermore, the study reveals several obstacles in effectively executing strategic communication in the military domain. The most prominent areas are contradictions in messages due to force-protection measures and lack of synchronization.

This paper discusses and reviews some previous research concerning what we denote as ‘goal-management’, in other words how to set, apply and evaluate goals when conducting military operations planning. We aim to explain and answer the following question:

• In what way could a review of previous philosophical thoughts on goal-management, decision theory and ethics improve contemporary military operations planning concerning goal-management?

We suggest a guideline (a planning tool) for how to conduct goal-management when planning military operations and exemplify our guideline with two fictive examples concerning the development of an Operational advice and Appreciation of Rules of Engagement. The paper concludes that the application of decision theory and ethics, i.e. important parts of philosophy, can contribute to military operations planning by focusing on three perspectives: an axiomatic, an ethical and a deliberative perspective.

The use of collaborations and partnerships that engage a variety of actors from both the public and private spheres has drawn attention during the last decade as a promising strategy for combatting trafficking and improving assistance to victims of trafficking. This article investigates the Swedish Civil Society Platform against Human Trafficking as an example of successful collaboration between civil society actors. The aim is to explore how the platform as a distinct organizational form is capable of dealing productively with some of the challenges facing internal and external collaboration. We utilize interviews with key actors and a study of policy documents as we argue that the modularity and flexibility of the platform organizational form are key factors in its success. While it is a robust type of organization that may be regarded as a trustworthy partner, it also permits its member organizations to continue functioning as independent entities.

The English school of international relations is in large parts focused on the study of historical change; at the same time, however, it is remarkably unclear on how to understand change in between the idealist belief in progress and the realist eternal cycles of recurrence. This article seeks to avoid this dead end by questioning the school's understanding of change as a commonsensical concept. It is argued that change would be better understood as composed of three facets: one ontological (what is change?), one explanatory (what causes change?), and one normative (is change desirable?). This metatheoretical reconceptualization of change permits cross-checking the three facets against each other for internal coherence, but most importantly, it makes visible the underlying assumptions used to study change, so that ideas of history, causes, and normative ideals can be openly scrutinized, questioned, and defended rather than treated as self-evident. The resulting suggestion of an internally metatheoretically coherent understanding of change in international society signifies a much-needed addition to the English school tool-kit. It brings a promise of a significant metatheoretical overhaul of the theory, which, if taken up, will open up new horizons for the school. In addition, it opens up similar metatheoretical inquiries into other international relations theories’ views of change.

This chapter asks in what way the English School (ES) is a helpful framework for addressing questions that are likely to concern International Relations researchers in the years to come. We draw on recent scholarship to demonstrate the utility, often underestimated, of the English School in making sense of topical issues in world politics. We revisit research on, first, the role of emerging powers and the future of world order; second, globalization and regionalization; and third, European security and Brexit. In each case, the ES sensitivity to nuance and its historical awareness make sense of the complexity and apparent contradictions of ongoing transitions. We conclude that the unique theoretical, conceptual and methodological approach of the English School makes it an essential resource for understanding and critically investigating current world politics.

It is becoming customary to define the English School (ES) as a group of scholars participating in a common inquiry related to a few central concepts, notably that of international society. Although the roots of the ES are often attributed to the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, it is now said to be more of an open society of impersonal ties rather than an exclusive community based on personal relations. But how true is that assertion? If the School is theoretically open to anyone, why are its members predominantly male, white and Western? In this piece, we discuss three obstacles that prevent the ES from becoming a more inclusive venture.

This book uses Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory as a lens through which to examine military operations. Novel in its approach, this innovative text provides a better, more nuanced understanding of the modern ‘battlespace’, particularly in instances of prolonged low-intensity conflict. Formed in two parts, this book primarily explores the scope of Bourdien theory before secondly providing a detailed case study of the Yugoslavian succession war of 1990-1992. Gunneriusson suggests that although theories do not necessarily provide answers, they do help us ask better questions. This volume suggests news lines of interdisciplinary investigation that will be of interest to members of armed forces, practitioners from NGOs, and policymakers.

Utgångsläget för texten är att terräng är en viktig del av fältövningar och att terrängen kan ses från olika perspektiv. Syftet med föreliggande text är att visa på att den för krigföring så viktiga terrängen kan problematiseras och teoretiseras för att ge fruktbara idéer på dess användande, dess natur men också analys av den.

The Russian National Security Strategy of 2015 aims at achieving autarky from Western influences on global security, the rule of law and global trade. Russia aims at attaining this by applying a holistic mix of military, political and economic means to weaken the West and to strengthen its own role as a global player. The Russian approach builds on a strategy of reflexive control which as such is an old method, but the outcome of the application of this approach results in hybrid warfare which as such is a new emerging concept of warfighting. This short article looks at one particular aspect of this Russian strategy, namely using Hybrid, or non-linear, Warfare against its Western direct neighbours in particular and the West in general. We will discuss the underlying cultural logic in Russia’s actions and will reflect on the impact of Russia’s utilization of the existing cultural asymmetry as a form of warfare in regard to the West. The examples used in this text are taken from the context of the conflicts of Ukraine and Syria, but have to be seen as constituting a part of an on-going global conflict aimed at NATO and the EU. The text builds on years of research within the hybrid threat, warfare respectively, context by both authors.

I DENNA ARTIKEL kommer defensiven att belysas utifrån två olika perspektiv och genom två historiska exempel tagna från första respektive andra världskriget. Inledningsvis betraktas defensiven utifrån försvararen perspektiv och med ett exempel från Estland (Narva) 1944. Efter en historik bakgrundsbeskrivning, där bl a doktrinutvecklingen beskrivs, följer ett avsnitt avseende doktrin- och reglementsjämförelse mellan dåtida tyska och nutida svenska reglementen. Vi har i den delen valt att som metod söka efter vissa militärteoretiska indikatorer – fyra typiska begrepp inom defensiv och offensiv strid – för att diskutera likheter och olikheter mellan dåtid och nutid. De fyra valda begreppen är eldens (verkans) betydelse, terrängens betydelse, djupets betydelse och slutligen reservernas betydelse. Jämförelsen appliceras sedan på det taktiska exemplet innan denna del avslutas med en kort sammanfattning.

This study explores the role of mobile phones in livelihood creation among Syrian refugees in informal tented settlements in Akkar Governorate and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Drawing on forty-five interviews with Syrian refugees and ten interviews with aid workers, the study highlights the importance of mobile phones in reviving, maintaining and leveraging social capital for the purpose of securing livelihoods in a context of precarity and restricted movement. We find that mobile phones offer important means for reviving social networks in exile, managing supportive relationships that have been established in Lebanon and liaising with employers. As such, they constitute important tools for coping with a context shaped by legal exclusion, restricted movement, police harassment, decentralised aid provision and a geographical dispersal of support networks, even as they remain a costly investment with uncertain returns.

The existing research on Japanese security focuses mainly on the nation state and conceives of male elites as the key bearers of relevant knowledge about the phenomenon. This article problematizes these biases by zeroing in on women’s everyday-oriented perspectives, which fall outside the scope of security politics as traditionally conceived. More specifically, it analyzes the rich material provided by a survey of the members of three major Japanese women’s organizations, using a mixed-method approach premised on statistical methods and qualitative content analysis. The results show that the Japanese women in our sample accommodate and reproduce content from dominant elite views about security and insecurity. However, they also challenge and at times ignore these perspectives by identifying a host of other insecurities as more pressing in their daily lives, notably those related to environmental degradation and Japan’s political development.

Military pilots have long been central to airpower projection in both combat and non-combat operations. While the historical and contemporary roles of military aviators have been examined extensively in previous scholarship, the present study distinguishes itself by evaluating the future prospects of military aviators. By so doing, it argues that technological advances in autonomy and artificial intelligence (AI) will most likely lead to the development of pilotless aerial vehicles (PAVs), if current technological and social trends persist. In this new order, the military pilot will become a thing of the past.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of air power in humanitarian intervention (HI) and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). Yet, the role of air power in HI and R2P has been understudied. This article seeks to remedy the lack of systematic investigation. It does so by developing a framework for assessing the effectiveness of air power during military operations in HI and R2P and applies it to NATO’s air campaigns in Kosovo (Operation Allied Force) and Libya (Operation Unified Protector). Upon examination NATO is revealed to have fared better in Libya than Kosovo in positively accomplishing its stated humanitarian objectives, minimizing collateral damage and reducing the costs for the interveners, all of which are aspects considered by the model. The relative effectiveness of Operations Unified Protector is generally attributed to geography, diplomacy and technology. It is argued that better ground support, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and burden sharing are needed to enhance the utility of air power in HI and R2P even further.

Content analysis has once again come to the forefront of discussions regarding methods in International Relations (IR). The first wave of content analysis in IR lasted from the 1940s to the 1960s and was marked by a commitment to quantitative and manual analyses. The second wave of content analysis appeared around the third millennium and continues to pervade the discipline also proceeds in a predominantly quantitative manner but emphasizes computer-assisted analysis rather than manual analysis. Critics and advocates of the method alike have, highlighted numerous shortcomings with these approaches. In order to address these limitations, the present investigation argues for a fully integrated content analysis that has the potential to ameliorate the identified weaknesses that have hitherto plagued the method. It accomplishes this task by combining all facets of the method: quantitative, qualitative, manual, and computer-assisted content analyses within a single research project.

Determining whether the opposition is benign or malign is central to the security dilemma. In this context, states have to decide whether the military capabilities of others are for defensive or offensive purposes. Despite the importance of this issue, states’ use of intelligence and diplomacy to gauge others’ capabilities and intentions and its implications for exacerbating, ameliorating and escaping the security dilemma have hardly been addressed. The few who have engaged with the topic have only done so superficially. This article engages with the subject matter at length and argues that both intelligence and diplomacy are double-edged swords in the security dilemma. Intelligence is particularly useful in attaining information regarding the capabilities of others and diplomacy is of great value in acquiring information about their intentions. Yet, they are both prone to error. The best prospects of mitigating and escaping the security dilemma are therefore by utilizing intelligence to gauge others’ capabilities and diplomacy to decipher their intentions, even though these efforts may instead end up aggravating the security dilemma dynamics due to mistakes.

In contrast to the vast majority of Western countries, Sweden left large segments of the society open instead of imposing a lockdown to combat the spread of the coronavirus. As a result, the Swedish COVID-19 measures, largely devised by its expert agency on health, garnered widespread international attention. Despite the global interest in the corona strategy of the Public Health Agency of Sweden (PHAS), there are currently no systematic studies on their COVID-19 policy. The present investigation focuses on the controversies that have characterized PHAS' work with reference to risk assessments, facemasks, voluntarism, testing, and the protection of the elderly during the pandemic. Overall, this inquiry demonstrates that PHAS' risk assessments were initially overly optimistic and their facemask recommendations in conflict with large segments of the scientific community for an extensive period. Yet, their voluntary measures worked moderately well. In their testing, PHAS did not manage to deliver on their promises in time, whereas several measures implemented to protect the elderly were deemed inadequate and late. 

The classical realist writings of E.H. Carr and constructivist publications of Alexander Wendt are extraordinarily influential. While they have provoked a great number of reactions within the discipline of International Relations, the ethical dimensions of their works have rarely been studied at length. This article seeks to remedy this lack of examination by engaging in an in-depth scrutiny of the moral concerns of these two mainstream International Relations scholars. On investigation, it is revealed that Carr demonstrates a strong commitment to the ethical principle of fairness and Wendt a moral concern for the prevention of the use of organized violence. These concerns are shared by Rawlsians and cosmopolitans in International Relations, and these findings may thereby encourage closer engagement between these diverse communities that rarely speak to one another and strengthen disciplinary research on morals.

This article scrutinizes the assumption that friends support each other in times of war. Picking up the notion that solidarity, or 'other-help', is a key feature of friendship between states, the article explores how states behave when a friend is attacked by an overwhelming enemy. It directs attention to the trade-off between solidarity and self-help that governments face in such a situation and makes the novel argument that the decision about whether and how to support the friend is significantly influenced by assessments of the distribution of material capabilities and the relationship the state has with the aggressor. This proposition is supported empirically in an examination of Sweden's response to its Nordic friends' need for help during the Second World War - to Finland during the 1939-1940 'Winter War' with the Soviet Union, and to Norway following the invasion of Germany from 1940 to 1945.

The international security environment has seemingly departed from a post-cold war period of everlasting peace and has instead evolved into a volatile and increasingly grey area of war and peace. Security challenges arising from both hybrid wars and hybrid threats are high on security agendas in Sweden and Europe as well as internationally. However, despite the attention there is a lack of research that addresses how such “new” wars and threats should be handled. While studies do exist on specific issues, a comprehensive approach to how hybrid wars and threats are to be handled is still lacking. This is particularly the case when it comes to the sharing of experiences between states. This workshop constituted a first step towards developing such a comprehensive approach.

The workshop’s aim was to be a bridge across disciplinary boundaries as well as between researchers and practitioners within and outside Sweden; integrating each group’s extensive experiences and knowledge into a coherent whole. Besides producing and disseminating new knowledge, the intention of the workshop was to establish a foundation for long-term collaboration; the first step in the creation of a European Network on Hybrid Warfare Capabilities that can work across borders and link state of the art of research and practice.

Although mainly a scientific workshop, a number of practitioners were invited, with a mix of presentations by academics and practitioners. This was intended to foster innovative and reflective discussions across the academic-practitioner divide. The workshop also aimed to develop new ideas associated with hybrid threats/warfare in order to facilitate future cooperation

These proceedings include a summary of the key points made by the presenters, along with conclusions and policy recommendations derived from the ensuing discussions. Conference programme and a list of abstracts for the papers and presentations can be found in the appendix.

This text is a rebuttal to Niklas Wiklunds remarks on Swedish research and training in naval tactics, presented in his article ”Svensk marintaktik – existerar det någon sådan?” in Tidskrift i Sjöväsendet – Kungl. Örlogsmannasällskapet, nr 6 2019. It claims that although Wiklund’s remarks are thought-provoking and may serve as a basis for discussion, they are also misguided. Wiklund’s mistake is an inadequate analysis of tactics and a misconception regarding scholarly research. This text posits that an analysis of tactics must include an analysis of tactical knowledge and what it means to know tactics. Furthermore, it urges that the Swedish Armed Forces and the Swedish Defence University coordinate their efforts to develop tactical knowledge.