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Sweden’s accession to NATO entails a fundamental reconfiguration of the doctrinal conditions shaping the Swedish Air Force. This study examines how military cooperation is articulated through tensions between NATO and Swedish doctrines, and how these representations affect the strategic room for manoeuvre of a small-state air force. Drawing on Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to be? (WPR) approach, the study conducts a qualitative, comparative analysis of key NATO and Swedish doctrinal texts. The findings reveal a strong convergence around deterrence, tempo, and interoperability as organising logics, in which flexibility is increasingly defined through standardisation. At the same time, small-state constraints, asymmetries, and dependencies are largely left unproblematised. The study argues that the resulting tension between great-power-oriented doctrinal rationality and small-state survival logic should not be understood solely as a limitation, but as a potential strategic resource for the Swedish Air Force within the alliance.