Research problem: To improve and grow it is necessary to analyze earlier experiences of technology shifts. After World War II, Swedish society and its military forces went through a rapid regime shift with motorization – engines replaced horses. There are no analyses of how this affected the armed forces, their horses and the staff that took care of them.
Purpose of study: To describe and analyze how care and health of army horses was affected during the motorization of the army 1945-1955 and, in a wider perspective, investigate and understand how technology shifts affect the armed forces, by identifying inertia.
Method: Eleven annual official reports from the Veterinary Surgeon General of the Swedish army, which include both a summary of the horse health and maintenance for each year and data sets of diseases and their outcomes, were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitively.
Results and Conclusion: Several frictions related to human resource issues were identified, including lack of interested and qualified recruits for horse placement, presumed to be due to the motorization having made professions such as horse cart driver and farrier redundant. Lack of qualified staff contributed to increased leg fractures after fights between horses. Horse temperamental disorders increased, mainly in boarded warmblood horses at farms where the farmers had no warmblood experience. Furthermore, minimal effort was made to remedy the horse facilities, despite repeated reports of disrepair and unacceptable building conditions. This may have been caused by miscommunications between the different levels of decision, where the heads have decided that horses should be removed from the army, and those working at regiment-level were unaware or unwilling to accept this decision. Another important issue was that the farmers did not maintain the boarded horses in sufficient shape and stamina for the refresher meetings, which meant that in case of mobilization the army would have insufficient horsepower to maintain mobility.
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