Sweden’s accession to Nato in 2024 ended two centuries of military non-alignment and forced a fundamental restructuring of defence logistics, with collective integration weighed against historically prioritised autonomy. While role theory has been used to analyse foreign policy before, how it applies to the way smaller states renegotiate specific functions domestically remains unexplored. The study examines how Sweden’s role conception has been renegotiated regarding defence logistics during 2015–2024. This is achieved by combining Holsti’s (1970) and Aggestam’s (2006) role theory with Kress (2002) logistics theory in an ideational analysis of Swedish Defence Resolutions. Using the two idealtypes ”active independent” and ”faithful ally”, the results show that the role transition is neither linear nor uniform across logistic domains. A previously dominant role is instead gradually subordinated to a previously peripheral one without being abandoned, which is here termed hierarchical subordination. The adaptation is however primarily discursive. While the legitimising logic has been redefined, much of the logistics system retains its previous structure. This discrepancy suggests that the integration of the logistics may have preceded the formal policy shift, with the state’s role conception having only recently adjusted to achieve strategic coherence.