Thread by @noclador

I am sorry 🇸🇪 Sweden, but I must talk about the Blekinge-class submarine procurement disaster.

Because it exemplifies what happens, when a nation guts its defence budget AND nonetheless demands from its defence industry to deliver cutting edge systems.

This never works!
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Sweden built its first submarine HM Hajen (pic) in 1904.

Since then Sweden continuously built submarines at Kockums' shipyard in Malmö and at the state owned Karlskrona shipyard.

Between December 1954 and December 1988 (34 years) the two yards launched 24 newly built and
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6 upgraded submarines (The latter, the Jaktubåtarna boats, were extensively reconstructed WWII era coastal submarines).

From 1960 to 1979 Swedish defence spending was always above 3%... in 1980 the decline began, but when the last Västergötland-class submarine was launched
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on 9 December 1988 Swedish defence spending was still at 2.59% of GDP.

And then it declined and declined and declined...

In 1989 the Swedish Navy fielded 12 submarines (5× Sjöormen, 3× Näcken, 4× Västergötland).

Between 1992 and 1996 Kockum's yard in Malmö built
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3 Gotland-class submarines to replace the 5 Sjöormen boats, which were sold to Singapore in 1997. The same year Sweden's defence budget fell below 2% for the first time.

Still, the Gotland-class (pic) was the best submarine class when the boats entered service.
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With their Stirling cycle engines the Gotland class could stay underwater for 2 weeks and the boats were quieter than any other conventional submarine.

But already in 1998 the first Näcken class submarines, were retired and Sweden decided against replacing them...
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As a direct consequence Kockums was sold in 1999 to Europe's biggest submarine yard, the German HDW Group.
By then Sweden defence budget was at 1.89%... once defence spending falls below 2%, which is the minimum to preserve capabilities, a nation has to start cutting units,
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programs, etc.
Instead of ordering new submarines, Sweden opted in 2003 (1.6% defence spending) to insert a 12 meter section with a Stirling cycle engine behind the sail of the Västergötland boats.

Top to bottom:
• Gotland
• Västergötland (original)
• Näcken
• Sjöormen
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This improved the capability of the two newer Västergötland boats (Södermanland - pic after the insertion, and Östergötland), but the costs lead to Sweden selling the two older boats to Singapore in 2005 (1.41% of defence spending).
By this time Sweden had not laid down a new
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submarine for 11 years... five years later in 2010 the Swedish government decided to order two new submarines (1.19% defence spending).

By now Kockums was part of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (former HDW Group), which between 1960 and 2010 (50 years) had built 80 submarines
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at its yards in Germany, while a further 26 submarines had been license built by yards in Turkey, India, Brazil, South Korea and Greece.
Furthemore at the time TKMS was building the most advanced conventional submarines, the U212A class.
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Sweden planned to lay down the first of the two A26-class submarines in 2012 and commission it by 2018... an ambitious timeline. Sweden wanted to spend 1.5 billion Swedish Krona (SEK) per boat (a mere €160 million).

Soon the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV)
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and TKMS were embroiled in a bitter dispute about the boats' design, price and timeline... TKMS felt the Swedish design/capability demands and price intentions were impossible to reconcile.

The dispute dragged on for years and on 8 April 2014 the FMV and
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Swedish Military police raided TKMS' offices in Malmö.
Three months later, on 22 July 2014, TKMS, which had delivered four submarines to other customers in the 4 years of the dispute, sold Kockums to Saab... which had 0 experience building submarines.
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On 30 June 2015, FMV and Saab Kockums signed a contract to build and deliver two A26-class submarines... for 3.8 billion SEK per boat (€410 million or €250 million more than Sweden wanted to pay initially).
The first boat should be commission in 2022 (in 7 years) which was
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wildly ambitious.
In 2015 Swedish defence spending was at 1.07%... and it would fall even further in the next years... and Sweden had not laid down a new submarine class in 23 years, which meant most engineering knowledge had been lost.
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And so, instead of delivering the first submarine in 2022, Saab Kockums laid down the first submarine on 30 June 2022 (!).
By then the costs per boat had grown from 3.8 billion SEK to 7 billion SEK per boat (€750 million)... and delivery was promised for 2028 and 2029.
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This week the Swedish Armed Forces admitted that the two submarines will be delivered even later - sometime between 2031–2035... and they will cost even more.
Worst outcome: 20 years from contract signing to delivery.

In the same timeframe (2015 to 2035) TKMS will deliver
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at least 16 submarines.

The lesson here is that either a nation continuously orders complex weapon systems from its defence industry to keep the engineering knowledge alive, or if a nation sunsets a capability and 20 years later decides to rebuild this capability, it then
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licenses the production of an existing design.
In the 1990s Italy, which had just finished building the second batch of Sauro-class submarines, required a new submarine design and instead of designing a new class Italy joined the German U212 program in 1996.
The U212 was
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then adapted to the Italian requirements and by 1998 the first U212A was laid down by HDW in Kiel for the German Navy.

In 1999 Italy laid down its first U212A, which was launched in 2003 - just 7 years after Italy entered the program. The first two Italian boats included
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just some Italian-made combat systems... while the next two boats (built between 2009 and 2015) included more Italian-made systems.

When Italy joined the U212A program it insisted that the Italian industry must be allowed to develop U212A variants... and that it did.
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On 11 January 2022, Italy laid down the first of four new U212 NFS... as of today three are under construction and all of them will be launched before the first A26-class (now renamed Blekinge-class) boat will be launched.

Sweden, due to having gutted its defence budget,
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didn't design or build a submarine for more than 2 decades... and instead of licensing a design to rebuild its submarine capability Sweden decided to design an entirely new class without any outside help.

Please never do that again!

Either do as Portugal did and order two
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submarines from TKMS, or license a design, or order CONTINUOUSLY from your industry.

You just can't switch on and off such complex industrial capabilities every quarter century.
And you don't save any money, as restarting ALWAYS costs more than just continuously ordering.
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