Sweden will spend 4 billion crowns ($437 million) on unmanned drone systems to be delivered over the next two years, the country's Defense Minister Pal Jonson said on Monday.
The NATO member will buy unmanned systems including long-range attack drones, electronic warfare systems and surveillance drones as well as marine surveillance and minesweeping drones.
"No one knows what the next war will look like but one thing is clear, the future battle field will be characterized by unmanned systems and long-range capacity," Jonson said at Sweden's annual defense conference in Salen, northern Sweden.
"Anyone who doesn't understand that is going to be either dead or defeated. War is, as we know, a cruel teacher."
In addition, the government will invest 1.3 billion crowns in new military satellites, Jonson said.
According to a report in Defense News, Sweden plans to have several independent mobile and modular company-sized units that will have a mix of different weapons including guns and radar systems. They will protect critical assets such as bridges, rail hubs, nuclear and hydroelectric power plants as well as cities.
In a post on X, Johnson said that the focus is on short-range air defense that can defend both civilian and military targets against cruise missiles and drones – the new territorial air defense needs to be simple and flexible, it should be possible to produce and maintain a number of units and to retrain soldiers who have been trained on other systems."
European Union member Sweden, which joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March 2024, has been ramping up permanent military spending since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Swedish government is also borrowing 300 billion crowns to speed up the acquisition of new equipment such as air defense systems, submarines and surface ships.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report