The Royal Swedish Navy has told armadainternational.com that reports of the force using components sourced from military museums to reconstitute its land-based coastal artillery are untrue.
The force announced in early November 2016 that it was reconstituting its coastal artillery; a capability that had been decommissioned by the navy in 2000. At the core of the coastal artillery’s capabilities will be truck-mounted Saab RBS-15 Mk.III GPS/INS (Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation System) and terminal radar homing-guided anti-ship missiles. The reconstituted coastal artillery, the navy told armadainternational.com will be under the command of its naval warfare flotillas; namely the 3rd and 4th Naval Warfare Flotillas headquartered at Karlskrona in southern Sweden, and at the Muskö Naval Base, south of Stockholm.
In addition, the navy disclosed that the materiel for the coastal artillery battery had been reconstituted from decommissioned Royal Swedish Navy corvettes and fast patrol boats and, although military museums have not been used as additional sources of materiel, the statement continued that: “on the other hand, if we had come to the conclusion that we had to do that in order to make the system work, we would not have hesitated.” Nevertheless, the navy declined to provide details on how many RBS-15 Mk.III launchers constitute a coastal artillery battery, how many missiles will equip each battery, how many personnel will support these batteries and when this capability will be considered fully operational, as such information is classified.
