A comment to Sara Unger about maneuver warfare.
The debate about Swedish maneuver warfare and the priorities of the armed forces is alive.
I Request and I military debate Lieutenant Saga Unger and Major Simon Qvist have discussed the Swedish ground forces and their importance to NATO. This is welcome and a nuanced discussion is needed within the army and the Armed Forces in general regarding our development and priorities.
I hope to contribute to that discussion.
Unger summarizes his article by writing that “land combat capability constitutes the most relevant and strategically significant contribution to NATO” and that it is the Swedish land combat capability that is “crucial to NATO’s deterrence and defense…”
She bases this on three central factors – that ground forces have a special position; that maneuver warfare is important to avoid a war of attrition and that experiences from the war in Ukraine cannot be uncritically transferred to our conditions; and finally that the Arctic Ocean is of great strategic importance to NATO.[1]
Simon Qvist, in his reply in Militärdebatt, points out that even though Sweden possesses a ground combat capability that few other countries possess, we must ask ourselves the question:
“How do we ensure that these units are operationally, tactically and combat-technically relevant tonight, tomorrow or in six months, whenever they need to be NATO's lock in the north?”
Looking at the past five years of war in Ukraine, Qvist points out that the development of ground combat units in Sweden appears to be “limping,” and the organization of our units “appears to be changing only marginally.”
Finally, Qvist states that “the willingness and urgency to reexamine established truths should be high in order for our ground forces to remain relevant into the future.”[2]
Like Qvist, I want to discuss an elephant. But it doesn't necessarily apply to platforms or technological developments. itself, but how multiple factors affect our ability to conduct maneuver warfare to the point that alternative methods are preferable.
I do not intend to provide a longer explanation of the concept. maneuver warfare, and readers likely have strong opinions about the concept. I therefore lean towards Ola Sandberg's article “Why think about maneuver warfare? It's ordered!” from 2020 regarding definitions of the concept.[3]
Sandberg describes how maneuver warfare is based on decentralized decision-making, but also on “creating, finding and exploiting gaps in the opponent that one’s own forces can quickly exploit before they disappear. It is through these gaps that a quick decision (or a quick defeat) can be achieved.”
At the same time, Sandberg points out – which is highly relevant after Sweden's NATO membership – that "with the limited military resources that Sweden possesses today, we cannot engage in anything other than maneuver warfare, something that our doctrines also state. If you are a state with large economic and personnel resources relative to your opponent, you are happy to use these large resources to minimize risks and wear down your opponent."
NATO's methods (now our methods) "are based primarily on American strategic, operational and tactical culture, where an analytical approach and risk minimization are used to deal with complex military problems."
The war in Ukraine has demonstrated a technological revolution in warfare where unmanned systems rule the battlefield. Sweden's NATO membership forces us to relate to an organization with completely different military capabilities than we previously had access to.
As both Unger and Qvist point out, the Arctic is a unique environment. Unger describes it particularly well when she writes that “cold weather, darkness, snow, difficult terrain and limited infrastructure have a major impact on the units and the way the battle is conducted. The ability to operate in this environment places high demands on equipment, training and experience of winter conditions.”
Despite this, Unger advocates maneuver warfare in the Arctic.
This leads me to ask a number of questions:
- How do we solve the deterministic nature of the terrain with the current organization and structure? Even before the technological development that has occurred since 2022, the terrain on the North Calotte was channeling, thereby limiting mobility and making the terrain easier to defend. Maneuvering, creating breakthroughs, and striking in depth were already very difficult. Add to this the technological development and Russian lessons from almost five years of war, and the ambition appears unreasonable.
- Which units will conduct maneuver warfare in the North Sea? Artillery and logistics are currently almost entirely dependent on the road network. In the North Sea, this is extremely limited. The maneuver to be carried out by a division within the framework of a corps risks resembling Russian units outside Kyiv at the end of February 2022 more than American divisions during the Gulf Wars. However, the division is more vulnerable because the Russian use of drone systems and sensors would quickly identify and combat its vehicles. This leads to the next question.
- What air defense should units conducting maneuver warfare be protected with? In July, the Ukrainian company General Cherry reported how their C-UAV drones knocked out 16,000 flying UAVs of various types.[4] The technological development of UAV systems, sensors and command support systems makes any form of movement near the front a huge risk. Today, the Armed Forces lack drone air defense on a large scale. At the same time, Russia is recognized as skilled in the space domain and in telewar, and produces proven patrol robots in large quantities. How is this taken into account?
- Consider that the Swedish division, despite the channeling terrain, the lack of a road network, poor access to C-UAS systems, and great distances, still manages to maneuver and create a breakthrough in Russian lines on the North Calotte. What happens then? Do we think Russia will give up? Is that what the experience from Ukraine tells us?
The fundamental question we should ask ourselves is whether maneuver warfare is at all a realistic idea on the modern battlefield and in particular on the Arctic.
Amos Fox, a retired American lieutenant colonel and professor at Arizona State University, has declared in a recently released book (“Maneuver is Dead”) that maneuver warfare is dead.
Fox gives us a number of reasons. First, that it was never the answer to effective warfare, but is one of a number of ways to fight effectively. Second, that today's battlefields offer only short-term opportunities for maneuver warfare, which requires space, open terrain, and time. When two combatants are close together, and no attackable flank is available, the parties cannot maneuver. Thus, positional or attrition warfare becomes the dominant form of warfare. The third reason that Fox gives is increased urbanization. In the modern world, cities are increasingly interconnected, and where there used to be rural areas, roads, villages, and the outskirts of cities and settlements are now poorly suited to maneuver warfare. Combat in settlements, Fox writes, is defined by positional warfare and attrition.
Finally, Fox writes that the increased transparency on the battlefield with sensors and support from space, cyber, drones and long-range precision combat will make any attempt at maneuver warfare a “heartbreaking experience.”
Fox suggests that strategists and military leaders must get used to this idea and stop seeing wars of position and attrition as less appropriate forms of warfare. New ways of organizing the battlefield and technology are needed, and new military organizations are developed. We must get used to it, Fox writes, that wars are won through attrition and exhaustion.[5]
The above is only a brief summary of some of his arguments, but they appear convincing.
Var, how , and why Unfortunately, Unger's text does not explain that we will conduct maneuver warfare on the North Calotte. It is simply taken for granted that a breakthrough (probably at the front?) is desirable on the North Calotte. But as I wrote above – then what?
As Unger himself points out, we need to focus on applicable lessons from Ukraine. That positional and attrition wars are effective methods of waging war have been demonstrated in Ukraine. One of countless examples is from July when two Russian mechanized companies attempted to attack Ukrainian positions in Donetsk. According to Ukrainian sources, it was the largest concentration of Russian combat vehicles in the area in almost a year. The attacking force suffered losses of up to eighty percent before they even reached the battle line.[6]
At the same time, Ukraine has deliberately fought against Russian front-line logistics. The result is that Russia has a cumulative shortage of trucks. The needs of the Russian army at the front are covered by about 14,500 trucks a day. In July alone, Ukraine knocked out over 3600 of them.[7] Russia has more air defense, radio warfare and practical experience with C-UAVs than Sweden. How well would we have handled a similar situation?
As Qvist points out in his article on Militärdebatt, one of the strengths of the Swedish army is that "we are in place from day one, our units live in the Nordic area of operations."[8]
This is an enormous strength, if we have units that can move quickly and defend the right terrain at the right time. It requires prepared defense lines, dug-in positions, sensors in place, and platforms suitable for defensive combat. It requires that we have practiced, as Qvist notes, “a long-term, coherent defense against a qualified adversary.” Trying to “lock in” and conduct maneuver warfare on the Arctic when Russia has access to the sensors and drone systems that they use daily in Ukraine seems like a recipe for impending disaster. By properly preparing for a war of position and attrition and acquiring the right equipment, we increase our endurance, the time for reinforcements to arrive, and create room for action for allies. By using the terrain to our advantage, rather than seeing it as an obstacle to our maneuver, we increase the cost to the enemy to attack. Using positional and attrition warfare in the Arctic is not about rejecting maneuver warfare because maneuver warfare by definition is bad, but because maneuver warfare is suboptimal given the terrain, and the intended enemy's ability to detect and combat units.
In October 2025, I described how Germany was forced to its knees militarily and economically during the First World War.[9] It is a model where robust defense at the front (positional and attrition warfare) goes hand in hand with increased sanctions and the combat of strategic targets in depth. Such a pronounced strategy in the event of war would mean that the army needed to be reorganized, with a focus on fighter units, infantry, ground long-range combat, drone units, and indirect fire. This does not exclude mechanized units, but it would mean a shift in how we view the defense of the Arctic and our view of maneuver warfare.
Personally, I am not a fundamentalist regarding the 'form' of war or technology, really. We must win. Everything else is secondary. But at the present time, under the prevailing conditions and terrain, it appears to be a mistake to try to carry out maneuver warfare on the North Calotte. We need to dare to think new – organizationally and technically.