On 14 November Major Jonas Björkqvist and myself presented on our approach to tactile teaching methods in practical and scenario-based exercises and examinations at the Swedish Defence University seminar on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
On 11-20 Oct 2023 we undertook a study tour to Georgia with our Advanced Course on Ground Tactics in the Higher Joint Command and Staff Programme. During this week we met with our Georgian counterpart and key institutions in Tbilisi. We also visited the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) to learn more about their work.
On 10-11 October I attended a research conference organised by the Psychological Defence Research Institute at Lund University. I participated in a panel on the role of narratives in information influence and disinformation.
On 18-21 September Major Jonas Björkqvist (Land Operations Division), Patrik Wiklund (Military History Division) and myself led a Staff Ride to the Netherlands and Germany studying Operation Market Garden and Operationn Veritable. This tour was part of the skill development of the Land Operations Division at the Swedish Defence University. Besides studying the two operations, the aim was to test a new pedagogical approach to Staff Rides and to study the new Swedish Army Tactical Regulations.
From 17 June to 16 August, I will be a Visiting Fellow at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) in Belgrade, Serbia. During my stay, I will conduct fieldwork for a range of projects across the Balkans with a focus on Serbia, Hungary and North Macedonia. I will also do pre-recognisance for future Staff Rides and battlefield tours.
Recently, I had the opportunity to be part of a wargame in Sweden that was part of an elective course on Land Operations in our Higher Joint Command and Staff Programme taking place in Skåne in the south of Sweden. It was an intense learning experience that required careful planning and tactical thinking from our students.
This week I have co-organised a Staff-Ride for a course on land operations and tactics for the Joint Higher Command and Staff Program at the Swedish Defence University together with Lt Col Per Lindahl, Head of the Land Operations Division. It has been a very successful trip where we used four different themes – Technology, Logistics, Urban Warfare and Tactics – as a starting point for discussions and seminars at various themed terrain locations.
We also spent a day studying and reflecting on the consequences of the profession, leadership, courage and symbolic values during a visit to Verdun.
Together with colleges at among others the Swedish Defence University, RISE and the Swedish Institute of International Affairs and partners in Denmark, Ukraine and Finland we have won research funding from the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency for major research project on Building Resilience and Psychological Defence: Countering hybrid threats and foreign influence and interference. The project will run over three years and includes four parallel modules focusing on respectively 1) Case studies, 2) International actors and cooperation bodies, 3) Sweden and psychological defence, and 4) Synthesis. More information about the project can be found here: [URL]
My new co-edited volume on Advamced Land Warfare: Tactics and Operations is just out on Oxford University Press. Download full volume or chapters here: https://academic.oup.com/book/45784 (OPEN ACCESS)
The book:
- Zeroes in on the evolving role of land forces, focusing particularly on the changes that have taken place in the art of commanding and executing combat and on the role of rapid technological innovation and information dissemination in shaping warfare
- Revisits established military theory and thinking (some of it neglected in recent years) with lessons learned from contemporary land warfare
- Provides various perspectives on key contemporary developments in land warfare, while also presenting case studies on land tactics and operations in different national contexts
- Draws on the knowledge and insights of leading scholars of war and senior officers to provide a current understanding of the central issues of land warfare
- Explores how land forces remain a crucial feature of warfare as evidenced by recent wars in Ukraine, Syria, Mali, Yemen and Nagorno-Karabak
Table of Contents
March 15th – 18th I attended the International Studies Association’s Annual Convention in Montreal, Canada together with our research group. We organised a panel on “Future challenges for the intelligence and security services” which I co-chaired with Dr Cris Matei of the Naval Postgraduate School. The panel included four presentations:
Intelligence as Policy Impact – is it measurable?
by Per Thunholm (Centre for Total Defence, Swedish Defence University)
Hybrid Threats and the Intelligence Community
by Bjorn Palmertz (Research Institutes of Sweden, RISE)
Current operations intelligence and intelligence assessments: information flows and the tension between quality and speed
by Niklas Nilsson and Mikael Weissmann (Swedish Defence University)
Future threats: what is to be expected?
by Mikael Weissmann (Swedish Defence University)