- It is a strained situation already now with a shortage of professional officers, says Lars Fresker, who is chairman of the Officers' Association, to SVT.
- At the same time as we are to grow within the country, it will be another burden when about a hundred officers go to Natostab and Natocenter, he states.
Exactly how many officers must enter the NATO service is of course unclear.
Lars Fresker points to Norway, where about 250 officers are in NATO service, and then it will at least be about so many, the reasoning reads.
Seen in relation to the number of officers in Sweden, it currently roughly corresponds to approximately the same number who retire each year.
Lack of disarmament
The shortage of officers in the defense is a well-known recurring theme for discussion in recent years.
The background is that decades of disarmament in 2014 were replaced by a major overhaul since Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in Ukraine.
A NATO membership thus means an additional challenge for the defense and all those who work there.
At the same time, the attitude towards NATO does not seem to be disturbed by such an extra challenge if Sweden were to join now, according to Lars Fresker.
- Now we have not done any membership survey but the picture I get is that you are for NATO.
You are for cooperation.
You have to help each other to be able to defend the country, but I do not know exactly what it looks like among the members.
Officers are also by definition loyal, and is it the case that politics decides that we should be part of NATO, well, then we are part of NATO, says Lars Fresker.