Countless millions of dollars in goods cross the Baltic Sea on any given day, making merchant vessels a potential target for criminals and enemy states. High-quality surveillance is needed to protect these assets.

In these episodes of Shielding the Baltic Sea, Patrik Gardesten Deputy Chief of the Swedish Navy, explains both that Sweden and its opponents are benefitting from technological progress in the maritime domain. “In order to match them, we need to keep up and have access to today’s new modern technologies. One technology area that's important for us is radar technology,” he says.

Johan Hägg, Naval Product Manager at Saab, says the Baltic Sea’s complex mix of sea and land masses has long created challenges for radar systems. “With earlier systems, you were forced to choose between looking for big things or small things or if you wanted to see objects far away or close by. But with the new systems we can do all of those at once.”

Angelica Persson, Business Development Analyst at Saab, says modern radar systems also offer far greater flexibility. “There's been a technological leap between older systems and the current systems which are to the greatest extent software based. That means that you can carry out upgrades much more flexibly than you could previously,” she says. “This gives you far greater possibilities to upgrade and meet new types of threat.”

We would like to thank the Swedish Armed Forces, the Finnish Defence Forces and the Swedish Coast Guard for footage and support.