Uploaded April 2024 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
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.
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.



![In the Air - Part 1 | Shielding the Baltic Sea
Advances in technology mean the time between an aerial threat appearing over the Baltic Sea and it arriving at its target has never been shorter.
In these episodes, Patrik Gardesten, Deputy Chief of the Swedish Navy, explains, “The Baltic Sea is a small sea. Theres a threat here and it comes from attack aircraft, from guided missiles and other missiles. In order to meet this we need good sensors and good weapon systems.”
Angelica Persson, Business Development Analyst at Saab, fully agrees. “[Aerial threats] can reach us from very long distances and they also come at extremely high speeds – supersonic speeds – which makes them extremely difficult to take action against,” she says. “In order to manage this type of threat, for example, tactical ballistic missiles, we need to ensure that the right system has the right information at the right point in time in order to be able to operate against them in an optimised way.”
Johan Hägg, Naval Product Manager at Saab, explains Saab’s air defence solutions rely on many integrated parts to provide coverage. “We have both active sensors, radar and others, and passive sensors which can detect such threats,” he says. “We bring this together in a management system that can investigate what kind of threat it is and then we have a number of different working parts which we can choose to use. It becomes a complete function chain.”
We would like to thank the Swedish Armed Forces, the Finnish Defence Forces and the Swedish Coast Guard for footage and support. In the Air - Part 1 | Shielding the Baltic Sea](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vXKBpm5IKHg/mqdefault.jpg)






