The Swedish Air Force demonstrated ACE operations to Janes and other defence media in May. Åmsele Airbase in the north of the country will be used as a dispersal site for Gripen combat aircraft from June 2025. (Janes/Gareth Jennings)
Sweden has reacquired a former airbase for Agile Combat Employment (ACE) use.
Åmsele Airbase has been brought back into military ownership by the Swedish Fortifications Agency, which manages the country's defence estate, 20 years after it was sold to the private sector in 2005.
Swedish national media, which reported the acquisition on 13 December, said the base in the northern Vindeln region of the country will be ready for use as a dispersal site for Swedish Air Force (SwAF) Saab JAS 39 Gripen combat aircraft from June 2025.
ACE is a NATO concept of operations geared at providing the means to deploy rapidly between dispersed operating locations without sacrificing combat capabilities. The decision to reacquire Åmsele Airbase is part of a wider effort by Sweden to revive the off-base ACE operations which, in many ways, it pioneered during the Cold War. While the practice of dispersing combat aircraft to remote and austere facilities throughout Sweden was fairly commonplace during the Cold War, it largely fell out of favour with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
ACE has gained increasing importance across NATO following Russia's renewed invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the lessons being drawn from that ongoing conflict. Sweden's admittance into the NATO alliance in March coincided with a pivot back to ACE operations geared at increasing the resilience of the SwAF.
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