The car journey has brought us to the Life Guards (Livgardet) regiment in Kungsängen (central Sweden). According to the instructions and a map pin, the interview subjects for the day are out on exercise in the forests surrounding the area. The car bounces along muddy forest tracks while the eye is fixed on the next bump in the terrain. Suddenly something green moves in the corner of the eye, and at that same moment a handful of soldiers appear, having just blended in among the trees. We have arrived.
Jakob Blomqvist and Fabian Duke are two of the founders of STRILAB, the Life Guards Brigade's (IB 1) own laboratory and war incubator. The duo are reserve officers at the brigade, and it is they who receive us at IB 1's field exercise on Good Friday.
STRILAB grew out of the need to develop new capability and technology at unit level. IB 1 has previously produced its own technical solutions, which are now being tested in the field, and within the framework of the incubator, a five-week programme will be held during the summer in which participants can test problems and solutions for the modern battlefield. According to Blomqvist, it is a natural way to make use of the expertise that exists within the unit.
"We are one of the few units that has this volume of part-time soldiers (GSS/T, contracted part-time service personnel). Some of us work regular jobs, but the majority are students, and a large proportion are engineering students," Blomqvist explains.
Duke adds:
"According to a survey, 53 per cent of our part-time employees are studying some form of technical education."
When IB 1 was reactivated in 2024, the unit was therefore made up largely of students with an interest in both technology and defence. Blomqvist recalls when the first spark, for what is today STRILAB, was first ignited. In connection with an exercise, they also wanted to use a drone.
"Good luck with that, we thought. But then we thought again... If we can't buy or get hold of one, can't we just build it ourselves?"
In a workshop at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, a group of soldiers and students got to work. They sketched, 3D-printed, and assembled the drone that was subsequently used in the exercise.
"All of a sudden we had soldiers who could be both users and developers of new technology, and at that point it is best to let them do exactly that," says Blomqvist.
After that, similar grassroots initiatives continued to emerge within the unit.
Among other things, Soldatappen (the Soldier App) was built to facilitate administrative management and save time for soldiers and leadership. For a battalion that has grown from 30 to 400 contracted part-time personnel in the space of a couple of years, reducing time spent on administrative tasks is a valuable resource.
"We have a company command made up of professional officers who spend an enormous amount of time on paperwork alone. If we can free them from that, it is tremendously valuable for the entire operation," says Duke.
Råttan (the Rat) is another initiative at unit level. The remote-controlled unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) has gone through several different iterations, and today it is present to take part in the exercise.
Are there many regulations to take into account when building your own equipment in this way?
"There is definitely a comprehensive regulatory framework. At the same time, we are in a period where the level of risk-taking must be fairly high if we are to maintain the pace, and that means you need to weigh up safety from several perspectives," says Duke, continuing:
"Our reason for existing is to build combat units and maintain their capability. That is our primary mission, and now that we are taking our own initiatives, we have so far been met with dynamic and positive responses."
Do you feel that this has changed in recent years?
"Four years ago, I do not think this would have been possible. That culture did not really exist within the Swedish Armed Forces (Försvarsmakten), unlike today. There is now greater trust placed in individual units, officers, and soldiers," says Blomqvist.
They highlight Ukraine as a leading example in this regard, pointing to the development units that exist at a low organisational level. When soldiers themselves are involved in developing new solutions, the cycle for producing and implementing new methods becomes much faster.
"It has proven to work in Ukraine and has been a major success factor. That is also why there is a willingness to allow such initiatives to emerge here," says Blomqvist.
The programme itself is structured as an intensive development programme inspired by the start-up world. The format resembles an accelerator or incubator, and the programme runs for five weeks during the summer. Experts from various parts of the sector will also participate in an advisory capacity.
At the same time, the brigade is gathering experience from its activities during the spring. Those evaluation points then form the backbone of the work carried out by the programme during the summer. The duo argue that experience management within the Swedish Armed Forces tends to lose direction over the summer period.
"We train in the autumn and exercise in the spring, gather lessons learned, and then the summer holiday arrives. People disperse in different directions, and when you return in the autumn there are new conscripts and a high tempo. It then becomes difficult to find the time to put the experience into practice," says Blomqvist, continuing:
"Our idea is that the Combat Laboratory (Stridslaboratoriet) should become the final piece of the puzzle in that cycle. Participants take the lessons from the spring exercises and work with them for five weeks over the summer. The goal is to produce concrete solutions that can then be submitted and implemented during the autumn."
What will implementation look like?
"What we develop will be prototypes to understand what solution is needed. It is therefore not something that should be finished and ready to deploy. We want to be able to take methods and test them, see what works and what needs to be improved."
Instead of top-down orders being investigated and procured over a period of a couple of years, these initiatives come from the bottom up. The hope is that lead times and purely administrative aspects will be reduced.
"A good example is to consider what this would have looked like a few years ago. It would have resulted in an order sent up to headquarters, investigated at length, and then perhaps put out to some form of procurement. The entire process would have taken a very long time," says Blomqvist.
Duke adds:
"Instead, we have brought with us an attitude from the start-up world. We try things out on a small scale, test ideas, sometimes fail, and learn from it. We then improve the solution directly and begin scaling it up over time. It is an entirely different way of working: fast and from the bottom up," he concludes.