Försvarshögskolan (Swedish Defence University)

And it is my honor and pleasure to welcome to the program today Dr. John Andreas Olson.

He is a retired Royal Norwegian Air Force colonel who is now the head of the Department for War Studies at the Swedish Defense University.

He's also a non-resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

He's one of the world's leading air power thinkers who has also focused on learning the lessons as well as telling the stories of leaders from Desert Storm who helped redefine modern air power.

Joining me and my co-host JJ Gertler will be Norwegian Air Force Colonel John Andreas Olsen.

He is a professor, uh, at the Department of War Studies at the Swedish Defense University, to discuss his great new book about air power legend General Chuck Horner.

Don't miss it.

Thanks very much again.

Today we have a... really, really cool guest.

Docent, Dr. Victoria Fedorchuk, is a senior lecturer at Air Operations Division at the Department of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University.

She teaches on air power and modern warfare, and her current research focuses on different aspects of the Russia-Ukraine war.

And we're so honored, so delighted to have you here, Dr. Fedorchuk, and I recently loved finishing reading your book, your excellent book with Routledge, The Russia-Ukraine War Towards Resilient Fighting Power.

Exactly.

It was great.

Thank you so much for having me and the Swedish Defence University.

It was a great discussion and I've quoted you in my book and a couple of other scholars that were with us.

Can you tell us a little bit about the area you work in? I mean, I'm assuming, of course, that it's related to your new book, The Stay Behinds.

Yes, I have a doctorate in political science and I'm a research fellow at the Swedish Defence University.

Right.

So I spent the last four or five years researching the Swedish stay-behind network during the Cold War.

So I've changed tracks

quite a bit since.

I can see you certainly have, haven't you? Tell us a little bit about the Swedish Defence University then, please.

Well, it's our equivalent of Sandhurst or West Point.

Uh, and, um, um, I think there were, you know, several reasons for that.

You know, the first being that I am, you know, a qualified, uh, academic, you know, uh, uh, affiliated with the Swedish Defense University.

Um, you know, not, not some journalist, you know.

Um, and I think the second reason was that actually the, the sort of climate of fear and paranoia that is g-w-was then and is still currently, you know, um, um, sort of, uh, well, that we have here in Sweden, you know, following the Ukraine invasion.

Um, I, I am curious though, and, uh, I, I bring this up just out of the blue, um, uh, and I'm, I'm certainly not a NATO expert at all.

I, I know very little about NATO, but I was in Sweden a couple of months ago and ... at the Swedish Defence University, uh, who were lovely hosts, absolutely brilliant, and there was ...

it was quite interesting.

We had a discussion about Sweden joining NATO, uh, and apparently of all countries, and again I know very little about, you know, Nordic strategic culture and so forth, but it, it, it, it seemed to be quite, quite a dramatic thing for Sweden to have joined NATO.