, Admiral Juhani Kaskeala, the chief of the Finnish Defence Forces (FDF), said Monday that Finland should raise its defence spending to a “Nordic level” in order to buy time for “the inevitable re-evaluation of defence policy solutions”.
“The Defence Forces have been developed for almost a decade in a way that has rendered both non-alliance and alliance genuinely into realisable options. At a Nordic resource level, that choice would remain credible into the next decade,” Adm Kaskeala said.
Speaking at the opening of the 180th national defence course, Adm Kaskeala underlined that last year, Sweden's defence spending was double and Denmark's and Norway's one and a half times greater than Finland's. The defence chief believes that an increase in defence spending is necessary, regardless of the differences in the defence policies of the three countries.
“In international comparative studies one is perplexed why in the Nordic region it is Finland that invests the least amount of money into defence. For Finland's national economy could afford a better effort.”
Adm Kaskeala said that a Nordic-level defence budget could buy a return to a normal frequency and duration of reservist military manoeuvres, improvement in the socio-economic status of conscripts, more flight hours and days at sea and new equipment.
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