IPA35
I think the army has a number of units, and I don't know the exact structure. Some of these are drafted units etc. The center piece, and the thing we/the danish public is discussing is what the army can deploy on "foreign missions". That means proffesional volunteers that have signed up for such missions, and have received a training of such a standard that it's considered safe/acceptable to risc their lives.
These foreign missions are categorized either as:
A) Peacekeeping
F.ex. the UN mission to Cypres, Unifil, various african countries etc.
B) Stabilisation
F,ex, Bosnia
C) Armed conflict
F.ex. Iraq, Afgh.
While A&B is something the danish army has done for many years, and consider themselves as very good at. C is a new one. While the army spend decades preparing for Ivan on it's home turff, it's quite a different thing to get involved in COIN warfare in f.ex. Afgh.
Initially the army sought to do it by having 2 brigades intended for these missions. 2nd brigade was training and low risc missions (peacekeeping and stabilisation) while 1st brigade was intended for armed conflict missions, and as such trained and equiped to a higher standard than the 2nd brigade. To my knowledge, this structure has been abandomed. Instead the army is composed of a number of more or less independed battalion sized units, who are then assembled to form so called "battlegroups". These groups are composed on a mission to mission basis depending on need from a number of active regiments (be that mech inf, heavy armour, engineers etc).
So far, dispite high ambitions, the army has (only) been able to sustain some 800 combat troops forming the core of "battlegroup center" in Gereskh , Helman province, Afgh. Which is under direct danish command and under over all British command. And then some 500 making up a battalion in Kosova (plus some minor peacekeeping missions).
The new defense plan calls for two instead of one battlegroup, each of some 800 men plus some minor peacekeeping missions. In all a capacity to deploy 2k men for indefinate lenghts of time. Of these some 1600 in "sharp" combat missions.
Untop of that the army is to be able to field a full brigade (3k-3.5 men) for shorter periods.
The battlegroups looks like they will receive or allready have a lot of hardware including tactical air transport (helicopters), modern artillery, modern fighting vehicles (LeoIIa5DK, Cw9035, eagle4,Piranhia, archer or and GMLRS) etc etc.
At the same time, as far as I know, the army maintains it's ability to conduct warfare on a divisional level (I quess they do that by using proffesonals in training or on pause together with the conscripted units).
This represent an abandoment of the cold war capacity, to lead a defense of the danish isles against a full blown warpac amfibious attack and simultanious warfighting on "panzer corps" level on the northern flank of the Bundeswehr. Though that army was useless in figting modern foreign wars, not because the training weren't good, but because the soldiers and officers had signed up or was pressed into service to defend the "homeland" - not getting the leg IED'ed in some remote far away dessert, and it would have been political suicide of any goverment to press enlisted men into f,ex Afgh.
It is the conclusion of the danish state that there is no credible threath against danish territory now nor in a forseeable future, and the army transformation has to be seen in that light.
