Finnish Air Force to Deploy Five Hornets to Sweden for Live Air Exercise
The Finnish Air Force will participate in the Swedish Air Force's FVÖ 16 live air exercise from September 2 to 6. A detachment of five Hornet multi role fighters and fifty airmen will deploy to the Visby airport on the Swedish island of Gotland for the duration of the exercise.
Flygvapenövning 16 is the main air exercise of the Swedish Air Force in 2016. The exercise area will cover the south-eastern part of Swedish mainland, the island of Gotland, and the surrounding sea areas. Exercise assets consist of dozens of aircraft and a total of 3,200 soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Swedish army, navy, and air force.
The exercise objective is to provide the Swedish exercise units an opportunity to rehearse national air defense related tasks as an integral part of a major air operation.
Operating out of an air base established at Visby on Gotland, the Finnish Hornet detachment is set to conduct target emulation sorties for the Swedish air defense assets.
This will be the first time the Finnish Air Force contributes to FVÖ exercises. The deployment takes place under the umbrella of the FISE cooperation scheme established between the Finnish and Swedish air forces. This arrangement also includes weekly Cross Border Training missions between the two services.
A further extension of the FISE scheme is set to take place on October 10 to 14 during the Finnish Air Force's Ruska 2016 live air exercise. In Ruska 2016, it will be the Swedish air force's turn to emulate targets for Finnish air defense units. Some sorties conducted by Swedish aircraft will be flown from air bases in the north of Sweden.
