Regional civil-military coordination - Experiences and lessons for the forthcoming regional commands

In 2013 the Swedish Armed Forces (SwAF) will set up four new regional commands which will take over the task of regional civil-military cooperation from the former detachments of HQ J2 and J9 sections. This study aims to collect the existing lessons of regional civil-military cooperation and present the forthcoming forms of Swedish regional cooperation. This study describes the development of these tasks on regional levels, describes the new regional commands, experiences from the staff members operating in current regional staff detachments and identifies organizational strengths and weaknesses. It suggests areas of consideration and development for civil-military cooperation within the near-term regional commands. Initially the report presents an outline of the Swedish Armed Forces' support to civil authorities, the tasks and the division of labor on a regional level (between regional staffs and the County Administrative Boards). The data describing experiences with staff members have been collected through interview based surveys. The findings from this study suggest that the demands and needs at the different commands will vary with the regional variations in vulnerabilities, presence of critical infrastructure, demography and geographical conditions. Contemporary civil-military cooperation has mainly aimed at coordination of SwAF's resources in support of civil authorities. Successful cooperation is based on domain knowledge, personal relations and access to networks. The SwAF must therefore consider which minimum levels of cooperation that is acceptable since it is the same networks that will provide coordination of civil authorities support to the armed forces in crisis or war. This report therefore argues that military support to civil authorities in strain is equally greatly beneficial for SwAF since such maintained networks provides knowledge, procedures and relations that can be utilized in crisis and war. It is therefore critical, at an early stage, to construct mechanisms and procedures for transferring knowledge, networks and experiences from the former staff detachments to the new regional commands.