ABSTRACT
The 1995 Submarine Commission Report was not able to identify the national origin of the intruding submarines. This provoked the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 20 February 1996 to appoint a group to make a study of possible security policy motives for the foreign submarine activity. The lack of evidence pointing to one nation or another made it necessary to classify this report (it was declassified in March 2000). Ambassador Lars-Erik Lundin was appointed the chairman of this study group. The other members were Ambassador Carl-Johan Groth, Professor Rutger Lindahl and Ambassador Lennart Myrsten. The report concluded that the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact had the strongest military motives for operations in Swedish waters, while both the Soviet Union and NATO countries may have had political motives for such operations. The authors underlined, however, that the strongest motives were to be found in the East. Only Baltic Sea states were believed to carry out major operations in the Baltic Sea area, and of these states only the Soviet Union, later the Russian Federal Republic, had the capability of operating with several midget submarines and conventional submarines in Swedish waters. The study does not exclude some Western activity, but the main intruder is believed to have been the Soviet Union. The number of Soviet submarines in the Baltic Sea, the actual intrusion of a Whiskey submarine in October 1981, and Soviet interests in the Swedish coastline because of increased tension between the two blocs all pointed to the Soviet Union.1
