Equipment
The standard armaments are Ak 4B battle rifles, (locally modified Heckler Koch G3), with red dot sights and sometimes with x4 optical sights for squad sharpshooters - or more rarely with a M203 grenade launcher - FN MAG (Ksp 58) machine guns, Carl Gustav recoilless rifles (Grg m/48) and AT4 (Pskott m/86) light anti-tank weapons. The AK4 (H&K G3) was the standard weapon of the Swedish Armed Forces until the formers replacement by the AK5 (FN FNC derivative). Psg 90 sniper rifles are also issued to designated snipers and some personnel are issued with Glock 17 (Pistol 88) pistols. Other equipment include anti-tank mines and manually detonated anti-personnel landmines, explosives and signals equipment. Some first and second generation night vision equipment of Russian manufacture have been issued, but illumination flares are otherwise used. Signals equipment at platoon level include AN/PRC-25 (Ra145), AN/PRC-77 (Ra146) and Ra180 backpack radios.
Dogs are also used as sensor systems, usually two for every platoon. The animals are issued and trained by one of the national auxiliary defence organizations.
The rapid response units have thus far been equipped with Volvo C303 cross country vehicles and Bandvagn 206 tracked carriers. The army is currently trialling possible replacements.
Read more about this topic: Home Guard (Sweden)
Famous quotes containing the word equipment:
“At the heart of the educational process lies the child. No advances in policy, no acquisition of new equipment have their desired effect unless they are in harmony with the child, unless they are fundamentally acceptable to him.”
—Central Advisory Council for Education. Children and Their Primary Schools (Plowden Report)
“Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter.”
—Betty Rollin (b. 1936)
“Dr. Scofield’s equipment, which you have just seen, radiated waves direct to Professor Houghland’s laboratory. When these waves came in contact with those the professor’s equipment was radiating, they created the interstellar frequency, which is the death ray.”
—Joseph O’Donnell, and Clifford Sanforth. Arthur Perry (Bela Lugosi)