Ramping up aid from portable anti-tank weapons to heavy-duty anti-aircraft systems was just the latest in a whiplash-inducing array of changes for Sweden after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. After 200 years of nonalignment, Sweden is now a NATO aspirant, prompting a fast-tracked rewrite of its defense strategy and – from its new center-right government – a major defense budget boost.

Ticking off his top priorities for Defense News on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum last month, Sweden’s newly appointed defense minister, Pål Jonson, started with aid to Ukraine. Days earlier, the government announced a package worth $287 million that was larger than all of its previous aid combined.

“First priority: stepping up economic, military, political and humanitarian support for Ukraine, including the transfer of more advanced weapons systems,” Jonson said Nov. 19. He added that the latest package included “air defense and winter equipment – because that’s what the Ukrainians need.”

Swedish military’s supreme commander, Gen. Micael Bydén, in a separate interview, pointed to the political unity to support the new aid package.

“All of the sovereign countries need to be able to defend ourselves, and I would argue there’s a greater understanding to take more national risk and make sure the Ukrainians have what they need,” Bydén said.

Jonson said the next priority is to become a NATO member “as soon as possible,” with Stockholm “eager” to contribute to NATO’s collective defense through the alliance’s enhanced forward presence arrangement along the eastern boundary, air policing or standing maritime forces.

Sweden, along with fellow unaligned Nordic nation Finland, is currently awaiting unanimous consent from NATO members to join the alliance, a process that could reach its conclusion in 2023 despite reservations about their applications from Hungary and Turkey.

The new government, meanwhile, has set a course under its civil-military “Total Defense” plans to boost the defense budget by $800 million in 2023, backed by higher investments in cyber-defense, signals intelligence, defense preparedness and the expanded intake of military personnel. The aim is to increase defense spending by 40% by 2025 and keep rising, Jonson said.

Stockholm wants NATO allies to know it plans to carry its weight. Sweden’s new government has accelerated the goal for defense spending to hit 2% of gross domestic product from 2026 to 2028 – as Germany and others have vowed to take similar steps.

“Just because we’re joining NATO doesn’t mean we can in any way reduce the pace of our own defense investments,” Jonson said.

In recent days, top defense officials in Europe say arms shortages among Ukraine’s Western allies are forcing difficult conversations about how to balance support for Ukraine with concerns Russia may target them next, and just how much equipment the defense industry can quickly produce.

Jonson said the push to support Ukraine and increased defense spending from Sweden and other Western nations has put “quite a lot of pressure” on the defense industrial base, and it must meet the moment. “It’s important to ramp up industrial production in order to keep up with these expectations,” Jonson said.

Front of mind for Johnson is a government finding in May that Sweden must think not only in terms of industrial capacity but reliable supplies. The idea is to fix capacity that is lagging from Europe’s underinvestment in defense after the Cold War.

“We all need to step up and get better burden-sharing across the Atlantic,” Jonson said. “Exports were very important for [Sweden’s] industrial base outside Europe, but now the demand is going to pick up inside Europe.”

Jonson said that Sweden’s robust defense industry, which already has “strong and viable transatlantic links” is yet another way it will improve NATO.

“For being a quite small country, we have quite a vibrant defense industrial base,” he said. “There’s no other country of 10 million that can produce submarines, surface combatants, advanced artillery systems, combat vehicles and fighter aircraft.”

For Bydén, one challenge is that nearly every Western country is looking to the defense industry to ramp up to meet their defense needs simultaneously.

“If you end up too far down in the row, you will not get what you need, you will not get deliveries,” Bydén said. “We’re in a close dialogue with the defense industry, where the needs are greater than the capacity to step up ― if we continue the way we have done.”

The Swedish defense industry must make a “mental transition” as it is called upon to quickly refill weapons stockpiles sent to Ukraine, he said.

In the haste to ramp up production, there’s the dilemma of who moves first – industry, by building new manufacturing capacity, or governments, by firing up their military-procurement machinations, Bydén said. “I wouldn’t point fingers here because we have challenges just to make sure we do our part, and industry has theirs.”

To Jonson, the war highlights the importance of civil resilience, troop morale and training – but also the role of counter-drone capabilities, space-based information and reconnaissance satellites, rocket artillery and long- and medium-range cruise missiles.

Roughly a year after Sweden became the first non-NATO partner to acquire the Patriot missile system, Bydén last month visited Fort Sill, Oklahoma. It’s home to the U.S. Army’s fires school and where Swedish troops were training to use the Raytheon-made system.

Bydén said Patriot satisfies a requirement in Sweden’s new plans, but there’s a gap for a long-range precision strike capability. He said the gap could one day be filled by a multiple launch rocket system like the Lockheed-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) – or even a fighter jet with a strike capability.

While the military would typically hold a competition to fulfill that need, Bydén said a discussion with political leaders was underway, and the ability to move quickly was a priority.

“It’s a discussion now, what are the capabilities and what are our requirements, and then we’ll find the system,” he said.

With Moscow’s land forces tied up in Ukraine, Sweden sees more of a diplomatic, economic, political, informational and cyber threat to be ready for. “They still have an air force that, if not fully intact, they can use; they have maritime forces, but we don’t see Russian conventional forces around our border in a way that we are worried about,” Bydén said.

As Sweden prepares for NATO membership, Bydén argued Sweden has done “the bulk of the job over the years” of integrating with NATO, as a close partner after cooperating in Afghanistan and Libya operations, and through many joint exercises.

“We know each other at the command level down to soldiers and sailors. They know what we’re capable of, and we know the requirements,” he said.

A major shift will come in the form of integrated operational planning, and another will be the inclusion of 200 Swedish personnel into dedicated NATO roles – a significant number for Sweden’s force.

“They will not happen the first day, but we need to prove and show we are serious,” Bydén said.

Adding Finland and Sweden to the alliance essentially turns the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake, and Bydén called the two countries the “missing pieces of the puzzle.” He said Sweden also brings modern thinking and equipment as well as cold-weather fighting knowhow.

“We will from day one be net contributors when it comes to military capabilities,” he said. “It’s not that Sweden will bring volume, but we will bring quality, and we are a modern force.”

Bydén said Sweden’s relative independence for so many years and well-developed civilian total defense concept mean it has something to teach other countries in the realm of NATO’s Article 3, which requires civil resilience and preparedness.

“This is a part where we also can contribute with our knowledge about a strong defense, total defense – civil and military defense in combination,” he said. “Look at Ukraine right now. Russia is not only fighting a military force that’s strong but they are fighting an entire country where the willingness to defend [is] tremendous.”

Still, Bydén said he felt the Swedish mindset, after two centuries of non-alignment, will have to adjust to absorb what it means to be in NATO.

“We will be a country that needs to understand that we will, in harsh times, be secured and defended by the alliance – but we are also expecting to defend the alliance every given hour or time,” Bydén said. “We are not there, and this is a mental transition for the entire country that we need to work on with more proactive information, education.”

Despite fears that spiking energy costs will hurt European support for Ukraine, Jonson said he was glad to see strong support in Sweden, and he predicted it would endure.

“I know in some other countries there’s a certain degree of fatigue, but I feel there’s both political and public support for stepping up support for Ukraine,” he said. “There’s a lot of momentum, and that’s great.”

Along similar lines, Bydén said he expects more decisions from Stockholm to aid Ukraine.

“What we talk about back home is we need to bear the consequences of the war that is being fought in Ukraine,” Bydén said. “Everything that happens right now, whether it be economic, energy, we just have to bear. Those consequences will always be less tough than ending up in a war.”

NATO members that have sent billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment are discussing what stockpile levels they need to meet their obligations under the mutual defense treaty. Decisions facing them now could have consequences for their their own security and for Ukraine, in its fight to repel Russia’s nine-month-old invasion.

“When you are continuing to give away ammunition to Ukraine and you have to evaluate and assess the risk you take for your own readiness, you will have to take into account the threat,” the chairman of NATO’s military committee, Adm. Rob Bauer, said at the Halifax International Security Forum this weekend.

The strain on stockpiles is “across the board,” and particularly sharp for ammunition, he said. In the years before some countries donated to Ukraine, they maintained stockpiles at half capacity or less because they saw little risk or couldn’t afford more, and took a “just-in-time, just-enough,” approach to the defense industry.

“So the urgency now is seen and understood, I think in most of the nations,” Bauer said.

While Russia’s battlefield losses of soldiers, tanks and aircraft have made it less of a threat, Ukraine’s allies have to make complicated calculations about the ability and pace at which Russia can reconstitute its forces, Bauer said.

“The Russians have the same problems we have in terms of their stocks,” Bauer said.

Speaking to the forum via videoconference, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned against giving Russia a breather right now. Amid splits among Ukraine’s supporters over whether Ukraine should enter peace talks, Zelenksy rejected the idea of a short truce with Russia.

“The cessation of war as such doesn’t guarantee peace. Russia is now looking for a short truce, a respite to regain strength. Some may call it the end of war, but such a pause will only make things worse,” Zelenskyy said.

The chief of Canada’s defense staff, Gen. Wayne Eyre, said that balancing Ukraine’s needs for lethal and non-lethal aid and what Canada’s military needs “is something that keeps me awake at night.”

“It’s a constant calculation as to where we can give and what we need to keep for our force generation, what we need to keep for future contingencies, and what industry can produce,” Eyre said at the Halifax forum.

Mindful of Canada’s ammunition levels after Ottawa donated M777 Howitzers and more than 25,000 artillery rounds earlier this year, Eyre said he visited General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems earlier this month to see what’s possible to boost production for 155mm ammunition.

“It’s not easy when you’re dealing with production lines that need significant retooling to get the various [equipment] that we need,” Eyre said. “It’s not easy when you have very complicated supply chains, especially for the component parts of the munitions that are required.”

For countries whose militaries have seen repeated cutbacks since the end of the Cold War, a sharp U-turn is underway. Seismic changes are afoot in Sweden, whose NATO application this year sparked fears of Russian retaliation.

“In my armed forces, we have for 30 years worked in a situation with reductions and downsizing, and plenty of time but no money,” the Swedish military’s supreme commander, Gen. Micael Bydén, said in an interview. “Now ambitions are there, the budget is racing. Ambitions and requirements are high; time is limited.”

One challenge, Bydén said, is that nearly every Western country is looking to the defense industry to ramp up to meet their defense needs simultaneously.

“If you end up too far down in the row, you will not get what you need, you will not get deliveries,” Bydén said. “We’re in a close dialogue with the defense industry, where the needs are greater than the capacity to step up ― if we continue the way we have done.”

The Pentagon is discussing with industry how to both surge new weapons production and coordinate among allies. In the meantime, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pressed allies at a NATO meeting in Brussels last month to “dig deep and provide additional capability.”

It’s an acute challenge for some of NATO’s smallest members, like the Netherlands, which even before its donation of more than $800 million’s worth of aid to Ukraine, was straining to meet its NATO obligations. Gen. Onno Eichelsheim, chief of defense of the Netherlands, said Dutch stocks were “not that high” when the Netherlands opted to send Ukraine 155mm howitzer ammunition and air defense missiles.

“We started with stocks that were not completely filled, that were not completely ready, did not have all the materiel to support what we needed for NATO,” Eichelsheim said. “It means that I immediately have to get stocks filled up by getting contracts with industry, which we started, luckily, a year ago.”

The Dutch government and other European allies have been having discussions with industry about their long-term procurement plans to incentivize production increases ― and how to prioritize deliveries based on which country needs a weapon most. One aim is to build Europe’s defense industry and not depend too much on the U.S.

“We have to coordinate ― specifically within the European continent ― better, because we have to fulfill a certain strategic autonomy in Europe,” Eichelsheim said. “You cannot only rely on the U.S. or on other partners if the need is that high. Because the U.S. will not be able to ramp up completely for us, which is what we thought in the past. That’s not the truth.”

The gray zone between defense firms being forward-leaning and governments actually spending money has increasingly become part of the post-invasion conversation.

At Halifax, Bauer criticized defense firms, saying that after NATO members increased military budgets in response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, industry didn’t expand their production lines to match and charged more.

“As a result of demand going up and production capacity lagging behind the demand, the prices went up. As a result, we started to pay more for the same, which was not the reason why we were raising these defense budgets,” Bauer said. “This had nothing to do with Russia and Ukraine. This had to do with our own system, our own societies.”

Beyond increasing orders, Bauer said, Western allies ought to find ways to finance the defense industry, strengthen supply chains and also engage military suppliers in a “values” discussion about their role in safeguarding the rules-based international order.

Eric Fanning, the chief executive for the U.S.-based Aerospace Industries Association, said that while the European and American defense industrial bases can differ, companies usually bear risks in response to “clear signals” from their military customers.

“These companies have shareholders. They can’t build excess capacity or stocks of things in anticipation of something,” Fanning said. “The department has to send a clear signal about what it wants it, and industry will respond.”

Fanning said that industry’s ability to surge munitions production hinges on companies getting contracts, which he said the Pentagon been slow to let.

“This isn’t pencils,” Fanning said. “Even legacy munitions like Javelins and Stingers are complex and have very elaborate supply chains that feed into them. All of that takes time to line up and get moving again, and it’s very expensive to do if the customers aren’t buying.”