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Finland Arms Acquisitions from Foreign Suppliers
Until the late 1950s, strained economic conditions
precluded
the refitting of the Finnish armed forces, which had to be
content with the large stocks of munitions and equipment
remaining at the end of World War II. As the economy
strengthened, a political decision was made to modernize
the
armed forces so that they could defend Finnish neutrality
credibly. The government allocated a modest amount for new
equipment in 1955, and it enacted a major new
appropriation in
1957. These procurements stimulated a revival of the small
Finnish armaments industry, although most major items
continued
to be acquired from abroad. Britain was initially the
primary
source of supply, providing tanks, aircraft, and a
training ship.
Jet trainers were purchased from France and Sweden, and
antiaircraft guns and fire control systems were obtained
from
Switzerland. The decision reached in 1959 to rely more
heavily on
arms procurements from the Soviet Union was partly a
political
effort to demonstrate Finnish neutrality by balancing
purchases
from the East and from the West. Economic factors also
played a
part. Finland's trade with the Soviet Union was based on
bilateral balancing, and imports from the Soviet Union had
to be
found to compensate for the high level of Finnish exports.
Favorable credit terms offered by Moscow were a further
attraction
(see Foreign Economic Relations
, ch. 3).
Among the heavy weapons deliveries from the Soviet
Union
during the early 1960s were T-54 and T-55 main battle
tanks,
armored personnel carriers, self-propelled antiaircraft
guns, and
artillery pieces. The political crisis sparked by a Soviet
call
for consultations under the FCMA treaty in October 1961
convinced
Helsinki that further efforts must be made to build up the
nation's air defenses in order to demonstrate its
determination
to resist violations of its neutrality. Accordingly, an
order was
placed with the Soviet Union for thirty-five MiG-21Fs and
associated Atoll air-to-air missiles. Since the MiG
fighters did
not have an all-weather capability, the Finnish air force
turned
to Sweden for Saab J-35 Draken all-weather interceptors;
the
first of these aircraft were delivered between 1972 and
1977.
Beginning in 1981, the MiG-21bis, an all-weather fighter
with a
more powerful engine, was introduced to replace the
MiG-21F. It
was armed with a more advanced version of the Atoll
missile.
Extensive new purchases for the modernization of the
armored
forces began in 1981 with the acquisition from the Soviet
Union
of armored personnel carriers, followed later by T-72
tanks,
armored transports, and BMP-1 assault tanks.
By the mid-1990s, the entire combat air force of Draken
and
MiG fighters will need replacing, and observers have
surmised
that the Soviet MiG-29 will be one of the models selected.
Financing the purchase would be facilitated by the fact
that an
imbalance had developed in Finnish-Soviet trade as a
result of
the drop in the price of Soviet crude oil deliveries.
Financing
of a Western model, possibly the Swedish JAS-39 Gripen,
was
expected to present a difficult budgetary hurdle.
Finland was eligible to purchase materiel under the
Foreign
Military Sales Program of the United States Defense
Department.
Its principal acquisitions from the United States were
advanced
electronic equipment and I-TOW (improved tube-launched,
optically
sighted, wire-guided) antitank missiles.
Data as of December 1988
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