History, Politics And Current Affairs

So if everything goes according to plan I hope to spend this Saturday at Malmen airbase. This year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Swedish airforce so they’ve tried to put together a (for Sweden) unusually packed airshow, along with a bunch of static ground exhibits. This is the preliminary display schedule: We’ve got some oddities such as someone managed to talk the relevant Britons into doing a temporary paint job in the SwAF livery on a Spitfire for the display, since we don’t have an airworthy one available ourselves. On the ground the displays are apparently going to include a pair of Saab J21s which is a rarity. I’m hoping to be able to get into a Gripen E simulator as well, though I expect the lines to be ferocious for that. They’re expecting crowds into the six figures so that aspect is going to be interesting. Assuming I do make it there I hope to have some photos to share afterwards.

F-35 and F-15 as Strategic Bombers?

We want pictures!!

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2026 11:24 pm F-35 and F-15 as Strategic Bombers?

We want pictures!!

Hehe, I suspect they mean strategic bombers and F-35+F-15. Presumably what they have in the UK and can spare for a trip over here at that moment. B-52s would be the likely candidate but I am intrigued that they didn’t write it out so maybe there’s a B-2 in the UK as well?

Micael wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2026 3:17 am

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2026 11:24 pm F-35 and F-15 as Strategic Bombers?

We want pictures!!

Hehe, I suspect they mean strategic bombers and F-35+F-15. Presumably what they have in the UK and can spare for a trip over here at that moment. B-52s would be the likely candidate but I am intrigued that they didn’t write it out so maybe there’s a B-2 in the UK as well?

IF there’s a B-2 anywhere - how could you tell?

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2026 4:01 am

Micael wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2026 3:17 am

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2026 11:24 pm F-35 and F-15 as Strategic Bombers?

We want pictures!!

Hehe, I suspect they mean strategic bombers and F-35+F-15. Presumably what they have in the UK and can spare for a trip over here at that moment. B-52s would be the likely candidate but I am intrigued that they didn’t write it out so maybe there’s a B-2 in the UK as well?

IF there’s a B-2 anywhere - how could you tell?

I have concluded I have amazing stealth-nullifying vision ever since I saw a B-2 do a 4th of July flyover in the US some twenty odd years ago.

Micael wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2026 10:19 am

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2026 4:01 am

Micael wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2026 3:17 am
Hehe, I suspect they mean strategic bombers and F-35+F-15. Presumably what they have in the UK and can spare for a trip over here at that moment. B-52s would be the likely candidate but I am intrigued that they didn’t write it out so maybe there’s a B-2 in the UK as well?

IF there’s a B-2 anywhere - how could you tell?

I have concluded I have amazing stealth-nullifying vision ever since I saw a B-2 do a 4th of July flyover in the US some twenty odd years ago.

That’s only for air shows when they WANT everyone to see them!

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2026 3:31 pm

Micael wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2026 10:19 am

Nightwatch2 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2026 4:01 am

IF there’s a B-2 anywhere - how could you tell?

I have concluded I have amazing stealth-nullifying vision ever since I saw a B-2 do a 4th of July flyover in the US some twenty odd years ago.

That’s only for air shows when they WANT everyone to see them!

I see

Well B-2 or no B-2, it turns out that it isn’t the only stealth thingy I could have a look at at the show. Saab has unveiled a new unmanned fighter jet (planned entry into service in ~10 years), and GKN Aerospace Sweden (ex-Volvo Aero) has unveiled a cruise missile with 600-1000+ km range and featuring a brand new turbojet engine made by themselves.

Okay so it was a very long day yesterday, but very fun! Me and ~100,000 of my closest friends attended day one of the air show, they’re running the same program again today but I won’t be there for that. Nearly all of the preliminary program I posted above came to pass except for the Bleriot having to cancel with what I believe was a technical issue, and perhaps more unfortunately the US Airforce flyover never happened. Understandable if there was some operational need that took precedent but a missed opportunity at soft power projection.

There was a large amount of aircraft on static display along with some exhibitions and such. You could queue up to go into some of them such as the transports, and sit in a Gripen but I decided to not do that as the lines were absurdly long and it would have meant not getting a decent look at many of the aerial displays. Conditions for snapping photos of the aerial stuff with a phone camera was also not great so I only got a few decent ones, but it looked great in person. I’ll post some stuff below.

Now at the risk of making every Briton angry at me, we had two full sized aerial display teams participating, the Red Arrows from the UK and the Frecce Tricolori from Italy and well, the Italians won this one in my book. Better display program with a greater degree of visual spectacle from the perspective of the crowd, many smooth formation changes and so forth. Here I also have to mention the speaker factor. The Finns had their smaller fourship Midnight Hawks team performing also and their guy (Finnish speaker) put in a good effort to read the display script in Swedish, which was only mildly surprising since he probably took Swedish in school. The Italians did surprise majorly by their guy also doing the thing in Swedish and it wasn’t a bad effort at all(!) Either that guy had some prior exposure to Swedish from like a school exchange year or he must have rehearsed that a lot beforehand. Typical Italian enthusiasm as well.

That’s where the Red Arrows came up a bit short unfortunately. Their guy was very robotic reading the script (in English), seemed to fall behind the actual display at times, and large portions of it was just a generic RAF promo that didn’t have anything to do with the display ”the RAF is deployed worldwide every day in support of allies and…” I think they need to rethink this a bit, it didn’t come off very well.

Overall I was impressed with the logistical effort the Airforce had put into the show, there were challenges getting to and from there since the local transport infrastructure isn’t really dimensioned for a crowd this size but things still felt under control. Someone had clearly considered the potential for an active shooter situation, apart from civilian police there was a substantial military security presence roaming around including fully tac-kitted counter-SOF peeps on motorbikes and quadbikes. Plus I saw a medic gal with more tourniquets attached to the outside of her medkit backpack than I’ve ever seen anyone carry before. Better be safe than sorry.

I’ll add a few photos here and probably a few more later.

Thanks for sharing

Saw a revised estimate now, 120,000 people attended yesterday. No wonder it seemed so crowded.

Some other notes: the F-86/MiG-15/J-29 joint program was neat, haven’t gotten such an appreciation for just how visually similar they are when in the air. Also the Catalina/DC-3 joint program was really neat, never seen a Catalina in the air before.

Another 110,000 spectators on Sunday for a total of 230,000 over two days. Major success this, considering the population of Sweden is about ten million. Glad that the airforce hit a home run for their 100th anniversary.

There’s naturally a huge volume of still footage and video popping up all over, lots of photographers/videographers there. This is a 24 minute long compilation video of some of the highlights, if you have any interest at all in aerial displays it’s worth a watch, some really neat stuff in there:
https://youtu.be/Ufb7Tm_xqDA?is=9fLnMz2gpiiL_pgE

Great pics and trip report, thx Micael. I love big airshows heh.