By Supantha Mukherjee

STOCKHOLM, June 17 (Reuters) - The Swedish Armed Forces

on Tuesday joined Telia and Ericsson's 5G

innovation program to strengthen military communications,

logistics, security and support interoperability within the NATO

alliance.

Telecom operator Telia and mobile gear maker Ericsson

partnered in 2023 to start the NorthStar 5G innovation program

to experiment on the latest 5G technologies and had focused on

industrial customers.

"We need to speed it up due to the geopolitical situation in

the last six months," Brigadier-General Mattias Hanson, chief

information officer at the Swedish Armed Forces, told Reuters.

"We have talked about it for years, but now we have to start

it up," he said.

European countries have been scrambling to boost their

defences against a potential Russian attack after the Trump

administration made clear since it took office that the U.S. was

no longer willing to be the main guarantor of Europe's security.

Sweden, NATO's newest member, currently spends around 2.7%

of GDP on defence and said this year it would target 3.5% of

defence spending in 2030.

The Swedish Armed Forces would work with new players and

startups to build new capabilities and solve military problems.

One of the areas of cooperation will be communication for

drones, Hanson said. "We will try to figure out how to be faster

in innovation and how to solve a military problem with civilian

technology."

The military has its own communication system, but plans to

use a combination of different technologies such as radio,

satellites, 5G and fiber optics.