The Blekinge Wing, F 17, grew out of a Riksdag decision in 1942, in the middle of the wartime expansion of the Swedish Air Force. The wing was formally set up on 1 July 1944 on Bredåkra heath, north of Ronneby at Kallinge, on ground that had been used by the Blekinge Battalion, I 30, between 1888 and 1901. On 17 September 1944 its first commander, Colonel Torsten Rapp, received the wing’s colour from King Gustaf V at a ceremony at F 8, and on 6 November 1944 the Royal Blekinge Wing on Bredåkra heath was inaugurated.

Its first job was naval cooperation. The wing flew the B 3, a licence-built Junkers Ju 86, as a torpedo and mine bomber, with a handful of light bombers and liaison types alongside: the official list names three B 5 dive bombers, B 4 light bombers, Fieseler Storch liaison aircraft taken over from Germany, and gliders for training. Anti-shipping work over the southern Baltic was the logic of the site.

The torpedo idea did not last. In 1947 the T 18B arrived to replace the B 3, but in the words of the official history the torpedo experiments failed and F 17 was reorganised as a bomber wing in the spring of 1947. The T 18B was later armed with a Bofors 57 mm cannon and attack rockets, and about fifteen radar-equipped B 18Bs flew alongside it until 1956. Wikipedia gives slightly different early types, including the B 17; the official list gives the B 17A from 1948 as a target-towing and liaison aircraft.

F 17 entered the jet age in 1954, when about ten A 21R jets were used for two years as a bridge to the new A 32 Lansen. The Lansen arrived in 1956 and made Kallinge an attack wing for almost twenty years; the last A 32 squadron was retired in 1975. Throughout that period the wing’s task stayed maritime: strikes against an invasion fleet crossing the southern Baltic.

The change to fighters came with the closure of other wings. From 1973 F 17 took over two J 35F Draken squadrons from the disbanded Östergöta Wing, F 3, and Kalmar Wing, F 18. In 1978, after the Norrköping reconnaissance wing F 11 closed, one Draken squadron was replaced by an S 37 Viggen reconnaissance squadron flying the SH 37 and SF 37. The remaining Drakens gave way to the JA 37 Viggen fighter in 1982; the official aircraft list dates the J 35F at F 17 to 1973–1981.

When the Bråvalla Wing, F 13, closed in 1993, a second JA 37 squadron came to Kallinge and the reconnaissance Viggens left, making F 17 a pure fighter wing again. The official page says the wing has flown only Swedish-made aircraft. That is true of its combat types, which were Swedish-built or licence-built in Sweden, but its own list shows foreign-built support aircraft such as the Percival Pembroke, the Cessna 404 and the Beech King Air 200.

In 2002 F 17 converted to two squadrons of JAS 39A Gripen, taking over aircraft and personnel from the Scania Wing, F 10, at Ängelholm, which closed that year. The official list dates the A and B models at Kallinge to 2002–2011 and the C and D, with air-to-air refuelling, from 2006. A government commission in 2014 named one of the wing’s two squadrons as the 171st Fighter Squadron; the second squadron’s number is not confirmed by an official source read for this page.

Also in 2002 the wing took over the Air Force station at Visby, which became F 17 Gotland. The Air Force has operated on Gotland since the late 1950s, and the station building was opened on 20 June 1989. There is no resident squadron: the station keeps a hangar for Gripens, maintenance, weather and communications services, and rescue crews who must reach an aircraft fire within 90 seconds while the base is open.

The wing’s stated task is to protect Swedish airspace around the clock with two combat-ready Gripen squadrons, from a base that faces the southern Baltic and, across it, the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Since Sweden joined NATO in 2024, F 17 has flown allied exercises: the government’s 2026 budget bill records that fighters from Blekinge Wing took part in NATO’s Neptune Strike 24:2 in autumn 2024.

Swedish Gripens also flew NATO missions in Poland in 2025. The government reports up to eight fighters in enhanced Air Policing from April to May 2025 and eight more in an air-defence operation from June to August, but it does not name the wing or the Polish base. Reports placing F 17 at a particular Polish airfield could not be confirmed for this page.

From the 1950s the Swedish Air Force planned to survive a first strike by scattering. Under the Bas 60 system, and from the 1980s the Bas 90 system, squadrons would leave their peacetime wings in wartime for dispersed war bases built around road strips and taxiways in the forest. Bas 90 bases typically had two or three short runways of 800 by 17 metres and 20 to 40 hardstands spread over up to 40 square kilometres, with one squadron of eight to twelve aircraft per base.

Hagshult, north-north-east of Värnamo in Småland, is one of the survivors. Wikipedia’s Bas 90 article, citing Swedish press, lists it as expanded in 1983 with three short runways and still in use. Today it is F 17’s exercise base. The Swedish AIP gives a single 2,020-metre runway, 04/22, and closes the aerodrome to all traffic without prior permission. The year the base first opened could not be confirmed.

Hagshult’s value in NATO exercises is that it looks like a war base. A Riksdag committee report on the defence cooperation agreement with the United States records, in its search index, that an American battalion was dropped over Hagshult air base in early May 2024 during the exercise Swift Response. The sentence could not be located in the text returned for this page, so the detail is given as reported by the Riksdag index.

Kallinge has been a helicopter base for more than sixty years. The official list records the Hkp 3, an Agusta-Bell 204, from 1964 to 1985 for utility and search and rescue, and the Hkp 4, a Vertol twin-rotor helicopter, from 1966 to 1992 for rescue and anti-submarine work. The Super Puma, Hkp 10, arrived in 1990 for search and rescue and was later used in Afghanistan; the Hkp 15 (Agusta A109) followed in 2009 and the Hkp 14 (NH90) in 2013.

Today the helicopters belong to the Helicopter Wing, whose official page lists Linköping, Luleå and Ronneby as its bases. The 2014 air defence commission named the unit at Kallinge as the 3rd Helicopter Squadron; which types it flies at Ronneby today is not confirmed on the official site. The official F 17 aircraft list shows the Hkp 10, Hkp 15 and Hkp 14 all still open-ended, but it does not say how many are at Kallinge. Their work over the southern Baltic is rescue, transport and anti-submarine warfare.

The ground side of the wing includes an air base ranger company that protects the base, recovers downed aircrew and runs ground reconnaissance. The Armed Forces say its six-person patrols each include a dog handler and describe the company as unique in the world in its use of dogs. The same 2014 commission also found the 1st Air Base Battalion and the air base ranger school at Kallinge.

The most damaging story connected to the base is not a crash. In December 2013 it emerged that Ronneby’s municipal water supply was heavily contaminated with PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals; the Guardian, as cited by Wikipedia, reported the highest PFAS levels ever recorded in municipal drinking water. A 2025 motion by the Left Party names the source as the Armed Forces’ fire-training ground at the F 17 wing, where firefighting foam containing PFAS was used.

Thousands of people in Kallinge drank the water for years, and the same motion says the PFAS levels measured in their blood are among the highest in the world. Because the Armed Forces caused the pollution but the municipal water company supplied the water, residents had for legal reasons to sue the water company. In 2023 the Supreme Court ruled, according to a Green Party motion, that raised PFAS levels in the blood are a personal injury that gives a right to damages.

The fight then turned to who pays. In May 2024 Social Democrat Magnus Manhammar asked Defence Minister Pål Jonson whether he would raise the question of damages with the Armed Forces, noting that the water company had its own recourse claims against them and that, according to emails seen by Swedish Radio’s P4 Blekinge, the Armed Forces did not intend to pay. Kallinge has since come up repeatedly in Riksdag debates on PFAS, compensation and a proposed lex Kallinge.