General Alexis Gregory Grinkovich

As governments remove barriers to work with defense firms, you're doing that here in Sweden, and we can learn from you.

As you build transatlantic partnerships or pan-European partnerships or global partnerships with other like-minded nations, we can learn from you.

And as you create opportunities for co-production and co-development, we can learn from Sweden.

Sweden's industrial base is already doing these things and demonstrating that it can deliver.

Yesterday, I heard the phrase made with Sweden.

In stark contrast to the other phrase that you might have chosen, a more protectionist phrase of made in Sweden.

This is fantastic.

All allies would benefit from adopting this mentality as a rising tide lifts all boats.

In conclusion, everything I'm seeing from Sweden, the collaboration, the modernization efforts, the defense investments, the health of your defense industry,

Frankly, I think someone gave you all a checklist for being a model ally and you just went down and started checking it off.

So it's a real privilege to be here today with you today with a model ally who's doing so much for the alliance.

And I truly look forward to your questions.

Well, I won't comment on the political dimensions of recent rhetoric.

It's not my place to do that as a military officer.

But I will just observe the readout from the North Atlantic Council, where all of our permanent representatives from the 32 nations get together to discuss thorny issues.

Those dialogues continue in Brussels.

They've been healthy dialogues from what I've heard.

And I think that's the most important thing.

Members of the Alliance who've worked together for so many years are talking together and working through these learning issues.

Is it only six months?