At about 7,500 tons standard and 9,348 tons full load, the ships remained modest by treaty-cruiser standards. Their long hull, shallowish draft, and 33-knot performance suited mobile operations in the Baltic rather than distant heavy-cruiser competition. Sweden envisaged three groups, each built around a cruiser and roughly eight to twelve destroyers. Those mobile formations would work with coastal fortifications, replacing reliance on increasingly inadequate coastal-defence battleships with a layered maritime-defence system.
Chapter · 3:30-5:22
Specifications for a Baltic task-group leader
Displacement and hull dimensions lead into Sweden's plan for cruiser-led destroyer groups as the mobile core of coastal defence.