The Swedish Army has not actually fought a war since 1809, so they've had two hundred years to hone their Flash design skills to perfection...

A very solid game-like web experience. Despite all the talk, it's going to be a while until HTML 5's <video> and <canvas> can deliver something like this.

It's true. An all black screen with no apparent content will indeed be hard to replicate without resorting to the awesomeness that is Flash.

"The Swedish Army has not actually fought a war since 1809"

Well, they're doing something right, then.

Sweden unwittingly executed a great strategic manoeuvre by surrendering all of Finland to Russia in that last war of theirs. That reduced Sweden's land border with Russia to a fraction of what it used to be. Later Finland became independent, which eliminated Sweden's Russian exposure completely. It's easier to maintain peace when you don't share a border with a chronically unstable aggressive empire.

It actually reduced the border with Russia to zero.

No, it didn't. It still had a considarable length of common border with the russian province Finland in Lappland. (To be honest, that was my first reaction too, but as the GP wrote, Sweden stopped to have a border with russia only after Finland became independent in WW1).

I think it's more to the point to say "during WW1". Finland wasn't directly involved.

The present Swedish government recently did a review of the military. The criticism was, more or less, that it was like the British navy before WW I, where officers were promoted based on how clean they kept their ships.

(Lots of money go into the army and lots of equipment is bought -- and these days have almost no units ready. There is talk about changing this a bit.)

I'm not going to claim that Swedish politicians are supernaturally prescient or anything, but... the last time the Swedish military was closed down since it obviously would never be needed, was in the 1920s. I'd better move west. :-)

Seems like the perfect screening test for the military. The objective is apparently to see who is willing to submit to an order to perform an endless series of seemingly pointless tasks using cool looking but over-engineered and awkward technology.

I guess you didn't try it out. Spoiler: the first test requires you to disobey an order to pass.

Nevertheless they seek techno-drones.

Politically correct ones, at that.

I don't think it's a good personality test (the instructions are often unclear), but it is a fantastic production.

Apparently Swedish is no longer a required skill in the Swedish military...

I've taken the online US Military test and got 99/100 percentile on the English/verbal section and 100/100 on the math/logic portion. Output: Primary assignment: intelligence operative/analyst Secondary assignment: Combat engineer. I've also been scouted by my home country's intelligence forces (which I rejected).

Things that bug me about this test: Q 10 - not enough time to evaluate each group so you auto fail, but upon redoing it and only choosing one without checking every group out I'm told I failed because I didn't check out every group. Autofail, unless you have reflexes like a cat.

Q 8 I purposely got 2/3 both times I took the test. Once the test was over, I rated the first time as under average and the second time as over average. Both times I was told that I misjudged my abilities. Which is it?

Q 4 The first time I did this test I thought she asked to look at the tape, as in the background color, so I got 0 out of 16 which put me in the bottom 10 percent (I'm not alone!) The second time I did it I got 16 / 16 with little time elapsed and only received top 22 percent. Ya right. Something fishy is going on here.

Q 2 the physics were ridiculous (too much energy lost to wind resistance, not enough energy lost due to elastic deformation) and the aligning of the paddles was annoying.

Q 1 stupid question. "save two people, also here is some useless information" ... "HAHA, you only saved 2, you could have saved 4"

After redoing the test and getting every question except for the ball one, the telephone one, and the group one right I still get "below average" Hahahahaha. Right. I'd like to hire a Swedish PhD to sit down and do this test, he would get 1 or 2 out of 9 (the racial ethnicity question doesn't count). The accent of the woman giving the test is unbearable and the little clues like "Memorize" written on the wall are no help at all due to all the visual noise.

"I'd like to hire a Swedish PhD to sit down and do this test, he would get 1 or 2 out of 9"

Wouldn't that be the expected result? A PhD is probably not the best suited person for a career in military.

There are plenty of PhDs in a uniform and they do just fine. I've worked with a few of them.

So I'm a Swedish PhD (who did actually do their pre-computerized tests 19 years ago), and I got a "below average" with I think 3 out of the 9. I would probably have gotten one or two more if I'd actually paid attention but since the load times were so long I sometimes missed the instructions (notably the colors where I also got 0/16).

The test I did 19 years ago also did have some of these "psychological" aspects to see how you reacted to impossible tasks, etc.

Style versus substance. Slick but crap. To echo psyklic, I felt the production was great, but the instructions, implementation and interaction were shockingly poor.

Which may have been intentional.

I was below average.

Hope it was because so many people do the test many times, not because I<am stupid.

I guess I'm not going to become an officer in the Swedish army. I only passed one part of the test.

Come to Norway! You're already well above the average for officers in the Norwegian Royal Guard. To quote one of my brighter commanding officers: "The time is now 4 o'clock, we meet back here in 3 hours. That means ... <counts on fingers> ... 6 o'clock. Get moving!"

This test is cinematic, but badly implemented: couldn't understand the instructions clearly (accent, echo, background noise - even on 2nd pass through the game, I didn't understand the voice), the flow of interaction was awkward, didn't understand what the hell was going on.

One thought occurred to me: maybe gamers used to dark video game environments do better here (I don't play video games).

Usually I'm o.k. in testing environments (not a total loser). Here I didn't get anything right, or at least that was my impression. I didn't agree with the evaluation, the points pressed seemed contrived and artificial. I don't understand this test at all.

Here's an officers test: http://aspirant.nu/

It's only in Swedish but most of it is self-explanatory. It's much more fun. Found this on their miltary website.

Guess the Swedish Army doesn't want colorblind people.

I stopped answering questions pretty early on, as I was getting tired of clicking randomly at yet another colour test.

I've read that the ability to discriminate between "vivid red" and "vivid green" is actually very important for parts of the US military... I'm not really sure why though. Maybe for airborne jump signals?

And reading maps at night using red flashlights...

Government marketing sites tend to be well done. The information and business critical sites are lowest bidder wastelands.

Am I the only one that's really confused by the beginning, where it's just an exclamation point in a triangle, and some dimly-lit wires/pipes? Previously, I got to where the triangle was replaced by a few numbers, but got stuck there. I refreshed, and am still not sure what's going on.

I quit after i failed to hit the red circle. Too slow of a process to complete at work.

I knew I was going to fail the color test. It's a test that's commonly used to diagnose ADHD.

The military is NEVER "amazing", only peace is.

The military is amazing in a way that nuclear weapons are: Interesting science, but the application – for the lack of a better word – sucks.

The alternative of not having a military sucks a lot worse.

Not necessarily. I doubt we need a military in modern day Germany to defend us against our neighbours. Just make sure to have enough cash on hand to hire mercenaries in case of attack.

Modern-day Germany has a military:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr

Call it a defense force, or a militia, or whatever you will, it's still the German military.

Yes, I am quite aware that modern-day German has an army. And a draft.

I just doubt the Bundeswehr is necessary. (Disclaimer: I was drafted, but refused to serve.)

Two million German civilians have fire arms and they train in their "Schützenvereine". No need for no army or mercenaries.

Small nitpick: "Schützenvereine" are more about drinking beer and having a party ("Schützenfest"). If you want to shoot, join a "Schießverein".

Costa Rica has no army and fares very well without it in stark contrast to the nations around them: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3929177.stm Just educate yourself.

Perhaps the education can go both ways:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Costa_Rica

So, yep, they've still got a military, it's just also their police force (and national guard), which is pretty smart, in my opinion.

Looking up Wikipedia is the opposite of education. Also this entry just confirms what I said. Costa Rica has only security forces with very basic fire arms.

Nuclear weapons are interesting science? Maybe you want to try something of this science on your city or area? FAIL.

Agreed.