But what does this imply for, for instance, the new MBT?
To recap from the first page, Sweden IRL decided to depart from its standing defence procurement policy from the Cold War (that critical systems should not be dependant of non-domestic suppliers), and made the decision to not go forward with the development of the Strv 141 (a.k.a. "Stridsvagn 2000"), but instead to have a competition between a number of foreign manufacturers, where the Leopard 2 Improved (not A5 or A6) eventually emerged as the clear winner; the formal procurement for 120 tanks (91 to be built locally on license) being signed in 1994.
As deliveries couldn't start until 1996, the deal also included 160 surplus Bundeswehr A4's on lease as a stopgap; these were delivered the same year the contract was signed.
So, with the Cold War heating up instead of blowing over ... how does that affect this timeline?
Will Sweden again see the wisdom of the established SOP vis-à-vis procurement, and accelerate the development of Strv 141?
But in that case; the existing MBT's — Strv 103 and 104 — were hopelessly outdated, and impossible to upgrade to meet the requirements of the modern battlefield. Some other stopgap would be required ... but what would that be?
Other European countries would all of a sudden most likely not have a lot of surplus to spare, and many takers for anything they did have. Krauss-Maffei would probably be prioritising its production capacity for arming its domestic army, as would Vickers, GIAT, Chrysler, and others.
So, would Sweden even have any choice but to go forward with Strv 141, as fast as possible? (The shooting war breaking out in 1997 would certainly give them time to do so.)
Or will Sweden be able to stitch together some kind of a deal anyway, with Germany? (Or with someone else — would the competition staged IRL even have been possible in this altered scenario?)
And in that case, assuming that we wouldn't have been able to get the surplus A4, but went straight to the "Swedish Imp" (which then btw would have carried the designation "Strv 121" in service) ... we must assume that the IRL 1996-2002 delivery schedule would have been considerably accelerated...
And this is still just scratching the surface...
Any way you look at it though; with the drastically altered background conditions, it'll take more than just a few tweaks here and there from real-world history to make the setting feel solid and believable.
Like I've stated before... that test of foreign MBT's wasn't done because the Stridsvagn 2000 project was cancelled. They were done because when they had previously borrowed two tanks (Abrams and Leo 2) to compare to the Strv 2000, they had shown a flaw in the previous way of thinking about tanks. There had been a general consensus that most modern tanks were too heavy to operate in northern Sweden.
This was completely shattered by the maneuverability tests of the Abrams and Leo 2 and serious doubts were raised on whether we could even wait until after the year 2000 for a new MBT.
Tests had showed that upgrading the current tanks to a satisfactory status was unfeasable.
Trips were done in 88-89 to France, USA and Germany to gather information on the current MBT's of those countries.
Tests of the three tanks were made in 89-90 during the winter in Sweden.
The subsequent report of the evaluations came to the conclusion that either we needed to buy a new MBT immediately, or a new MBT that more fitted with current economic plans (ie. with delivery by 2000 at the earliest).
While that report was made in 1990 and included the fact that the Berlin wall had just fallen, they did point out that the assessments were made in 1989, with 1989's factors. So it's obvious that Strv 2000 project wouldn't have continued full steam even if the wall never fell.
The report noted that the first alternative could only be made by direct purchase of a foreign tank, and the Abrams and Leo 2 were considered the most viable options.
The second option was to continue with the Strv 2000 project, but it wasn't considered realistic with current economical restrictions.
Anyway, you can read more on it here;
https://www.ointres.se/strv_2000.htm
Point is, I'm not so sure that Sweden would have just done a massive U-turn and thrown themselves headlong into the Strv 2000 project even if the coup had succeeded in 1991.
Mostly because it would take at least a year or two more for the government to be certain that the USSR was still a threat at that point, and by that point they would have already have made the decision... (since that decision was, in fact, taken in 1991)
So yeah... I'm certainly not sure that there would have been any immediate changes that would have lead to the Strv 2000 project being A: Finished by the time the war broke out or B: even continued in the first place.
That leaves us with two options.
Either Sweden decided to continue the Strv 2000 project (highly unlikely, since the decision to end it was taken before any larger results of the successful coup would have been known), in which case the Strv 2000 wouldn't have been completed by the time the war broke out, and Sweden would still have been stuck with their severely outdated Strv 103 and Strv 104.
OR, they did exactly what they did in real life. They went for the Leo 2 "improved", leased surplus Leo 2A4's from Germany as a stop-gap and started production of the Strv 122... in which case we still wouldn't have had any 122's since the first one was delivered after the war started in the game, but we'd have a bunch of Strv 121's to bolster our defense.
