As has become my own little tradition, I publish my year in review on the blog on the anniversary of the first post and not around the new year. Today’s that day, so happy sixth anniversary to myself!

2019 was in many a challenging year for me personally, but the end of the year also saw me come up with a clear plan for how to move forward from here. Without going into details, I am currently in a much better place than I was a year ago.

Naturally this also had some effects on the frequency of my blogging, which declined compared to year before. The year was also the first that the annual readership declined, both measured in views and visitors. The key reason is quite easy to find, as while the baseline is still healthy (the monthly median was actually higher in 2019 than 2018), the year lacked the kind of single hit post that has given the blog a boost earlier years by drawing in people from outside the regular readership. To look at things from the bright side: as these usually are tied to some less than pleasant development in the region (such as the Airiston Helmi-case of 2018 or the earlier sub-hunts), it isn’t just a bad thing that last year’s month-to-month viewership was more stable than earlier year.

2019 was also the year I tried to monetize the blog by running generic adds on it. Let’s just say I’m not thrilled about the cost/reward ratio, but I have yet to decide if I will continue with them or take them down again.

As for who the readers are and where they come from, there’s no major surprises. Search engines and Twitter still dominate the referrer-stats, with the largest forums being Finnish Maanpuolustus.net and Estonian Militaar.net, with Swedish SoldF.com coming in as third. A newcomer was Hungarian HTKA.hu, which was a pleasant surprise to see! Land topics seems to be of particular interest to our Hungarian friends. As for where people read Corporalfrisk.com, Finland and Sweden are unexpectedly in a class of their own (with Finland being largest by a healthy margin this year), followed by the USA, the UK, Norway, France, Germany, Canada, and Australia in that order.

The most popular new post of 2019 was The True Face of the Baltic Fleet, which despite being published in the later half of the year got quite a nice readership. HX in general and GlobalEye in particular was another very popular topic, and of the older posts Gabriel 5 (PTO 2020) did very well. A number of interesting trips also fit into my calendar last year, including going back to Germany for the first time in a decade when I visited the first ever AMBLE, getting to speak at the FOI workshop on Russian A2/AD capabilities in the Baltic Sea region in Stockholm in December (proceedings should be out soon!), and finally receiving the Naval Reserve Medal of Merit at the Finnish Naval Academy during the Maritime Defence Day held there.

For 2020, the focus of the next few weeks will obviously be on HX Challenge. Unfortunately, with Corporal Frisk being just a sideshow, I won’t be able to skip work for all five media days, but I will attend one or possibly two in person, and will obviously report on any new (or not so new) details that emerge from the rest of them as well. Next up is Rafale, and it will be really interesting to see what message they bring! Following that, HX is likely to be on the back burner for the next year and a half, as few major twists are expected to take place before the eventual announcement of the winner in 2021. However, that doesn’t mean that the blog will be empty, as there are quite a few other interesting projects in the pipeline that I hope to be able to share with you all during the first half of the year, most of which are naval related.

As always, a big thank you to all of you readers! You are what make this blog! Oh, and did seriously no-one of you (especially you Swedes) catch the Easter egg in Weapons & Ammunition?