The pounding of the 40mm cannons sends tracer shells skimming over a snow-covered ridge towards the Baltic Sea.

“The enemy has conducted an air drop near the town of Kivik that has moved up here to the north, so this is a hostile landing site for reinforcements from the sea,” Captain Johan Ström says, as he surveys the two positions taken by his four-strong platoon of CV9040 combat vehicles.

All the two vehicles lined up behind us have left to do is to take out one last enemy ‘helicopter’ — in reality a thin, metal target on a moving platform.

The air-cushioned landing craft and combat boats Capt. Ström envisages waiting offshore will then have been stripped of their last remaining protection against his platoon’s Bofors guns, with their state-of-the-art programmable ammunition.

“And that,” he grins. “would not be good.”

Ravlunda firing range has been used for this sort of exercise since the final years of the Second World War.

But what makes this unique is that the 19- and 20-year-olds operating the eight vehicles are some of the first 3,700 conscripts to be drafted since Sweden brought back national service.

In his debriefing, Colonel Bo Stennabb, the regiment’s commanding officer, heaps praise on the new recruits, telling them that he could not remember an exercise going so well.

“I’ve been in the system for 35 years and I've never seen more more motivated conscripts then these guys,” he tells The Telegraph, in flawless English that wouldn’t sound out of place at Sandhurst military college. He puts it down to the “novelty”.

The heavily militarised Russian enclave of Kaliningrad lies 250 miles away across the Baltic Sea credit: Eddie Mulholland

Evelina Lööf, 19, commander of one of the vehicles, is bright-eyed with adrenaline after her first exercise firing live rounds on the move.

“The most dramatic moment was when we got to the field right in front of the sea,” she says. “There were a lot of enemy vehicles. You have to tell the driver where to drive and the gunner where to shoot, and at the same time, you have to report to the boss, so it’s a lot to think about.”

Part of the reason Sweden’s parliament voted to bring back the draft in 2017 lies just 250 miles southeast across the Baltic sea: the heavily militarised Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, from where Russian planes make incursions into Swedish airspace, with the most recent taking place only days before the exercise.

“When the wall came down, everybody thought we had entered an era of eternal peace. Not many people think that any more,” Col. Stennabb smiles.

“We've seen that Russia is prepared to use military means to accomplish political objectives, not just in Crimea but in Syria. We've seen a more aggressive behaviour by Russia in the Baltic. And there’s the rearmament that Russia is engaged in.”

Capt. Ström, who spent time in Afghanistan coordinating the training of local soldiers, is somewhat less complimentary about the new intake. They are, he notes, “not quite as physically capable” as those who did national service before it was abolished in 2010.

“They’re not so much doing sports activity,” he says, miming swiping screens on a smartphone. “When I conducted my national service, we had these farmer boys, who were big and strong, good at mechanics and quite practical. But nowadays we don't reach them in the same way as we did.”

He has had to be careful to only gradually increase the amount of equipment the conscripts have to carry during early exercises.

“So we don’t break them,” he smiles. “What we have seen when we conduct the three-month basic training is that there are quite a lot of injuries due to fitness levels.”

Back at the rendezvous point on the edge of the firing range, the second four-vehicle platoon has been waiting its turn for hours in the sub-zero temperatures.

"We have a saying that Swedish soldiers don't freeze, they shake with joy,” jokes Hampus Petersson, 19.

Gabriel Rosenqvist, a pony-tailed 19-year-old who serves as a gunner, is warming up in the cramped rear section of his vehicle.

“In the beginning it was kind of rough,” he says of the basic training. “But now that we’ve begun our training in the combat vehicle, they've eased up.”

Axel Nilsson, who is sitting opposite, chips in: “It’s very strict, a lot of different rules that you have to follow, like how you make your bed. How you shine your shoes.” “

"And how you speak to officers,” adds Private Rosenqvist.

Daniel West, who has been eavesdropping outside, sums up: “They wanted to get the civilian out of you.”

Private Rosenqvist was in the classroom in the nearby town of Hässleholm last April when he heard he was being called up.

“I received an email and I looked up and I was like, ‘hey yeah! finally I know what to do when school ends’,” he says.

He agrees that his generation of conscripts is different from those called up from the 1960s to the 1990s, when nearly 85 percent of Swedish men carried out what is known in Sweden as ‘lumpen’ and it was common to try and find a way to out of it or even refuse on conscientious grounds.

“Forty or 50 years ago, everyone got drafted, so there were a lot of people who didn't want to be here, now almost everyone wants to be here, they don't try to escape,” he suggests.

All the 3,700 people who was called up last summer, out of 94,000 school leavers, were drawn from the 36,000 who had expressed an interest in military service and passed a test.

The plan is to build up the number of young people conscripted year by year credit: Eddie Mulholland

This year is also the first time conscription has been gender-neutral.

“They don't train females or males, they train only soldiers,” Lance Corporal Lööf says proudly. “If they had made it easier for females, it would have been weird.”

During exercises she has had to rough it just as much as the men, she maintains. And with only one female-only shower in the entire barracks, she showers with the male recruits.

Trundling back towards the perimeter gate, which someone has decorated with a Jurassic Park sign, Capt. Ström argues the return of national service will be good for Sweden.

“I think this is a place where they learn responsibility, to be part of a team,” he says. “I think that's quite… how would you say… a life change for many of these youngsters that are here today.”

But the Swedish army still has a long way to go.

The North Skåne Dragoon regiment, which once controlled this firing range, was lain down in 2000 along with the entire Hässleholm garrison. Another garrison in the nearby city of Kristianstad, was lain down in 2002.

“We had three regiments in the southern part of Sweden,” Capt. Ström says wistfully. “Now we have one.”

With about 20,000 active personnel, the Swedish army has recovered from its 2013 low of 16,000, when the then Supreme Commander estimated that Sweden could hold off an invader for at best a week.

It is still a tiny fraction of what it was in the early 1960s though, when the country could in theory call on 800,000 trained armed forces personnel.

The plan is to gradually build up the number of young people conscripted, with 4,200 next year, 5,000 in 2020, and 8,000 between 2022 and 2025.

“Every country needs to have the capacity to defend itself and in Sweden we neglected that for some time,” Col. Stennabb says. “And now we have woken up again.”