Cold Response 26: NATO's Largest Arctic Exercise Since the Cold War

On 18 March, as Cold Response 26 entered its final day across Troms, Nordland, and western Finnmark, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stood at Setermoen training area and told Norwegian Defence Minister Tore O. Sandvik: "What Norway is doing — in terms of defence spending, the support for Ukraine, keeping NATO safe on the eastern flank, in the Arctic — you are really punching above your weight." He was speaking to Norway, but the observation applies to the exercise itself. Cold Response 26 attempted to do more than any previous iteration — integrating two new NATO members, testing a new strategic framework, rehearsing civilian casualty reception, and conducting multi-domain operations from submarine insertions to air-mobile counterattacks — all within an 11-day window, across two countries, under conditions that routinely dropped below minus 20°C.

The exercise delivered genuine capability indicators alongside structural gaps that no amount of Arctic training can close on its own. This is what 32,500 troops in the High North actually looked like — and what it means for European defence.

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1. Scale and Structure — The Numbers Behind the Exercise

Cold Response 26 ran from 9 to 19 March 2026, commanded from a Norwegian-US joint headquarters at Reitan, near Bodø. The exercise deployed 32,500 personnel — 25,000 in Norway (11,800 on land, the remainder at sea and in the air) and 7,500 in Finland. Fourteen NATO nations participated: Norway, Finland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, Türkiye, Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium.

The exercise area spanned Nordland, Troms, and western Finnmark in Norway, with a parallel land component centred on the Rovajärvi training area in Finnish Lapland. Maritime operations extended into the North Atlantic off Norway's coast. Air operations ranged across Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish airspace — a tri-national integration that would have been impossible before Finnish and Swedish NATO accession.

Cold Response 26 sat under Arctic Sentry, NATO's enhanced Vigilance Activity for the High North, launched on 11 February and led by Joint Force Command Norfolk. This was the first Cold Response conducted as a component of a broader consolidated Arctic framework rather than as a standalone Norwegian national exercise with allied participation.

A parallel large-scale simulation ran alongside the live exercise, involving significantly larger simulated forces than the 32,500 on the ground. The simulation tested strategic and operational decision-making that the live exercise could not replicate at scale — including scenarios involving force generation timelines, political decision cycles, and escalation management.

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2. What Actually Happened on the Ground

Cold Response 26's land component centred on a scenario familiar from NATO's Cold War playbook: an adversary has seized territory in northern Norway, and allied forces must receive reinforcements, stabilise the line, and counterattack. The exercise tested this across several concurrent operations that, taken together, constitute the most complex Arctic ground manoeuvre NATO has conducted since Cold Response 2022.

Interactive map — zoom and click markers for detail. Ground operations in red, air bases in blue, logistics in amber, command in white.

The German counterattack at Bardufoss

Germany's Gebirgsjägerbrigade 23 — the Bundeswehr's mountain infantry brigade — was assigned the exercise's marquee ground operation: a counterattack to recapture alliance territory under Arctic conditions. The brigade, supported by Transporthubschrauberregiment 30 (transport helicopters) and Fernspähkompanie 1 (long-range reconnaissance), executed a Ablösung durch Angriff — a forward passage of lines — taking over from US Marines at Bardufoss and pushing forward over frozen mountainous terrain. The brigade established its command post in a mountain tunnel near Bardufoss.

This is operationally significant for two reasons. First, a forward passage of lines is one of the most complex tactical manoeuvres any ground force can attempt — one unit passes through another's positions to continue the attack, requiring precise coordination to avoid fratricide and maintain momentum. Executing this between two different nations' forces, in Arctic conditions, under simulated combat, tests interoperability at a level that staff exercises and tabletop simulations cannot replicate. Second, it positions Germany's mountain troops as a credible Arctic force — a role the Bundeswehr has been rebuilding since the Zeitenwende declaration.

Chancellor Merz, who visited Bardufoss on 13 March alongside Norwegian PM Støre and Canadian PM Carney, told troops: "At this location, too, the Bundeswehr defends Germany." The three leaders rode together in a CV90 infantry fighting vehicle — a Swedish-built platform operated by Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Estonia. The image was deliberate: three NATO heads of government in a single European IFV, in the Arctic.

US Marines: the long Arctic convoy

The 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment (2nd Marine Division), commanded by Lt Col Chase Bradford, formed the core of the US ground manoeuvre element. The battalion operated alongside Combat Logistics Regiment 2, Combat Logistics Battalion 6, 2nd Distribution Support Battalion (2nd MLG), and VMGR-252's KC-130J transports.

The Marines drew equipment from the MCPP-N caves, shipped it by sea to Narvik, then ran a long-range convoy in BV 206 all-terrain carriers across Norway and Sweden into Finland — a logistics chain that tested the trans-Nordic movement corridor that any reinforcement scenario would require. In Finland, the Marines conducted force-on-force exercises against Spanish mountain infantry regiments acting as opposing forces, then integrated with Swedish and Norwegian units for combined operations.

On 11 March, Echo Company, 2/6 Marines was airlifted from Bardufoss to Rovaniemi, Finland, by the Franco-German Binational Air Transportation Squadron (BATS) — two German-operated KC-130Js plus one VMGR-252 aircraft. This was the first time in NATO history that a binational European squadron had transported a US Marine rifle company. On arrival in Finland, Echo Company was placed under the tactical control of the Swedish Army's 4th Mechanised Brigade — American infantry fighting under Swedish command in the Arctic, the kind of deep interoperability that accession was supposed to enable.

Separately, a Multi-Domain Task Unit (MDTU) made its first operational deployment at Cold Response 26 — a new USMC formation combining signals intelligence, reconnaissance, defensive cyber, joint targeting, and counter-ISR capabilities. Maj Gen Daniel L. Shipley (Commander, MARFOREUR/AF) described it as "giving commanders advanced capabilities and necessary information before a conflict starts."

Royal Marines: submarine insertion and amphibious raids

The UK's contribution demonstrated why the Royal Marines remain one of NATO's most capable Arctic forces. The Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron and elements of 148 Commando Forward Observation Battery deployed from the German Type 212A submarine U-35 in a Norwegian fjord roughly 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle. The teams launched inflatable raiding craft from the submerged submarine, moved ashore undetected, located a simulated hostile radar installation, and relayed targeting information to NATO warships offshore before exfiltrating back to the submarine.

The operation is notable both for its tactical ambition and for what it reveals about capability gaps: the Royal Marines used a German submarine because no Royal Navy submarine was available. The Type 212A — a hydrogen fuel-cell AIP boat with a non-magnetic hull — is among the quietest conventional submarines in the world. That British special forces are training from allied platforms rather than their own is not unusual in NATO, but it underscores the premium on submarine availability across the alliance.

Separately, 45 Commando Royal Marines conducted night raids on Senja Island, deploying from HNLMS Johan de Witt via Merlin and Wildcat helicopters and small raiding craft. The final objective was the capture of the Norwegian port of Sørreisa. The amphibious task group operated under Dutch command from HNLMS Johan de Witt, with Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 providing air and underwater security.

Dutch amphibious operations

The Netherlands deployed roughly 1,000 personnel centred on the Korps Mariniers' 2nd Marine Combat Group, embarked on HNLMS Johan de Witt (L801) with the frigate Zr.Ms. Van Amstel and two NH90 maritime combat helicopters. The Dutch marines' assigned mission: land on Norway's icy coast, disable simulated cruise missile and air defence positions, then attack invading forces from the flank while the allied main force advanced from another axis.

Pastoor described Cold Response 26 as a "mission rehearsal" rather than training, noting that commanders now weigh political and civilian wartime consequences in their planning.

Canadian special operations: back to basics

Canada's Canadian Special Operations Regiment, commanded by Lt Col Robert Girouard, operated deep behind simulated enemy lines. The Canadian Armed Forces declined to disclose troop numbers — standard for special operations. Girouard offered one of the exercise's most operationally relevant observations: the drone-contested environment is forcing a return to fundamentals.

The remark applies beyond Canadian SOF. Across Cold Response 26, units from multiple nations described the same discovery: that drone surveillance has made movement in the Arctic more dangerous than terrain or temperature.

Norwegian concealment and drone adaptation

Norway's Long Range Reconnaissance Squadron — an elite unit operating deep behind enemy lines — demonstrated tactics adapted for the drone age. Soldiers constructed quinzhees (hand-dug snow shelters approximately 1.5 metres high by 2 metres wide), moving only during darkness, fog, or snowfall when tracks fill rapidly. In clear weather, they remained static and concealed.

The drone threat has fundamentally altered Arctic reconnaissance. Royal Marines participating in the exercise noted that units must now relocate every 15 minutes to avoid detection. Norwegian soldiers carried their own Skydio X10D surveillance drones (procured under a $9.4 million contract in July 2025) and first-person-view models for counter-reconnaissance. The Norwegian Army also tested attack drones and unmanned ground robots. Sweden's Saab demonstrated its Mobile Camouflage System — a cloak designed to reduce visual, thermal, and radar signatures — though the gap between demonstration and fielding remains.

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3. The Air Domain — Fifth-Generation Integration Above the Arctic

Cold Response 26's air operations represented the first large-scale test of tri-national fifth-generation air integration across Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish airspace — a three-country corridor that did not exist before 2023.

The F-35 backbone

The 48th Fighter Wing's 493rd Fighter Squadron deployed F-35A Lightning IIs from RAF Lakenheath to Ørland Air Station in Norway — originally planned for Evenes Air Station but redirected after the Iran crisis pulled some USAF assets south. The 493rd flew more than 100 sorties and logged over 270 flight hours across the exercise, conducting suppression of enemy air defence (SEAD), air-to-air escort, strike missions, and complex night operations. Norwegian Royal Air Force F-35As from the 132nd Air Wing (Luftving) flew coordinated fifth-generation sorties alongside the Americans, enabling day and night combat integration between the two F-35 fleets.

Nordic air integration

The Finnish Air Force operated F/A-18 Hornets from the Lapland and Karelia Air Wings — including the 211th Fighter Squadron — across all three nations' airspace. Swedish Air Force JAS 39 Gripens from the Norrbotten Air Squadron and a second fighter squadron operated across northern Sweden, with military aviation activity extending over Norrbotten and parts of Västerbotten. Swedish Air Force Rangers deployed alongside ground forces in Finland.

A NATO E-3A Sentry AWACS operated from a forward location at Ørland, building the recognised air picture for all participants — detecting targets at several hundred kilometres and directing fighters across the exercise area. Air command and control ran from the Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) at Bodø, which opened in October 2025 and used Cold Response 26 as its first major live-flying, multi-domain operation. Brigadier General Michael Bottenvik-Hartmann, head of national operations at CAOC Bodø, called the exercise "an important opportunity to test and validate the work we have put into our new Combined Air Operations Centre, ensuring it can effectively coordinate Allied air power in the High North." Colonel Vesa Mäntylä served as Deputy Chief of Staff for the Finnish Air Force component.

Enablers: tanking, CSAR, maritime patrol

The air component was not just fighters. KC-135 Stratotankers from the 100th Air Refueling Wing (RAF Mildenhall) operated from Sola, Norway, providing aerial refueling to US and allied aircraft across the exercise area. On 9 March, a Swedish JAS 39 Gripen received fuel from a USAF KC-135 over Norway — confirming cross-national refueling interoperability between Swedish and American air forces in the Arctic. HH-60W Jolly Green IIs from the 56th and 57th Rescue Squadrons (Aviano AB) and HC-130J Combat King IIs from the 23rd Wing (Moody AFB) operated from Bardufoss, running combat search and rescue missions across Norway and Sweden. A C-17 Globemaster III provided strategic airlift. P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft conducted anti-submarine warfare and surveillance operations in the North Atlantic.

Marine Wing Support Squadron 273 (MWSS-273) established a Forward Arming and Refueling Point (FARP) at Kallax Air Base, Luleå, Sweden, on 11–13 March — refueling Swedish JAS 39 Gripens from a US Marine fuel point on Swedish soil. This kind of cross-national logistics support — American fuel under Swedish aircraft under NATO command in the Arctic — is the operational connective tissue that makes multinational air campaigns possible.

The Danish Air Control Wing and Helicopter Wing integrated into the air C2 structure, with personnel working alongside Norwegian, Swedish, and American counterparts. A Danish MH-60R Seahawk was transported to Keflavík, Iceland, aboard a French military aircraft — testing a cooperative relocation of maritime helicopter capability across NATO bases.

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4. The Maritime Domain — Present and Absent

Cold Response 26's naval component operated with what it had — which was considerably less than planned.

The force that assembled comprised four amphibious decks from four nations, a standing NATO escort group, Norwegian coastal defence corvettes, and a single mine countermeasures vessel — enough to rehearse littoral strike and amphibious assault, but stripped of the carrier aviation and high-end air defence that the original plan assumed. The amphibious force — Dutch, French, Turkish, and Italian ships operating together in Arctic fjords — was the exercise's maritime centrepiece, staging the landings on Senja and the assault toward Sørreisa. Turkey's TCG Anadolu, commanding NATO's Amphibious Task Force alongside TCG Istanbul, TCG Oruçreis, and the combat support ship TCG Derya, represented the largest Turkish naval deployment to a Cold Response exercise. SNMG1, under Spanish command, screened the amphibious force through all phases, while Norway's Skjold-class corvettes — fast, low-observable, and designed for exactly these waters — provided coastal defence in the fjord approaches. The UK sent no national ship — Royal Marines operated entirely from allied amphibious platforms, principally HNLMS Johan de Witt, with heavy equipment delivered to Norway by a Point-class commercial Ro-Ro vessel; Germany's contribution was split between FGS Sachsen in the escort screen and U-35 beneath the surface.

During exercises in Andfjorden, KNM Skjold and KNM Glimt diverted from training to rescue a 30-foot day cruiser carrying nine civilians that had lost steering — a reminder that Arctic operations take place in waters shared with civilian traffic, and that the line between exercise and operational reality is thinner than exercise planners prefer.

The carrier that left

The Charles de Gaulle carrier strike group — Charles de Gaulle herself, the FREMM frigate Alsace, the Horizon-class destroyer Chevalier Paul, the Italian destroyer Andrea Doria, and the replenishment vessel Jacques Chevallier — was en route to Cold Response from Swedish waters when President Macron ordered it retasked on 3 March. Iran had struck Gulf states; France needed its only carrier in the eastern Mediterranean. The strike group turned south.

The Charles de Gaulle was not the only asset lost. The Iran crisis hollowed out Cold Response's high-end capabilities in real time: the Italian destroyer Andrea Doria (Horizon-class) departed the exercise area — Italian personnel aboard San Giusto confirmed it had left "a few days earlier" and was making its way back to southern Italy; the Dutch frigate HNLMS Evertsen accompanied the French carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean; a USMC F-35B squadron from 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing was absent — the Corps cited "operational security" but the jets were assessed as redirected toward the Middle East; and some USAF F-35As were pulled as early as 20 February, with approximately 100–150 personnel who did not arrive in Norway. A Norwegian officer noted that the air defence component lost eight exercise targets as a result.

A Norwegian Armed Forces spokesperson told the Barents Observer: "We are adapting so that the effectiveness of the exercise is not significantly impaired." The adaptation was real but the gap was structural. Without its carrier, its best destroyer, and a significant portion of its fifth-generation air power, Cold Response 26's maritime-air domain proceeded at reduced capability — precisely the scenario that a real crisis would produce.

On 18 March, the day before Cold Response concluded, Macron unveiled the name of France's next-generation carrier: France Libre, 80,000 tonnes, nuclear-powered, EMALS catapults, service entry 2038. It will be Europe's only CATOBAR-capable carrier. The naming ceremony's timing — one day before the exercise that lost its carrier ended — was presumably coincidental. The structural condition it describes is not.

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Maritime operations and Russian concurrent signalling. NATO naval in blue, Russian activity in red, withdrawn assets in amber.

5. Finland's First Major NATO Exercise on Home Soil

Finland joined NATO in April 2023. Cold Response 26 was the largest exercise to date in which Finnish territory hosted a substantial multinational NATO force — scaling up significantly from the approximately 3,500 allied troops that operated in Lapland during Nordic Response 2024, Finland's first such exercise as a NATO member.

The Finnish contribution was the exercise's largest per capita. The Jaeger Brigade commanded the land phase in Lapland under Colonel Marko Kivelä, with Brigadier General Manu Tuominen overseeing Finnish participation overall. Some 3,500 Finnish troops deployed alongside approximately 2,000 reservists — the reservist component being the critical test, given that Finland's entire defence model depends on the rapid mobilisation of 900,000 wartime reservists from civilian life.

The multinational force in Finnish Lapland — approximately 7,500 strong — operated north of Rovaniemi and further north to Sodankylä, with units from Finland, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy training side by side under NATO's Multinational Corps Land Component Command–North West.

Three elements stood out as genuine capability indicators:

The C5 Agency's reservist mobilisation. Finland's C5 Agency — command, control, communications, computers, and cyber — ran its largest-ever refresher exercise: 350 reservists standing up a signals battalion from scratch. In a country whose defence model depends on reservist mobilisation, the capacity to generate specialist communications units rapidly is not a display — it is the mechanism that makes everything else work. Whether Finnish C2 systems can plug into NATO's architecture under field conditions was among the exercise's most consequential tests.

The Utti Jaeger Regiment. Finland's special operations force deployed approximately 1,000 personnel for concurrent northern operations. The Utti Jaegers are among the most experienced Arctic SOF in Europe — their integration into the wider NATO exercise framework, operating alongside allied special forces under NATO command, tested whether Finnish SOF interoperability matches the political integration that accession delivered on paper.

Swedish forces in Lapland. The Swedish 1st Division deployed its headquarters to Finnish Lapland — the largest single foreign unit transported to Finland — commanding the 4th Mechanised Brigade (Skaraborgs Regemente P 4) and attached units. Approximately 2,000 Swedish troops operated north of Rovaniemi to Sodankylä, transported by road and air through multiple border crossings simultaneously. Sweden has participated in every Cold Response since 2006, but 2026 was the first as a full-fledged NATO member. The 4th Mechanised Brigade is the first of the Swedish Army's brigades set to reach full readiness by the end of 2026 under Defence Decision 24. This is Nordic integration at a scale that NORDEFCO, the pre-accession Nordic defence cooperation framework, never achieved.

The Finnish Air Force flew F/A-18 Hornets from the Lapland and Karelia Air Wings across Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish airspace — tri-national air integration that three years ago was operationally impossible.

FLF Finland: from exercise to permanent posture

On 16 March, as Cold Response entered its second week, the defence ministers of Finland (Antti Häkkänen), Sweden (Pål Jonson), and Norway (Tore O. Sandvik) issued a joint statement from Rovajärvi announcing that NATO's Forward Land Forces Finland — the alliance's ninth FLF — is "progressing rapidly and will be established this year," before the NATO summit in Ankara in July 2026.

Sweden will provide the core of the multinational battlegroup, based in Boden in northern Sweden. Nations expressing intent to contribute include Norway, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Iceland. Cold Response 26 directly exercised the FLF concept — the large-scale movement of Swedish forces from Boden into Finnish Lapland was described as demonstrating "elements of the FLF employment."

Häkkänen called FLF Finland "a concrete sign of NATO's increasing deterrence and defence in Finland." The practical significance is that it converts exercise-scale Nordic integration into a permanent NATO force posture on a border that runs 1,340 kilometres along Russia's Kola Peninsula and Karelia.

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6. Arctic Sentry — The New Framework and Its Tensions

Cold Response 26 was the first major exercise conducted under Arctic Sentry, an enhanced Vigilance Activity launched on 11 February that consolidates all allied Arctic activity under a single coordinated framework for the first time. Previously, Arctic exercises — Cold Response, Denmark's Arctic Endurance, Nordic bilateral activities — ran independently. Arctic Sentry, led by Joint Force Command Norfolk, folds them into one operational posture.

NATO described Arctic Sentry as providing "full visibility of Allies' national activities across the region" and consolidating them into "one coherent, overarching operational approach." JFC Norfolk's area of responsibility was expanded in December to include Denmark, Finland, and Sweden — meaning seven of eight Arctic nations now fall under a single NATO joint force command.

The institutional logic is sound. Russia operates its Northern Fleet, SSBN bastion defence, and Arctic ground forces as an integrated system. NATO responding with disconnected national exercises was a coordination gap that Arctic Sentry is designed to close.

But the framework carries embedded tensions. Its political genesis was partly a response to the Trump administration's rhetoric on Greenland — a German proposal in early January aimed at demonstrating allied Arctic commitment. The Danish Armed Forces explicitly link their increased Arctic activity — including Cold Response participation — to "enhancing security around Greenland." This makes Arctic Sentry's political foundations dependent on American strategic preferences that could shift. If U.S. interest in the High North wanes, the framework's coherence may follow.

The command structure raises a separate question. JFC Norfolk sits in Norfolk, Virginia. The operational headquarters for Europe's Arctic defence is an ocean away from the Arctic. Command transferred from US to UK leadership in February, but the institutional architecture remains transatlantic. European Arctic states — Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark — do not yet have a command structure that can coordinate their own northern flank without American institutional scaffolding. Whether that is a feature or a dependency depends on how long the American commitment to Northern Europe remains unconditional.

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7. Total Defence Year 2026 — The Civilian Dimension

Norway designated 2026 as Totalforsvarsåret — Total Defence Year — and Cold Response 26 was its centrepiece. The exercise tested not just military interoperability but the civilian infrastructure that military operations depend on: ports, airports, road networks, health services, energy supply, and communications.

The most visible civilian test was the health preparedness exercise conducted on 12 March across Narvik, Fjelldal, and Tromsø. The scenario: mass casualties from combat in Finland, transported by train through Sweden to Narvik, where Norwegian civilian health personnel would receive, triage, and distribute patients to hospitals across northern Norway and, if needed, abroad.

The exercise simulated 1,200 casualties arriving over ten days. The live component involved approximately 100 volunteers — including students — playing wounded, unloaded from a train at Narvik harbour, triaged, and transported by ambulance to civilian hospitals.

Elisabeth Aarsæther, outgoing director of the Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection, framed the broader ambition: narrowing "the gap between military forces and civil society." The military trained alongside police, health services, municipalities, and transport and energy companies. International observers from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, and Serbia — invited under Vienna Document obligations — were notably surprised by Norway's integration of civilian terrain and the total defence concept.

Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, stated the exercise's purpose bluntly: "NATO will use the exercise to show that the alliance takes the defence of Norway and our areas seriously." The total defence dimension makes Cold Response 26 more than a military exercise — it is a rehearsal for national resilience under conditions that Norwegian society has not faced since 1945.

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8. Logistics — The Caves, the Joint Command, and the Enablers Test

The exercise's logistics backbone was itself a capability test — and arguably the component with the most direct operational relevance.

The Marine Corps Prepositioning Program–Norway (MCPP-N) issued over 14,000 items from its cave complexes at Tromsdal, Bjugn, and Frigard during a two-week cave draw in late January. The equipment — ranging from ready-to-eat meals and cold-weather gear to tactical vehicles and heavy trucks — has been pre-positioned in Norwegian mountain caves since 1982 for precisely this scenario: the rapid reinforcement of northern Europe without waiting for trans-Atlantic shipping.

According to Buddy Cote, the technical assistance and advisory team officer in charge, drawing from prepositioned stocks saves more than a month compared to shipping from the United States, while avoiding more than $2 million in transportation costs per exercise cycle. The caves are not a historical curiosity — they are a strategic enabler that converts American reinforcement from a weeks-long deployment into a days-long activation.

For the first time, the US and Norway established a fully integrated joint logistics command: the 2nd Marine Logistics Group and the Norwegian Joint Logistics Support Group merged into a Combined Joint Logistics Support Group. This is a structural innovation — not coordination between parallel national logistics chains, but a single command directing American and Norwegian supply chains as one entity. Whether this integration holds under stress — when supply priorities conflict and national chains compete for the same road network, port capacity, and fuel — is the test that exercises can approach but only operations can answer.

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9. Russia Watches from the Other Side

Moscow's response to Cold Response followed a pattern established across previous iterations: concurrent military signalling designed to demonstrate that the Kola Peninsula's nuclear submarine infrastructure is defended regardless of what NATO does on the Norwegian side.

The escalation pattern was deliberate. The Marshal Ustinov firing a few nautical miles from Norway's border crossing preceded the exercise. The Il-20M SIGINT flights on consecutive days gathered electronic intelligence on NATO forces in real time. The reconnaissance aircraft inside the exercise area tested NATO's response thresholds.

The most pointed signal came from the sea. The Northern Fleet's nuclear attack submarine Kazan (K-561, Yasen-M class) launched a supersonic Onyx (P-800) anti-ship cruise missile from a submerged position in the Barents Sea, hitting a simulated target approximately 300 kilometres away. This was explicit capability signalling: the Yasen-M is Russia's newest and most capable attack submarine class, and the Onyx can threaten NATO surface forces operating in the Norwegian Sea from the relative safety of the Barents bastion.

The Northern Fleet's primary concern is protecting its SSBNs in the Barents Sea and the White Sea — Russia's sea-based nuclear deterrent. Every NATO exercise in northern Norway is, from Moscow's perspective, an approach rehearsal toward those bastions. Russia's concurrent exercises are not mirror-imaging NATO — they practise the specific scenario they fear most: allied forces moving north toward the submarine bases.

Norway characterised the Russian activity as "routine" but "important." US intelligence assessed in March 2026 that while Russia has enhanced its Arctic combat readiness, the Ukraine war has "limited its ability to fully achieve its Arctic ambitions" — Northern Fleet marines and ground forces have lost approximately 80 per cent of their quantitative strength since 2022. The submarine force remains intact, but the gap between Russian ambitions and available resources is widening. The Arctic is not a theatre where tensions are rising because something new happened. It is a theatre where the baseline is permanent proximity between nuclear-armed forces — and where Russia is compensating for ground-force attrition with increased submarine and air signalling.

Norway notified Russia of Cold Response through multiple channels: a detailed written briefing in November 2025, direct diplomatic communication in Moscow, and notification via the OSCE under the Vienna Document. This transparency is not ceremonial — it is the only mechanism that reduces the risk of miscalculation in a region where the distance between NATO exercises and Russian nuclear infrastructure is measured in hundreds, not thousands, of kilometres.

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10. Industry on the Ice — Systems Demonstrated

Cold Response 26 doubled as a live-environment showcase for several European defence systems seeking Arctic validation.

Rheinmetall Nordic's Ragnarok 120mm Mortar Mission Module. At Rena, Norway, Rheinmetall Nordic demonstrated the Ragnarok system — a 120mm mortar mounted on an HX truck — in a live-fire event before delegations from Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Germany. The system demonstrated shoot-and-scoot capability in sub-minus-ten conditions. CEO Morten Kjorum framed it as "a scalable European indirect fire solution" — indirect fire being one of the capabilities most depleted by Ukrainian demand and least replenished by European production.

Saab Mobile Camouflage System. Sweden's Saab demonstrated its signature-reduction cloak — designed to diminish visual, thermal, and radar signatures — for Arctic concealment. The system addresses the drone threat that now defines Arctic reconnaissance: when every movement leaves thermal and visual traces in snow, passive signature management becomes a survival requirement rather than an enhancement.

CV90 infantry fighting vehicle. The CV90 — operated by Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Estonia — was the exercise's most visible armoured platform. Merz, Støre, and Carney rode in one at Bardufoss. BAE Systems expects a joint procurement order from up to six European nations in Q2 2026 for the CV90 MkIV variant, priced between $9.5 million and $13 million per unit depending on configuration. Cold Response 26 functioned as a live advertisement for the platform's Arctic performance across multiple operator nations.

HIMARS. US Marines from 2nd Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment conducted live-fire HIMARS training with Norwegian forces at Setermoen on 24 February — the pre-exercise warm-up that tested precision rocket artillery shoot-and-scoot profiles under Arctic conditions. HIMARS in Norway validates the rapid-reinforcement concept: Marines fly in, draw vehicles from caves, and field long-range fires within days of arrival.

Drones and counter-drone. Cold Response 26 became a significant testing ground for Ukraine-derived drone tactics. Norwegian forces fielded Skydio X10D surveillance drones across nearly every Army unit. US Marines, Norwegian troops, and French Foreign Legion units tested the Orb Jawbreaker — a 30-centimetre cage FPV drone developed at Johns Hopkins University with the USMC, built from 3D-printed plastic and carbon fibre. The Norwegian Army chief stated forces also tested attack drones and unmanned ground robots. Cold conditions drastically reduced battery efficiency, limiting range and flight time — a constraint that Ukraine-theatre operators do not face at the same severity. The exercise confirmed that Arctic warfare is now a drone-contested environment, but one where the physics of cold impose constraints that temperate-climate experience does not prepare for.

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11. Strategic Assessment — What Cold Response 26 Proved and What It Did Not

Strip away the press releases and Cold Response 26 tested five structural questions for European Arctic defence. It answered some. It exposed others.

1. Can Nordic NATO integration operate at scale? Yes — conditionally. A Finnish brigade and a Swedish division HQ ran multinational operations in Lapland with NATO C2, allied air support, and integrated logistics. The C5 reservist mobilisation worked. Finnish Hornets flew tri-national sorties. The FLF Finland announcement converts this into permanent posture. Nordic accession has moved from political gesture to operational reality. The condition is that this was a planned exercise with months of preparation — whether the same integration works at crisis speed, with political decision-making in real time, remains untested.

2. Can Europe's northern flank survive a two-front pull on forces? Not yet demonstrated. The Charles de Gaulle's departure is not an anomaly — it is the normal condition for a continent with one operational carrier and simultaneous commitments in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Arctic. Cold Response 26 proceeded without its primary maritime-air platform because the Middle East needed it more. The Italian destroyer left for the same reason. USAF F-35s were pulled south. Every future Arctic scenario will face the same competition. The naming of France Libre on 18 March acknowledges the gap; the ship enters service in 2038.

3. Does Arctic Sentry produce operational coherence or merely brand what already exists? Too early to say — but the structural tension is already visible. The joint US-Norway logistics command is a genuine innovation: a single entity directing two national supply chains, not coordination between parallel ones. That did not exist before Cold Response 26. But Arctic Sentry's command architecture runs through JFC Norfolk, Virginia. European Arctic states — Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark — do not yet have a command structure that can coordinate their own northern flank without American institutional scaffolding. Whether that is a feature or a vulnerability depends on assumptions about American strategic constancy that the past three years have made harder to hold with confidence. Arctic Sentry is eight weeks old. It has demonstrated a coordination function. Whether it develops force assignment authorities and dedicated resources — the difference between a framework and an architecture — is the test that subsequent cycles will have to answer.

4. Is Total Defence more than a concept? Norway's demonstration was among the most ambitious civilian-military integration exercises a European NATO member has attempted. The health preparedness exercise at Narvik — civilian hospitals receiving simulated battlefield casualties transported by rail from Finland through Sweden — tested a logistics chain that crosses three national borders and two domains. The exercise simulated 1,200 casualties over ten days. The fact that this was "unthinkable five years ago" indicates the pace of Norway's societal shift. But the test was narrow: one casualty reception chain, one transport mode, one corridor. Total Defence as a national posture requires that energy, communications, transport, and port infrastructure all function under stress simultaneously. Cold Response 26 tested a component. Whether Norway — or any European ally — can integrate civilian resilience at the scale that sustained defence requires is a question this exercise opened rather than answered.

5. Can NATO operate credibly in permanent proximity to Russian nuclear infrastructure? Cold Response 26 demonstrated tactical proficiency in Arctic conditions — the counterattacks, the submarine insertions, the amphibious landings all worked. What no exercise can test is the escalation dynamics of operating hundreds of kilometres from Russia's SSBN bastions under conditions where both sides have nuclear weapons and strategic interests at stake. The Vienna Document notifications and observer programmes are the only risk-reduction mechanisms currently in place. They are better than nothing. They are not sufficient for the scenarios that keep planners awake.

The open question after Cold Response 26 is not whether NATO can fight in the Arctic — it demonstrated that it can. The question is whether the political, logistical, and force-generation architecture behind that capability can scale from a biennial 11-day exercise to a posture that deters continuously, across multiple theatres, with the forces that actually exist rather than the forces that exercise planners assume will be available.

Cold Response 26 rehearsed that cooperation. The rehearsal was credible. Whether it is sufficient is the question that the next crisis — not the next exercise — will answer.

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Exercise Timeline — Key Events

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Cold Response Exercise History

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