HARSTAD, Norway — Some hundreds of kilometers from a Russian naval base in Murmansk Oblast, a formation of military boats dash across the frigid Norwegian Sea.
A team of officers bearing the Norwegian flag on their uniform climb from one moving vessel onto another, a larger Norwegian Coast Guard offshore patrol ship, using a single pole with a hook and flimsy ladder to haul themselves up.
They are part of the Norwegian Coastal Rangers, a marine commando unit trained to operate in littoral combat environments. In the context of the NATO exercise Joint Viking 2025, organized earlier this month, they trained for the task of boarding a suspicious vessel.
The ship-boarding scenario has turned front and center in the alliance’s recent defense planning. Western officials fear that NATO adversaries employ ships under the guise of research missions or civilian cargo runs to damage undersea cables and energy infrastructure in the waters around Europe.
The small Norwegian unit, composed of roughly 150 individuals, is highly versatile, tasked with missions spanning from coastal raids and maritime patrol to intelligence-gathering. With sabotage risks on NATO’s mind, formations like this are rising to new prominence in national force structures.
In its annual national threat assessment report, the Norwegian Police Security Services noted that in the last year, Russia has shown “its resolve and ability to carry out sabotage operations on European soil” and that it is “likely” that it may affect Norway in 2025.
The NATO member shares a 198-kilometer (123-mile) land border with Russia in the Arctic and a maritime frontier in the Barents Sea.
While the Coastal Rangers have not noticed an uptick in the number of illegal or sanctioned vessels sailing along the Norwegian coast, officers did note that there has been an increase in the level of electromagnetic jamming over the last few years.
Norwegian defense authorities recently approved a series of upgrades to modernize and expand the capabilities of the ranger unit. Among these is the acquisition of new unmanned technologies, including long-range maritime surveillance drones, according to Frode Nakken, commanding officer of the Coastal Rangers.
“We’ve been operating with drones for a few years, primarily fixed-wing models, but they have proven vulnerable to the Arctic climate – the larger and longer-range drones we will get will have more endurance and power to resist these conditions,” he told Defense News during the Joint Viking exercise.
Winter temperatures in Northern Norway can easily drop to -10 degrees Celsius, where the cold quickly drains the drones’ battery life and the abundant precipitation makes it tricky for operators to fly them.
The 2025-2036 Norwegian Defense Pledge stated that the ambition is to have the unmanned aerial systems stationed at Andøya Air Station, some 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.
The Norwegian Ministry of Defense has contacted U.S. manufacturers, including Northrop Grumman and General Atomics regarding this request for information, as reported by Janes.
A General Atomics spokesman told Defense News that the company has already responded to the solicitation, pitching its MQ-9B SeaGuardian.
“It will provide Norway with 360-degree maritime radar coverage and full SIGINT capabilities – the MQ-9B is the only remotely piloted aircraft able to perform anti-submarine warfare missions, allowing it to enhance the country’s existing fleet of P-8 patrol aircraft,” said spokesman C. Mark Brinkley.
Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo is a Europe correspondent for Defense News. She covers a wide range of topics related to military procurement and international security, and specializes in reporting on the aviation sector. She is based in Milan, Italy.
