NORDIC WARDEN Exercise: Protection of Critical Underwater Infrastructure
For the second time in its history, the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) activated a JEF Response Option (JRO) NORDIC WARDEN (NW) in June, delivering multi domain activity focused on protecting Critical Underwater Infrastructure (CUI) in Northern Europe.
The ten JEF nations—Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK — are all crucial stakeholders in Northern Europe‘s maritime affairs. Past incidents in the Baltic Sea Region (BaSR) have highlighted CUI’s importance to western way of life providing everything from gas to gigabytes. These incidents have demanded that JEF Participant Nations collaborate for our mutual security whilst also being a visible to all stakeholders to contribute to NATO’s deterrence activity.
NW has demonstrated JEF’s ability to coordinate across domains, nations and geography to contribute to the protection of CUI in Northern Europe building on the success of the first JRO activation in December 2023.
The Standing Joint Force Headquarters (SJFHQ), JEF Operational Headquarters in London, planned the activities which utilised 34 assets (28 ships and 6 aircraft) from JEF Participant Nations. This activity led to 99 intelligence reports being shared and the tracking of 33 vessels of interest in numerous areas, from Norway’s western approaches, through to the
eastern Baltic Sea. Assets remained under national command, with the coordination of activities and messaging by SJFHQ. While most JEF nations contributed vessels and aircraft, Iceland contributed three StratCom specialists to support coordination of messaging.
Standing Joint Force Commander Major General Tom Bateman:
In my new appointment in the Joint Expeditionary Force Operational Headquarters it has been an absolute pleasure to see the JEF participant nations come together once again to deliver a series of activities in the region and complement NATO in delivering deterrence in Northern Europe. NORDIC WARDEN highlights the value of our operational approach as the nations came together deliberately and dynamically to conduct activities, demonstrate our capabilities and improve interoperability at this critical time.
JEF Director of Communications, Group Captain Kevin Latchman ACOS J35:
The JEF has made considerable progress during NW building superb situational awareness, sharing information across JEF participant nations, NATO and other stakeholders, and clearly communicating our intent. Through a concerted effort, we have delivered close to 100 articles across the region, thanks to a collaborative effort of the JEF participant nations communicators, informing our audiences of the importance of this regional defence cooperation, while maintaining our complementarity to NATO. Key to the success of NW was consistent liaison with numerous NATO HQs to align messaging with Exercise BALTOPS to emphasise our mutual interests, our and ability to cooperate and coordinate in a very busy part of the world. Overall, this was an important contribution to national efforts whilst also complementing the important work NATO is doing in this area.