Sweden and Finland Face First NATO Test

NATO is launching a new major military exercise on Monday to practice defense of its northern theater, the first such drill since the confirmation of the alliance's expansion to include Finland and Sweden.

Nordic Response 2024 will see more than 20,000 troops from 13 nations involved in a practice defensive operation across northern parts of Finland, Sweden, and Norway. The exercise will run from March 3 to March 14.

The accessions of Finland and Sweden to NATO have transformed the security environment in northern Europe and the Arctic Circle. Though long cooperating with NATO, Stockholm and Helsinki had maintained official foreign policy neutrality for decades through the Cold War and its aftermath. Both nations had sought to avoid confrontation with Russia, but Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 precipitated a rapid shift in public and political opinion.

NATO nations will drill on land, at sea, and in the air. More than 50 submarines, frigates, corvettes, aircraft carriers, and amphibious vessels will be involved, per a NATO press release. So too will more than 100 fighter jets, transport aircraft, maritime surveillance aircraft, and helicopters.

Ground troops will use equipment including artillery systems, tanks, and tracked vehicles. The NATO nations taking part are Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the U.K. and the U.S.

Norway will co-host the exercises along with Sweden and NATO. "We all need to know the terrain and conditions we operate in," Brigadier Tron Strand—the commander of the Norwegian Air Operations Centre—said in a statement.

This month's drills are an evolved version of the biannual Exercise Cold Response. "Thanks to the NATO accession of Finland—and eventually Sweden—we are now expanding the exercise to a Nordic Response with wider participation from other allies," Strand said.

Stockholm said around 4,500 of its personnel would be involved in Nordic Response. More than 4,000 Finns will take part—the largest Finnish contingent ever involved in NATO exercises.

"For the first time, Finland will participate as a NATO member nation in exercising collective defense of the alliance's regions," the Finnish Defense Forces said in a statement.

Their additions of Sweden and Finland to NATO bolsters the alliance in the Baltic Sea—onto which key Russian ports in Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg open—and in the so-called High North area.

"The High North represents an important and strategically located area for NATO," the alliance said on its website. "The exercise increases Nordic preparedness and the capability to conduct large-scale joint operations in challenging weather and climate."

Sweden is now in the final stages of joining the bloc, the Hungarian parliament having ratified its bid in February. Stockholm's accession has long been delayed by Turkish and Hungarian opposition.

Neil Melvin—the director of international security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank in London—told Newsweek: "Sweden notably brings to NATO a well-equipped army, over a hundred advanced [jet] fighters, a modern navy including five submarines, as well as a technologically advanced defense industrial base."

The extension of the alliance's Article 5 collective defense commitment across Scandinavia "is part of a transformation of northern Europe into a NATO bastion," Melvin said.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry by email to request comment.

Russia has protested Nordic Response. "Our country will not leave the bolstering of NATO's military potential near its borders without a response, it will take relevant defense measures in order to curtail threats to its national security," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in February.