Lance Landrum
Okay, welcome everyone, and on behalf of the Center for European Policy Analysis, I want to say welcome to this on-the-record press briefing that’s related to Arctic security in the High North. By way of introduction, my name is Lance Landrum. I am a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, particularly in the Transatlantic Defense and Security section, and a retired US Air Force officer after 31 and a half years. I have now been retired for a couple of years, out and about, and am a senior fellow at CEPA for now. What I do want to say administratively is, as we get going, we will have some opening comments, and then we will go to some initial framing questions with our panelists. Then what we’ll do is reference the chat, so please go to the chat and put your questions in the chat, and we will get to them as we flow through the discussion here for about the next hour. We may go in order; we may skip around based on the topical substance that we’re talking about. So, as a reminder, this is about the High North; this is about the Arctic; this is related to some recent publications by the Center for European Policy Analysis. The particular one in question here is “High Stakes in the High North: Harnessing Uncrewed Capabilities for Arctic Defense and Security,” and there are some others that go along with that that you can find on the CEPA website. I think we’re all aware that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s effort to bolster their deterrence and defense, particularly since Russia’s illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, has been front and center, and one of the areas that NATO has been wrestling with is how to deter and defend in the Arctic Circle and above the Arctic Circle and below the ice in all domains in the Arctic, and CEPA has been watching this very closely and did quite a bit of analysis and study, culminating in this paper that I mentioned. As we see a lot of the ongoing media associated with unmanned systems, uncrewed systems, autonomous systems, and the harsh weather conditions in the Arctic and the ability for the NATO allies, particularly with Finland and Sweden now part of the Alliance, and bringing that level of expertise, it’s appropriate to take a look at this as one of the many areas that we look at in the transatlantic relationship. So, with that, let me turn towards some of our panelists to get us started. Federico, one of the authors of their recent report, can you get the ball rolling? Can you just talk about how the Alliance thinks about securing the northern flank and securing the Arctic area, protecting the critical infrastructure that’s up there, and ensuring the freedom of navigation, both from the air domain, from the land domain, and from the sea domain, and the harsh conditions up there? And can you talk about some of the things you discovered in your analysis? Thanks, Federico, I appreciate that.
Federico Borsari
Thanks so much, Lance, for the introduction, and thanks to everyone for joining this conversation. Thanks to CEPA for organizing it. I think, Lance, your question is really broad, of course, and it covers a lot of the different issues that are intertwined, but that are very specific in many elements and from many angles. I think when we started looking at the topic of uncrewed systems and their potential applications in the High North and in the Arctic and Subarctic regions, we were trying to understand how this technology can really support and complement traditional capabilities, and based on your question, NATO and Nordic allies are doing a lot of things to secure the High North and to increase security in the region and to improve and strengthen the defense and deterrence capabilities that they have. At the same time, we were wondering how improved systems can increase these efforts, and what we discovered as we were writing the report was that these systems are not just complements; they are a critical element of deterrence and defense in the region. The reason is that the technology maturity of these systems is very high, and for this reason, the applications are very broad and multiple in many ways. So, according to our observations, and also talking with partners in the region, we found out that these systems are a very important priority for many countries because they can really increase situational awareness in the region; they can improve the detection and the sensing capabilities of Arctic navies and personnel. Naval groups can use uncrewed systems across different domains in the air and underwater to improve their sensing and detection, and at the same time they can also use uncrewed systems to improve the logistics for increasing resupply capacity or providing medevac or case back support, but they can also use this technology to monitor critical infrastructure, and you mentioned it in your question, this is an area of great importance because we have seen the risks for critical infrastructure, not just in the Nordic sea, but also in the Baltic Sea, for instance. You can use underwater, subsurface, or above-surface vehicles to monitor checkpoints and to create a perimeter of security around critical infrastructure. We are not just talking about energy pipelines, undersea cables for connectivity; we’re also talking about oil platforms in the Arctic Ocean, we are talking about satellite ground terminals in Norway or elsewhere, or in Iceland. So, we’re talking about a variety of critical infrastructure, and so we discovered that traditional capabilities are essential, but at the same time, they are not enough. Given the maturity level of drone technology, now drones across different domains are not just complements but they are essential, and that’s why countries in the region are investing more resources in developing these capabilities, but it is a very multifaceted effort which forces allies and the Alliance as a whole not to focus only on technology, but also on our elements, and I’m happy to expand on this in later in the conversation. So, thanks again.
Lance Landrum
Federico, thanks for that, and thanks for bringing your expertise as a fellow for CEPA, particularly in transatlantic defense and security, with your focus on unmanned systems across the breadth of the Alliance. I really appreciate the way you had a broad brush there of the technology and brought in the all-domain aspect of it, particularly the protection of undersea critical infrastructure as just part of the deterrence and defense. Skip Davis is a retired Army Major General from the United States. He had 37 years in the Army and is a senior fellow now with the Center for European Policy Analysis. One of his last postings was the Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Defense Investment at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, so he brings a wealth of European experience that is too long to list. Skip, thanks for working on this report and being a key part of its writing and publishing. Federico talked about some of the technology, and he talked about it in terms of sensing, detecting, and many other examples. Can you talk about the unmanned, uncrewed systems in a strategic sense? How does the NATO alliance look at this from a high level of being able to help with its strategic focus for deterrence and defense?
Gordon B. “Skip” Davis, Jr.
Well, thanks for the question and thanks for the introduction. I’ll also join my thanks with Federico’s to CEPA for hosting the event, as well as for all the media representatives who decided to join today. Let me start off with just a kind of framing response that encapsulates what we tried to put in the report, but also some of the answers I’ll give today, and that is that the Arctic region we knew before recent discussions in the political sphere, which is strategic and important for NATO, is no longer an afterthought. Certainly, the events of the last several weeks have brought that to the forefront, but it’s a critical operational area where deterrence and defense depend on a series of things, specifically awareness, integration of capabilities, and resilient architecture. Now, Federico talked about the fact that we focused on uncrewed systems because they’re maturing, they’re versatile, and they provide critical capabilities that can’t necessarily be substituted by human presence, so, in that regard, they’re important. Let me just talk first about two big takeaways. Uncrewed systems matter in the High North, not because they’re revolutionary, but because they enable persistence, where continuous human presence is really impractical. Some presence, okay, but it’s difficult to expand because of a lack of protection, because of the extremely arduous conditions. The second is that the challenge for NATO is not inventing new technology. It is maturing so fast, and there are so many things off or in development right now, that the real challenge is integrating and scaling them, or what already exists, and putting that into an integrated structure for credible deterrence and defense. So, three quick responses on awareness, integration, and resilience. Deterrence, I think, begins with persistent awareness, and the Arctic’s size and remoteness make it very expensive for traditional presence to have an impact. It can be episodic, periodic, but not necessarily persistent. But uncrewed systems – air, surface, subsurface – can provide that multi-domain ISR. They can monitor sea lines, communication, and critical infrastructure on land, and then they can also provide early warning from air and maritime, specifically because of the long distance that they can potentially detect. You can’t deter what you can’t see, but uncrewed systems can improve how NATO sees the Arctic consistently. In terms of integration, drones don’t deter on their own. Deterrence comes from a network of sensors that are integrated and can feed the NATO command and control system, and allow rapid information sharing across allies, allowing commanders to understand, decide, and act faster than a potential adversary. So, this is about human-machine teaming, not fully autonomous warfare. I’d say the value overall of improved systems isn’t this specific platform; it’s in the decision advantage they can collectively enable. Then finally, in terms of resilience, the platforms we recommend for the North aren’t necessarily going to be designed for every possible situation, but they can survive well enough in the conditions that the Arctic poses, and they can operate in degraded communications, in disrupted Global Navigation Satellite Services, they can survive the environmental stress, and those are the kinds of systems that NATO needs to focus on testing and validating and integrating to really get that resilience, redundancy, and, frankly, simplicity of an architecture to help in deterrence and defense in the High North.
Lance Landrum
Thanks for highlighting the role that the autonomous systems can play, as far as bringing persistent awareness and the need to integrate with other systems, because it is a very harsh environment up there, and we’re happy to have with us Minna Ålander, who is a fellow for the Transatlantic Defense and Security program at the Center for European Policy Analysis. She’s also an analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies, and she brings a wealth of international relations, security, and defense work, particularly from work like at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Minna, you have a lot of expertise on this. Can you talk about the uniqueness of the Arctic environment and how that is a factor for all of the equipment and the human input and human interaction that has to happen in that harsh environment?
Minna Ålander
Thanks, Lance, thanks a lot for having me here. So, as has been hinted at already, the Arctic is a very hostile environment to humans, and that is quite a challenge because I would say that the first main challenge in Arctic military operations is how to survive the weather conditions in order to even get to combat. There is a chance that you will die from natural causes, basically, if you’re not very well prepared. What this means is, even when we talk about mid-Sweden, Norway, northern Finland, that area, or anywhere in the Canadian Arctic, even if you’re not trying to do a military operation, but you just want to drive on a road, you need very good tires in order to stay on the road because it can be very slippery. You need, obviously, really good personal equipment. Battery life is way shorter. Technical equipment simply freezes, like batteries and motors. Engines can freeze if you don’t have specific equipment to stop that from happening. Fuel can even freeze, so there are a lot of these kinds of very specific technical considerations that you wouldn’t necessarily think of. Then there are two specific factors related to the seasons in the Arctic. We usually think about all this cold-weather stuff and the fact that it’s always dark in the winter because of the polar night. But on the other hand, in the summer, above the Arctic Circle, the sun doesn’t really go down at night, so you don’t have the advantage of darkness. There are a lot of mosquitoes in the northern parts of Finland, Sweden, and Norway, and this sounds kind of silly, but it actually makes it difficult to stay in one place. Jokes aside, this makes Arctic operations really hard. It requires a lot of very specific know-how and equipment. For example, in the NATO context, this means that there’s only a handful of allies that even have the ability to exercise and operate in the Arctic in the first place, and these allies are basically the ones that are located in the region, so the Nordic countries, Canada, the US, and then France, Germany and the UK to an extent, and Italy is also now increasingly developing or adapting their Alpine brigade to Arctic operations because there’s also difference between Alpine and Arctic environments. For example, when we think about the cap of the north region, especially the Finnish and Swedish Arctic areas, they are flat land, so they are not mountainous like in Norway. So, you need different types of skis. There are a lot of these kinds of detailed questions that are really important if you want to sustain operations. One huge challenge is, of course, that the Arctic is not a very densely populated area, so sustaining troops is really hard; you don’t have basing, and so on. This all highlights why uncrewed systems have such potential for specifically this region, so as to improve the domain awareness, as Federico was highlighting earlier.
Lance Landrum
Minna, thanks for expanding on that harsh environment and how it affects all of the equipment. Let’s go to our last framing question; we’ll go to Dr. Jan Kallberg. He’s a senior fellow for CEPA in Transatlantic Defense and Security. He’s also a fellow at the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, and he’s also on the faculty at George Washington University. Jan, could you talk about the autonomous systems and uncrewed systems a bit in the sense that a lot of times there’s overinflation of their capabilities, right? They’re made out to be a little bit more than what they are. Skip talked about how they need to be integrated with other systems, interoperable with other systems across the NATO Alliance, and the other capabilities that nations bring. Could you expand a little bit on the need for integration and what is being done throughout the Alliance and the different nations of NATO to interoperate and integrate those systems together?
Jan Kallberg
I think there’s a lot of soul searching going on, saying, “How can we adapt and integrate these types of tools into how we conduct combat?” There is also a stream coming back from Ukraine that says we can’t operate in the same way; we can’t open command posts that stay for days with a massive electronic signature. We must not mass troops and concentrate fire, movement, and so forth; we must disperse. I think this drone integration comes with a complete other set of adaptations. We also see the growth of important long-range fires, which main source of fires from 60-70 miles away, which is compared to artillery that was going behind you before. So, I see this as a significant change in how we do warfare, and drones are not the only integration issue. When it comes to the Far North, I spent a significant part of the Cold War in uniform. I didn’t participate in war; I participated in the cold part. I was born in Sweden, I did that in Sweden, and I was a company commander at the end. When it comes to the Arctic, as Minna captured really well, we always said that any adversary is just a problem for 50 minutes a day; the climate is the real problem, and it’s really trying to get you. I think what drones add value to is just reach and the ability to cover an area before, let’s say, a platoon can cover on skis, maybe, if you squeeze them 20 miles a night and through Lapland terrain. Here, you don’t need to do it. You can send the drone to answer the intelligence question. It’s also a reverse problem. Earlier, you could just find a nice robbery; you could hang out there for a day or two. There were no thermal drones that would pick up your thermal signature. There were no LIDARs; there was no signal intelligence. So, this has also changed how we do things, and with drones, what I find really important in a tactical application is that the drones themselves would create a lot of benefits when it comes to intelligence, getting data, answering questions, directing where to strike, and we don’t need to actually go; we can figure it out. The problem is, where do we lead these drones, and where do we farm them? Where do we send them out of? The problem in the Arctic, or from about Lapland and further up, is that there are no competing electronic signatures. There are no civilizations, there’s no housing, there’s no people texting on every single street corner. It’s just you. And the problem then is that if you start communicating with drones, you’ll be picked up. And that I see as the problem, and as Minna also mentioned, energy is sparse. There are no outlets in 20 miles; there’s no sun, and it becomes tricky. How do you charge these drones, and how do you ensure them? But I think as we solve this, as we’re going forward, I think you can cover significant terrain, from an intelligence perspective, as with unmanned stations, energy and supply docking stations, and they just move on. What I think we don’t really mention here, too, is the submarine drones, which I think are really interesting, especially as we look at the Russian Northern Fleet, which will hang out somewhere in the coastal areas of Norway, Spitzbergen, depending on the task, or Greenland. Even though there were spaceborne assets and navy surveillance and so on, we can track these, but I think there’s a significant potential in the Arctic, a large area with submarine drones tracking outgoing and incoming submarines and so forth. That’s a little about how I see it. I also think that it’s important to understand, as we mentioned here, about materials, plastics, and so forth, getting brittle in cold weather. War is a really practical thing. It’s very easy in the beltway to see as an intellectual sport, but it’s like plowing or carpentry; it’s this pretty practical thing. So, to maintain these, repair, and keep them functional over time in an area with absolutely no support infrastructure, I find, is one of the largest challenges. Thank you.
Lance Landrum
Jan, thanks for that. I think some of your historical explanation of your experience actually touches on a question that’s down the list in the chat about the evolution of capabilities in the Arctic, so thanks for starting to kind of expand on that. Your discussion about the electromagnetic spectrum resonates with me as part of my passion area of maneuvering within the electromagnetic spectrum, and the way that if you’re in an uncongested environment, you’re really going to stand out, so I appreciate that. Let’s go to the chat. We’ll try to look through it in order. I see the Mitchell Institute for Air Power Studies is on the line with Houston Cantwell. Thanks for the question, Houston. This, I’m going to click towards Federico to start, and Skip, if you have anything based on the research you did for the paper to add on this, please weigh in. So, Federico, in your research, in your study, did you guys get a sense of the space-based data and services coverage in the Arctic, and any challenges associated with that? Not being an expert in the space, I am aware that coverage over the poles is different than coverage around the latitudes that are closer to the equator. Did you discover anything as far as challenges with position, navigation, timing, communications, etc., that were a factor as you looked across the unmanned systems in the Arctic? So, Federico, get started.
Federico Borsari
Yes, thanks so much, Lance, and thanks to Houston for his question, which is a very important one. Well, definitely the PNT issue in the Arctic and Subarctic regions is important because it’s a critical element of any military and drone capabilities and uncrewed systems, and for many others, actually, it’s a critical requirement. You need to know where you are with precise timing. And so, if you don’t have reliable connectivity in terms of a satellite signal, for instance, or satellite coverage, then it becomes more difficult to ascertain your relative position, and based on that, plan your mission or operations. When it comes to improved technology, I think there are limitations of limited satellite coverage at the poles, and this has been somewhat addressed with low-Earth-orbit satellites, for instance, that are enabling a more consistent passage also on the North Pole, but at the same time, this is not enough to close the gap in connectivity and especially satellite coverage. That means that many of the systems need to rely on other types of sensing to determine their positions. Visual navigation is now becoming a critical part of that, even though there are challenges to it, and especially in the Arctic, where, as Minna mentioned, the environment can in certain areas be very, very similar. You can have kilometers and kilometers of snow with limited- I think someone has a mic open, yeah, okay. If you need to use visual navigation, the environment can deceive you and deceive your sensors, and so you need a combination of different things. You need the visual, but you also need to rely on celestial navigation, for instance, and at the same time have very good, very robust inertial navigation systems on board. So, you need to have a combination of different methods, or methodologies, to basically ascertain your position. This has an implication, however, because it means a higher cost for the systems that you’re considering. And so, how do you balance these requirements with your budget? How do you make sure that you have sufficiently reliable systems that you can still produce at scale, to, for instance, achieve the desired effect? I think GPS or satellite connectivity is just a piece of that. You also need other types of navigation methodologies, but at the same time, the environment in the Arctic can represent an obstacle, a formidable one, that you can address only by a combination of different things. At the same time, you should also plan a contingency where you know uncrewed systems are not reliable anymore, and so you need to use the old type of navigation methodologies, with your compass, with your paper map, etc. I think it’s more complex than it seems, but there are technologies now that are very, very effective, and as I mentioned, they are changing the way PNT is done in the Arctic.
Lance Landrum
Federico, thanks for that. Houston, let me add that there are some difficulties in coverage for space-based data and services, PNT, and comms in the Arctic, but I think we should also remember that we’re seeing the same challenges in other regions of the world. We take Russia’s war in Ukraine as an example. There are all sorts of electromagnetic interference that’s either unintentional or intentional, that is blocking similar PNT and comms. So, I think as the Alliance looks at this as a whole, this isn’t just an Arctic problem; this is a modern warfare problem. Solutions for alternative navigation in Arctic autonomy applied just as much to alternative navigation systems in other regions that would be used in other regions. We’re moving to the New York Times from Laura. This is an interesting one. She transitions the conversation…
Gordon B. “Skip” Davis, Jr.
Lance?
Lance Landrum
Yep, sorry, you can get two fingers on that one because I’m coming to you on this one. So, if you want to add to the last one, go ahead, but Skip also help out with this question from Laura, New York Times. She transitions from awareness, sensing, ISR, to kinetic offensive employment. If you, after you want to add on a little bit from the first question, if you can talk a little bit about autonomy and kinetic lethal force in what you discovered, that’d be helpful, thanks.
Gordon B. “Skip” Davis, Jr.
Okay, thanks, Lance. So, let me first add a few comments onto what Federico provided in a very comprehensive response, and I would only add the fact that he talked about inertial navigation and visual navigation and its issues, but the fact that there are some alternatives to normal, GNSS, PNT support, precision navigation and timing support, which could also be enabled by AI, so they can go between various options to find out what works and ensure redundancy, to ensure position navigation, specifically for movement of uncrewed systems in the Arctic, where there’s difficulties in satellite coverage. The other aspect is that NATO has developed, since last summer, an initiative specifically focused on improving satellite communication, PNT services in the North called NorthLink, and they’ve already got a memorandum of understanding, where they’re moving forward on a number of initiatives to try to figure out exactly what can, specifically the Arctic allies, do to help improve the ability to support NATO systems, as well as national systems and operating in the Arctic region. So, they’ve started on that, not necessarily rolling out specific capabilities, but at least they’ve seized upon the problem. Then, the last is that testing and experimentation can go a long way. There are test centers in Sweden and Norway that are focused on cold-weather operations, and they’re a perfect opportunity. There’s a NATO Cold Weather Operations Center of Excellence in Elverum, Norway, which, next month, will start an initiative to experiment with Arctic capabilities. With respect to kinetic capabilities from the New York Times representative, the systems that we’re recommending are used in the Arctic region and also carry kinetic capabilities. The primary task is gaining domain awareness and being as consistent as possible. But once threats are identified, and if there are specific threats to NATO territorial sovereignty, to NATO forces, to NATO capabilities, then obviously there should be a need for defensive capability, which includes kinetic effects. They’re already on board a variety of aerial platforms and naval platforms, as we’ve seen involved in Ukraine, and they need to be tested in an Arctic region to ensure that they function as advertised. So, that’s where I get back to that testing and experimentation being critical for NATO to really ensure it’s got credible capabilities for deterrence and defense in the North.
Lance Landrum
Thanks, Skip, I think that’s a great way to put it. I appreciate your insights on that transition, not only all the extra information on the space, but also on NorthLink. I was not aware of that, so that’s some homework that I have to do based on this discussion. The next couple of questions, I think we can kind of roll up together. I’m going to come first to Minna and then over to Jan on them, and if we look at the next couple of questions, we can talk about Greenland and how drones, obviously, Greenland has been in the news recently, but it’s more than just Greenland. There’s a lot of nations that border on the Arctic and the High North, but really the question is about, specifically, how can the drones expand the capability and how can they expand the deterrence and defense, particularly against Russian malign activities and influence, Chinese malign activities and influence, and then if we combine that question with the other question from Sven from R&D Deutschland, the question is about some number of troops, so a number of troops from 150 to 200 US troops to Arctic missions in Greenland, etc. Can you just hit on that as far as uncrewed systems, autonomous systems, integrated with an increased number of forces in order to bolster deterrence and defense, countering malign influence? If we kind of wrap those questions up, Minna, let’s start with you.
Minna Ålander
Thanks a lot. I just wanted to add very briefly on the question of navigation that, for example, GPS is almost, more often than not, jammed in Northern Norway and in Eastern Finland. So, this is even the situation in peacetime, and there’s also an increasing amount of satellite spoofing and that kind of stuff going on. It’s very good that it was emphasized that we need a number of options here. On the question of a possible NATO presence in Greenland, I think that there are some blueprints. For example, right now NATO is building up the forward land force in Finland, which is, by the way, an entirely European effort. It’s going to be a contingent consisting of contributions from the Nordic countries, France, the UK, and Italy. And, of course, something like that could potentially be a sort of solution for Greenland as well, and where, for example, unmanned, uncrewed systems can obviously help with all the tasks we have been talking about here, what has proven really important, and that has been tested in the Baltic Sea over the past year with the Task Force X and the Baltic Center, which are both NATO missions. Task Force X has been specifically experimenting with uncrewed maritime systems to improve NATO’s ability to monitor subsea activity, and the point of all this is to sort of deny the deniability with, for example, acts of hybrid warfare, which we have seen in the Baltic Sea, but also in the Arctic, for example, between mainland Norway and the archipelago Svalbard with cable cuts and such appearances. These unmanned systems can really help the monitoring capacity in terms of, especially, submarine or underwater infrastructure. And if we look at others, not only Greenland, but also Iceland for example, there’s a lot of really important infrastructure that are around Iceland and also that go from, let’s say, the UK towards the US, and the North Atlantic is full of really important, lifelines of communication infrastructure and Iceland most definitely does not have the capacity to monitor all of this, so these systems can really help especially smaller nations that don’t have the human resources to man, for example, monitoring assets and so on. So, there is a lot of potential here in those terms.
Lance Landrum
Thanks, Minna. Jan, can we come to you for your perspective on this? These are NATO missions in the Arctic, NATO missions in Greenland.
Jan Kallberg
So, let’s say the Danes and the Canadians, they’re already doing silver energy patrols. You hang out in the terrain; you ski over it in a specific pattern. Yes, claiming this is Canada, that’s it, or this is Greenland, Denmark, and so forth, this is it. Drones can extend that coverage, and we can also see the flipside. It’s a hostile environment, true, but it goes both ways. So, I mean, we’ve all seen Jack Nicholson in The Shining; it can be bad for others, too. So, we just need to focus on being okay with it, and then we deliver what we have to deliver to the other side. With your small unit support vehicle that you will have in these types of patrols, there are limits to how much you can carry in drones and so forth. But we are talking about the kinetic effect. If you have to strike out into a kinetic effect on, let’s say, a helicopter, or some sort of airframe, there is no repair infrastructure. A half-hit is a good hit. So, with any damage or casualty, they’re done; if they have a breakdown, and so forth. I think with the outposts and small patrols supported by drones and drone-based intelligence, plus we have space-borne, which would see the bigger picture and more, I think we can get a really good picture of what’s going on. We can also claim sovereignty by international law, and if there is something to be taken care of, we have to rely on air assets and other types of assets. There’s no way that you, as a patrol, can carry either firepower or just enough to carry out something bigger. I also think, when it comes to Russia, I have to say it, and I’ll maybe get booted out of the Zoom now, but the Russians, they have four or five Ropucha landing crafts built by the Poles in the 1980s; they had 50 years of Russian maintenance. If they make it beyond Hammerfest in Norway, I’d be surprised. So, I’m not so concerned. But different challenges to sovereignty, especially in Northern Canada and definitely Northern Alaska, that you maintain this is us, this is our territory, this is our border, and I think you can do that, supported with drones and small patrols that follow a regular pattern and move across the terrain. Thank you.
Lance Landrum
Yeah, Jan, thanks a lot. I really appreciate the way you highlighted the challenge for both sides and your landing craft example there, as you concluded, I think shines a light on the difficulty and the challenge to frame this. We could look at it from the sense of this is a major force-on-force war with amphibious assaults and all-domain force-on-force warfare, or we can look at it in the sense of hybrid malign influence and a slow burn of just leaning on the Alliance and creating a new norm and a new accepted level of influence from other nations in the Arctic, where it is not conducive to the cohesiveness of the Alliance.
Jan Kallberg
Sorry for injecting myself, because of the cycle; as you say, they’re trying to push a narrative that this is what the lower man – I say that to sound intellectual – called Terra Nullius: they abandon land, and then there can be new claims. I think it was really good that you mentioned this, Lance, just how you push and push and change the narrative and start to create facts on the ground. I think that’s what we’re facing, and I think that’s more concerning. Thank you.
Lance Landrum
Yeah, and regretfully, we’re facing that in many other areas across the entire transatlantic region, as well. Federico, I’m coming to you. We are going to go to John Seward, The Washington Times. He asked us a technical question about the batteries and the battery tech in the harsh conditions of the Alliance. Can you discuss what you learned about battery tech, battery life, and battery refresh in your studies?
Federico Borsari
Yeah, absolutely. I think this is one of the critical technical questions that developers need to answer and address when it comes to using and developing Arctic-capable drones. And as Skip and I were writing the report, we found out that talking to people in the industry and talking to the end user, batteries are draining very fast in the Arctic, as Minna mentioned at the beginning. There is no standard rate of draining, but in certain exercises or training events, the battery capacity dropped from 100% to as low as 20% in a matter of a few minutes, given the very harsh, very cold temperatures. This was a training exercise in Germany, for instance, not even in the Arctic, so you can imagine how fast the battery goes down in these regions. But there are solutions, of course. They are not a silver bullet or a panacea for having limited battery capacity with your drones in the Arctic, but they are useful. You can have specific elements that basically provide heat to the battery’s enclosure, and so they maintain a more stable temperature around the battery in order to make it work properly, or for a longer time. You can also improve the energy efficiency of your drone with more effective components that drain less battery and have lower energy requirements. You can also improve the efficiency of the propellers by using silicon spray to make sure that the enzymes work properly and drain less battery, so there are multiple ways to do it, but these are critical things that you need to think about because if you simply take a drone developed for a temperate climate and you put it in the Arctic region, then you will discover very, very fast that it’s not its environment. So, you need to make sure that these kinds of development elements are embedded from the very beginning in the development phase, and this is really critical. Thanks.
Lance Landrum
Thanks, Federico. I think the energy source is really important. Jan talked about that in the beginning. Skip, let’s turn to you because we’ll go to Le Mans Diplomatique. Merci, Morgan, for the question, and her question is somewhat answered, a little bit by our discussion on alternative navigation, and somewhat answered by the discussion on the battery. But really, your question is about whether we developed autonomy and uncrewed systems for the Arctic and the harsh environment. Is that a completely separate development? Is that so different than other autonomous systems that it has to be a completely separate track? And, as an example in her question, are the autonomous systems we’re seeing in Ukraine applicable to the Arctic, so how does that work, Skip? Can you describe the capability development aspect of this?
Gordon B. “Skip” Davis, Jr.
Okay, so there are a couple of options, and Morgan merci pour la question. I would say two things. First off, with respect to the NATO controlled procurement, if there’s a NATO mission, and there’s a lot of talk about a potential NATO mission for the Arctic or the High North separate from what we already have in terms of regional plans, and if that comes to realization, then there’ll be specific tasks and there’ll be a desire for this kind of persistent awareness that we talked about, and the need to integrate capabilities from Arctic allies or others that want to contribute to the effort that aren’t necessarily Arctic allies, think the UK, think big nations, Germany, France, etc., Italy because of its cold weather capabilities. And so, there could be an initiative as we had for the NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance, which is now the NATO ISR Force, and there’s already all the basic requirements for personnel, for analytics, for mission control that are down at Sigonella that could basically take on additional capability. There could be an initiative for, let’s say, maritime-capable platforms, I think of the Triton, which has already been tested in the High North, and so there are certain high-level, high-altitude, long-endurance capabilities that are available only by a few nations, in this case particularly the US, but that could be acquired collectively, like the AGS was. There was actually, through a consortium of less than all at 28 at a time, a couple that opted out: France and the UK, but nonetheless, it was bought. Now, it’s operated by all 32; the operating expenses, so that certainly could be done. Triton has been looked at as a potential capability because of its maritime-specific capabilities, which would be perfect for looking over the Barents Sea, the Greenland Sea, the Norwegian Sea, and the High North writ large. That said, there are a whole lot of other types of capabilities on those high-altitude platforms that are relevant for Arctic deterrence and defense. In this case, it may not be that nations decide to collectively put that together because you would need specific forces distributed across various nations. That’s more appropriate for nations to buy, but not nations individually, because, as we all know, procurement is cheaper and can be much, much faster and scaled higher if, in fact, multiple nations come and agree upon the same performance characteristics and then buy collectively. That’s been proven time and time again, why NATO has so many high-visibility projects undergoing, and then there have also been plenty of other examples from air refueling and transport, etc. So, the answer is that multinational procurement can certainly be a preferred method of acquiring capabilities, and then also testing and experimentation can be multinational, which is extremely important to ensure the right kinds of capabilities for the end users – those national forces, maritime, land, air, that will be employing the capabilities that are eventually bought.
Lance Landrum
Thanks for that explanation. I am looking at the clock, and time flies when you have a robust media engagement. I’m going to come to you, Minna, on Elizabeth’s question from Defense News about prioritizing drone development. You can see the question there, and then Jan, I’m setting you up for Zita’s question after Minna. This is Zita from Military Times. Her question is about the threats and how the threats could or couldn’t develop with or without unmanned systems. Let’s start with Minna to talk about prioritizing unmanned systems.
Minna Ålander
Well, I would say that these systems are starting to mature, but there are still a lot of issues that we have talked about here that are specific to the Arctic, and those still require more work in terms of making them more reliable. It’s still a work in progress, I would say, and as has been emphasized, they can’t replace legacy systems either or human presence in terms of especially sovereignty, sort of stating sovereignty and marking sovereignty. I would say that they are quite a high priority, but they are still a supporting capacity, or that’s at least the view in the Nordic countries. And by the way, about the question, just to add briefly on the question of joint development and procurement, the Nordic countries, for example, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on starting to jointly procure uncrewed systems, aerial systems. So, this is very much happening.
Lance Landrum
Thanks for that. Jan, we’ll go to you for that question about the threat development.
Jan Kallberg
So, as I see it now, and of course, that comes with my elderly person type of outlook, I see wars, wars have been, but the threat is, if you look on a specific Russian Arctic unit like the 20th Independent Motorized Brigade and so forth in Petsamo, who has been designed to do smash-and-grab attacks towards Norway and so forth, all those have been nicely, completely eradicated in Ukraine. They might have a set of flags and a banner left, but that’s it. So, those are gone, so they have to restart from scratch to set up a lot of their units, so I don’t think there is an imminent ground threat unless they use some of the regular ground forces further up north, so I would say that the threat right now is more naval, that they are seeking to destroy cables. I mean, Ireland has no navy. Very low-hanging fruit for them to go out for more mines, can seek themselves in the North Sea and tamper with cables and so forth, but they’re done in the Baltic Sea and so forth, and I see it mainly as a naval threat. And there we, of course, have the Presidium and so forth from the navy and space assets that contract, but one first priority is to seek better coverage with drones when it comes to the naval space. Thank you.
Lance Landrum
Thanks, Jan, I appreciate it. Again, sensitive to time. Federico, just giving you a warning, I’m coming to you for the very last question in the chat. Morgan, I see a second question about integrated development and integrated procurement. I think Skip answered some of those questions. I think that I would just add on to that that multinational integrated capability development – I know it’s a push from the European Union; it’s rightfully a push from the European Union. It’s a push from the NATO Alliance; it has many benefits of scale, it has many benefits of natural interoperability, and there are mechanisms by which nations can partner for integrated capability development. The real challenge is getting those nations together and agreeing on the capability in a way that they can all come to terms and get on contract and advance and scale and accelerate the procurement part of that. I’m looking to Skip to see if you want to throw in anything else on this before I go to Federico for the last question. Okay, Skip, we’ll give you one second. We got to save a minute for Sarah to conclude.
Gordon B. “Skip” Davis, Jr.
Okay, so very quickly, you just talked about interoperability, and I just wanted to hit that button one more time because, frankly, NATO procurement collectively or multinational promotes interoperability where it doesn’t already exist, then NATO provides a framework for data and network integration through standard nation agreements, but even there, it’s upon the nations themselves to actually comply with the agreements that they sign up to, and so we need both implementation and also probably certification to ensure that those standards are respected and implemented.
Lance Landrum
Excellent, thanks. Federico, it’s got to be fast. The last question from Heine from Aftenposten is about scaling unmanned systems, using them in networks together. A brief comment on that, and then we’re going to go to Sarah from CEPA to conclude with the administrative remarks.
Federico Borsari
Okay, thanks so much, and I’m sorry if I’m taking up the time from other questions to be answered. There were a lot of interesting sites. So, regarding the uncrewed systems for monitoring undersea cables and other infrastructure, I think you need, of course, a lot of them because simply the sensor capacity underwater is severely limited, and so you need, as it’s mentioned in the question, you need to create a network, you need to create a kind of a grid comprising of different types of undersea drones and sensors, not just drones moving, but also sensors on the bottom of the sea to make sure you’re tracking and you’re monitoring your critical infrastructure. These need to be connected with other types of assets above the surface to provide the data and information to the analysts and the intelligence community to monitor. So, there have to be many, and just to briefly comment on a couple of other questions very quickly regarding Denmark’s baseline assets in terms of drone capabilities. Many other nations are in Denmark’s situation. You need to cover and close some capability gaps, so you need to see where drones can be a good force multiplier and complement, and also cost-effective, compared to traditional capabilities that also require a lot of other expenses in terms of personnel sustainment, etc. So, it needs to be a very robust analysis there, and there are multiple systems that can address that issue in terms of drones. Regarding the New York Times question also about the kinetic options, I think, just to build up on what Skip said, I can see situations where Russia launches, for instance, one-way attack drones. This is a very serious contingency, of course, but in that case, there are drones that can provide early warning and domain awareness for air defense assets. And so, this is a force multiplier that can help air defense to cover the Arctic and Nordic areas, so I think that is also one of the situations where the drones can be very, very helpful.
Lance Landrum
Grazie, Federico. I will simply say thank you to everyone who joined and thank you to the panelists. I will turn it over to Sarah for concluding administrative remarks.
Sarah Krajewski
Thank you so much, Lance, and thank you to our panelists. Watching the sun slowly set in Skip’s background as we’ve had this briefing. Fantastic questions. If we didn’t get to any of them today, please email me or press@cepaorg.pages.dev. I’d be happy to connect you with anyone who was on this call today. A recording and rough, auto-generated transcript will follow shortly in the coming hours, so you’ll have that in hand too. Nothing much left to say, other than thank you, everyone, for both the insightful questions and the expertise on this call, as all of this news develops, but thank you and enjoy the rest of your day wherever it takes you. Bye, everyone.
