A KONGSBERG StrikeMaster anti-ship missile launch vehicle has been deployed to the remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen as part of Operation Atlantic City, bringing land-based anti-ship fire capabilities to a major Norwegian-led NATO exercise in the High North.
Footage released by the U.S. Marine Corps shows the StrikeMaster vehicle being escorted across the isolated island by soldiers from the Norwegian Home Guard’s District 11. The arrival of the platform introduces a vital sea-denial and coastal defense element to the multinational activity, which ran from 26 August to 4 September under NATO’s broader Arctic Sentry enhanced vigilance initiative.
The deployment places the StrikeMaster in an exceptionally demanding operational environment characterized by extreme weather, minimal infrastructure, and complex logistics. Designed as Australia’s configuration of KONGSBERG’s Naval Strike Missile (NSM) Coastal Defence System, the platform mounts a twin-pack NSM launcher onto Thales Australia’s Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicle. This creates a highly mobile, protected, and dispersed precision-strike capability.
Following a successful firing in Norway earlier this year, KONGSBERG announced in March that its StrikeMaster demonstrator would remain in Europe for partner demonstrations. Its deployment to Jan Mayen—located roughly 1,000 km off mainland Norway and north of the strategic Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap—significantly elevates those trials by testing how the system integrates into expeditionary advanced-base operations, combined fires, and maritime domain awareness under harsh Arctic conditions.
The StrikeMaster’s operations on the island are part of a coordinated, three-nation effort integrating sensors, command-and-control nodes, and strike assets from Norwegian, U.S., and British forces. To support the remote deployment, the UK Royal Air Force provided airlift capabilities using an A400M Atlas to transport vital cargo, while Royal Marines trained alongside Norwegian and U.S. personnel on the ground.
Conducted concurrently with Exercise Northern Viking 26, Operation Atlantic City allows NATO forces to leverage overlapping maritime surveillance and test whether distributed, high-precision capabilities like the StrikeMaster can be effectively projected and sustained at distance in Europe’s most challenging environments.
