NATO’s ‘Steadfast Defender’ exercise is demonstrating the delivery of unprecedented scale in multi-domain operations, integrating several national and multinational exercises and task groups for an extended period, from January until the end of May, and over an extended geography, from North America’s eastern seaboard to NATO’s eastern border. This includes delivery of reinforced maritime power across the North Atlantic and into the High North.
“‘Steadfast Defender’ is an exercise designed to be executed across the whole NATO area of responsibility,” Rear Admiral Joaquin Ruiz Escagedo, a Spanish naval officer commanding Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1), told a media briefing on 22 February onboard the SNMG1 flagship, the Spanish Navy’s F-100 Alvaro de Bazan-class frigate SPS Almirante Juan De Borbon, during a port call in Southampton, UK.
Also currently part of SNMG1 are the Spanish replenishment ship SPS Cantabria, the French Navy FREMM frigate FS Normandie, and the German Navy Type 702 Berlin-class auxiliary ship FGS Bonn.
“[‘Steadfast Defender’ is the] biggest alliance-wide effort in collective training and exercises in decades,”
“It is promoting readiness across the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.”
Rear Adm Ruiz Escagedo
“[There is] a clear message for all audiences inside and outside,” Rear Adm Ruiz Escagedo continued. “We are ready. NATO is ready.”
The purpose of ‘Steadfast Defender’ is to demonstrate deterrence and defence of the Euro-Atlantic theatre through being able to deliver high-end warfighting power across the North Atlantic by sea, and to project such power ashore across Europe and into the High North. Reinforcement by sea is a central element of NATO’s deterrence and defence posture, especially in a contested naval operating environment.
All 31 NATO member states plus Sweden are participating in ‘Steadfast Defender’. For the maritime phase – which is opening the exercise, with activities including reinforcement by sea across the Atlantic and into the High North – more than 50 ships are present, plus naval and maritime aircraft and assets like uncrewed vehicles. A dozen different countries are providing ships: seven different countries are providing amphibious forces.
The force integration training (FIT) component, which began in early February, encompassed two national-level exercises – the Spanish Navy-led ‘MAREX’ and the UK Royal Navy (RN)-led ‘Dynamic Guard’ – held in the southwestern approaches to the UK. This element included escort across trans-Atlantic sea lines of communication (SLOCs) of the US Navy (USN) Whidbey Island-class amphibious assault ship USS Gunston Hall, which had departed Norfolk, Virginia in late January. Task groups present included a Spanish Navy national task group, which sailed north from Ferrol, Spain; and SNMG1, which sailed south from Stavanger, Norway. In this FIT phase, the task groups worked up independently and began integrating. The US Second Fleet-led Combined Task Force – North (CTF-N) was also stood up, to provide the exercise’s maritime command element, operating under the NATO Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) maritime component commander.
In late February, ‘Steadfast Defender’ will progress into combat enhancement training (CET) in the two-week, UK-led ‘Joint Warrior’ exercise, held north of the UK and encompassing more advanced force integration.
The maritime phase will conclude with Exercise ‘Nordic Response’, taking place in the Norwegian fjords in early March. Here, the task groups will combine to deliver theatre entry, anti-submarine warfare, amphibious landings, and strike operations ashore (the latter led by the UK’s HMS Prince of Wales carrier strike group).
“‘MAREX’, ‘Joint Warrior’, and ‘Nordic Response’ are completely synchronised. We’re sharing planning teams between all three, and there’s an overarching scenario. They are completely linked,” Rear Admiral David Patchell, a Royal Canadian Navy officer posted as Vice Commander US Second Fleet, and operating as Commander CTF-N for the exercise, told the briefing.
“[The exercise] is connecting all those countries and all those capabilities into one theatre to understand and increase the ability of NATO to respond as a complete fighting force across all domains,” Rear Adm Patchell continued. “We conduct multi-domain exercises like ‘Steadfast Defender’ to create environments for building relationships or enhancing our defence and deterrence capabilities,” he added.
The exercise construct – to deliver reinforcements across the North Atlantic, to shape and enable the movement of those reinforcements into the High North, and then to project them ashore – very much reflects NATO’s deterrence and defence posture and wider strategic plan, said Commodore Simon Kelly, an RN officer and Deputy Commander UK Strike Force.
“The foundation of NATO strategy is defence and deterrence. This exercise is about ensuring we can operate together so we can execute the defence task,” said Cdre Kelly. “Deterrence is about communication, it’s about credibility, it’s about capability. So, drawing these forces together across every domain – air, land, sea, cyber, and space – is incredibly important in order to send a credible message to anyone out there.”
A major exercise like ‘Steadfast Defender’ can take several years to plan fully. “But clearly, the [current] strategic situation forms a backdrop to this, and therefore the exercise will be focused on making sure we can communicate deterrence and defence of the Euro-Atlantic area,” said Cdre Kelly. The second major phase in ‘Steadfast Defender’ – a multi-domain demonstration of the employment of NATO ground forces ashore, supported by allied air power – runs between mid-February and the end of May, stretches from Italy to Norway across central Europe, covers 10 separate exercises, and includes deployment of NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force into Poland.
