NATO Prepares to Demonstrate its Greenland Defense Plans
NATO is to conduct a series of integrated exercises to test and exercise plans for the defense of the High North and Greenland. A keynote of the plans is the engagement of numerous NATO nations but also use of NATO command and control structures.
British involvement in the plan was announced by British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at the Munich Security Conference last week. The United Kingdom will deploy a Royal Navy carrier strike group (CSG) led by HMS Prince of Wales (R09) supported by Type 45 destroyer HMS Dragon (D35), a frigate, a nuclear attack submarine and a logistics support vessel.
The Prince of Wales CSG, as part of Operation Firecrest, will operate as part of NATO’s Standing Naval Maritime Group 1, which is being led in 2026 by the Royal Navy. It also includes ships from the United States, Canada and Northern European members of the Joint Expeditionary Force. Standing Naval Maritime Group 1 is in turn commanded by NATO’s Joint Force Command in Norfolk, Virginia, which will be exercising NATO’s new plans for defending the High North and Greenland under the NATO Artic Sentry plan.
The Prince of Wales CSG will also visit the Eastern Seaboard of the United States for port visits and to exercise with US F-35 aircraft. The Royal Navy may also during this period seek to take forward plans to operationalize autonomous air-to-air refueling tanker drones.
The clear intent of the plans announced by the UK Prime Minister is to demonstrate the NATO alliance’s commitment to defending the High North and Greenland as a joint enterprise.
None of the various announcements made about the deployment of the Prince of Wales CSG has given an indication of when it would commence. HMS Prince of Wales is still in a recovery and repair period after an extended deployment to the Asia-Pacific theater last year. But she is still alongside in Portsmouth rather than at the shipyard in Rosyth, to which she would normally be sent if any major problems needed to be rectified. Therefore a likely timetable for this year’s Operation Firecrest deployment is likely to be mid-summer. By this time her sister ship HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) will have completed her deep maintenance period in Rosyth and should be ready once again for operational deployment, should sufficient UK F-35B aircraft be available.
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