Warsight recently attended the NATO Exercises ‘Northern Star’ and ‘Karelian Sword’. Both gave insights into the kinds of preparations NATO forces are undertaking to secure the alliance’s eastern flank against Russia. While many of these efforts appear promising, they will need more time and investment to mature and scale.
Exercise Northern Star 26 was held at Vuosanka training area, Finland’s second-largest training area, spanning over at over 138.5 km2 , located near the town of Kajaani. Warsight’s visit took place on 27 May 2026. The exercise incorporated over 5,000 personnel, primarily drawn from the Finnish Army, alongside smaller detachments drawn from various NATO allied formations. The forces involved are summarised below:
When asked whether the exercise was scripted or free-form, a Finnish army representative told Warsight that the exercise followed a “hybrid” model, in which certain moves and objectives were pre-planned and known to commanders, but the outcome of forces coming into contact was left relatively free-form. To enable the latter, both individual soldiers and vehicles were fitted with laser emitters and receivers from Saab’s Combat Training system, to register hits on target.
At its core, Northern Star aimed to trial some of the technologies and tactics being used to develop the NATO Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative (EFDI) – effectively a template for how the alliance would aim to fight against Russia in the event of an incursion.
The official US explanation of EFDI referred to it as a “distributed warfighting concept, a network of capabilities woven across allied nations, and across every domain, integrating offensive and defensive fires and manoeuvre.” In plain English, it can perhaps be best explained with reference to its main goals:
During Warsight’s visit, much of what was shown and explained by representatives from allied militaries looked to have been informed by observing the realities of current fighting in Ukraine, with allied militaries looking for ways to adapt and integrate lessons and new tools into existing NATO structures and tactics.
The UK contingent for example, comprised members of the 3rd Battalion, Rifles (part of 11 Brigade), along with 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment (part of 16 Air Assault Brigade). During Norther Star 26, 3 Rifles were trialling several pieces of new equipment from Anduril, including the Ghost rotary-wing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); the Bolt-M loitering munition, as well as some acoustic sensors, and Anduril’s Lattice software.
Alongside UAVs and loitering munitions, the UK contingent was also trialling the ARX Robotics Gereon tracked unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), in both the ISR and transport configurations.
Speaking to UK service personnel, they seemed generally happy with the new capabilities being trialled, but stressed that the equipment shown was still in the process of being tested and validated. Upon being asked if or when it would enter service, no one knew the answer. Over the past year or so this reaction, usually tinged with frustration, has become extremely common in response to anything to do with UK defence procurement, from industry to serving personnel, and the reason is always the same – the UK government’s ongoing delay in publishing the Defence Investment Plan (DIP) has meant that no one has a clear idea of what the UK will be investing in.
The UK was not the only contingent to employ unmanned technology, indeed small reconnaissance drones were a reasonably common sight, seen in use with both the French and Finnish forces.
This was a fairly encouraging development to see, but overall numbers of course remain many orders of magnitude smaller than that seen used in Ukraine. A recurring theme which has cropped up in my conversations with representatives of various armed forces over the past two years, and including here in Finland, was that there was some reticence by Ministries of Defence to commit to large orders of drones, due to a fear that they will be obsolete by the point there is a wartime need for them.
Alongside drones were various efforts made at countering them, with examples of both jamming equipment and kinetic solutions seen. Of particular note were efforts to devolve anti-drone capability to the individual soldier level, with several Finnish air defenders seen mounting the Smart Shooter SMASH 2000L fire control optic on their RK 62 M1 rifles.
While drones exemplify the kind of digitally networked equipment that works under the model EFDI is trying to build, the extent to which other NATO equipment can be meaningfully integrated into the digital ‘kill web’ will vary greatly across forces. It is no simple task to attempt to standardise anything across an alliance of 32 member countries, especially given that alliance members operate a myriad of completely different equipment – much of which is not interoperable, and some of which was never designed with digital integration in mind.
This is especially the case for much of the Warsaw Pact equipment still in service with numerous allies, including Finland. Speaking to Finnish soldiers regarding several items of Warsaw Pact equipment, however, they gave the impression that they were fairly happy with the kit despite its age, and one officer commended its reliability.
While much of the legacy kit may still work well, there are limits to how deeply it can be integrated into the ‘digital backbone’ envisioned under EFDI, when much of it lacks features that can really benefit from networking technologies, such as digital fire control, automatic target tracking, slew-to-cue, and in the case of artillery, automatic gun laying.
It can be argued that many of the aforementioned modern features are luxuries rather than necessity – Ukraine has already shown that even simple forms of digital integration, such as issuing commanders with tablets running situational awareness (SA) and battle management system (BMS) software, can greatly improve the performance of legacy equipment, as seen with the ‘Kropyva’ and later ‘Delta’ SA/BMS software. While this argument broadly holds true, at the same time, equipment lacking such modern features will not be able to benefit from digital integration to the same extent as equipment with these features.
This situation is likely to resolve gradually over time, as legacy equipment stocks are retired and replaced with more modern equipment. However, given the timescales involved in large-scale equipment replacement, this is likely to require more than a decade, alongside substantial investment. Nonetheless, the efforts shown so far represent a step in the right direction.
Lastly, while digital ‘kill webs’ offer many benefits, they also come with potential vulnerabilities due to their reliance on persistent communications to maintain near real-time situational awareness and battlefield information flow. Electronic warfare (EW) is a central component of Russia’s way of war, with direction finding (DF) and electronic intelligence (ELINT) frequently being used to locate sources of emissions, such as command posts, radars, and units not observing radio discipline.
With this in mind, Warsight spoke to members of several allied militaries participating in Northern Star, regarding the extent to which emissions control (EMCON) was being practiced at the exercise. All of the contingents Warsight spoke to understood the problem and detailed some measures in place to deal with it, however the US contingent from the 1st Armoured Brigade particularly impressed with their answers, with a representative noting that EMCON was already “baked-in” to their training. The representative also noted that the US planned to tackle the drone threat using a mix of jamming and hard-kill counter-unmanned aerial vehicle (C-UAV) systems.
Exercise Karelian Sword 26, held at the Vekaranjärvi training area was a Finnish-led exercise involving around 10,500 personnel, largely drawn from Finland’s Karelian Brigade, Pori Brigade, and Armoured Brigade, alongside smaller contingents of NATO allied personnel, including a UK detachment from the 1st Aviation Brigade with Wildcat AH1 helicopters, and a detachment from the Virginia Army National Guard.
This exercise served two purposes – the first was to ensure readiness of Finland’s largely conscript army, and represented the last exercise for many before they finished their national service and went into Finland’s national reserve system. The second purpose was to practice operating with allied militaries, and a Finnish Army representative noted that the exercise was especially notable for the fact that it was the first time allied detachments were operating directly under the command of Finland’s own formations.
During the 28 May 2026 visit, Warsight got to observe both the red force (REDFOR) and blue forces (BLUFOR) practicing essential skills including reconnaissance, laying ambushes, movement and concealment, bridge-laying, demining, and various others.
On the subject of anti-drone efforts, Warsight enquired into the kinds of quantities of drones being dealt with. A Finnish Army representative acknowledged that while efforts were being made to integrate more drones in training, it was difficult to both field drones in the kinds of quantities seen in Ukraine, and to realistically integrate threats such as first-person view (FPV) drones into the exercises, due to safety regulations.
Overall, both Northern Star 26 and Karelian Sword 26 showed signs of progress for NATO forces in a number of areas, from trialling new drones and loitering munitions, as well as fielding organic C-UAV capabilities, to efforts aimed at establishing a common ‘digital backbone’, to subordination of allied units under Finland’s command structure.
These moves are all broadly positive, however, there still seem some areas for improvement. Chief among these is finding a way to deal with threats such as FPV drones at scales closer to those likely to be encountered on a future battlefield. Over the last few years, FPV drones have become a key component of both Russia’s and Ukraine’s armed forces, and have been used to devastating effect by both sides.
While Warsight saw some positive signs of anti-drone technology integration, it is equally important to consider what we didn’t see. In this regard, there was a relative lack of dedicated organic VSHORAD or C-UAV systems embedded within armoured or mechanised units, for instance.
These kinds of force composition shifts will likely be required to retain the combat effectiveness of current formations going forward. A week before Northern Star and Karelian Sword, Warsight attended the Association of Old Crows (AOC) conference in Helsinki. In one presentation, Colonel Ivan Pavlenko, Chief of the General Directorate of Electronic and Cyber Warfare in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, stated that the Russians were now able to launch around 7,000 FPV drone strikes per day, supplemented by smaller numbers of strikes with larger classes of one-way attack (OWA) UAVs such as Geran-2. This figure is likely to grow quickly, as in early 2026, Russia launched a large push to recruit new drone pilots.
While employing FPVs into training in numbers anywhere close to the aforementioned figure represents a great challenge, it is nonetheless important for alliance planners and instructors to find a way to incorporate scale. NATO forces are currently demonstrating their capability to deal with drone threats in small numbers, but more investment will be needed to deal with such threats numbering in the many thousands.
Of course, in a conflict with Russia, the alliance would hope to avoid getting bogged down in the kind of static, attritional fighting where drones thrive, as seen in Ukraine. However, avoiding that kind of fight would in all likelihood require attaining air superiority. Given that Russia’s air defences are a fairly tough nut to crack, this should not be treated as a given. As such, it is worth having a convincing ‘plan B’ in case allied forces end up having to fight precisely that kind of war where drones work well.
