NATO is continuing to evolve its naval command structure and operations to build deterrence in the North Atlantic, but out-of-area geopolitical pressures are threatening to hamper those plans.
Events in and around the Gulf in late February and early March 2026 may have diverted political attention from concerns raised in some quarters, earlier in the year, regarding the durability of North Atlantic deterrence and defence, especially around the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap.
Due to those concerns, individual northern European NATO members moved to enhance security across the GIUK Gap region. On 11 February NATO itself announced the establishment of Operation ‘Arctic Sentry’: a multi-domain activity designed to boost Arctic and High North security.
In a statement NATO said member countries would step up contributions to the region’s collective security to offset increasing Russian military activity and growing Chinese interest. These efforts would be co-ordinated through ‘Arctic Sentry’ as a single, overarching operational approach led by Joint Force Command Norfolk (JFCNF).
Through this approach, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in the statement, “We’ll not only build our posture in the region … but we’ll also build a more cohesive picture of potential challenges in the Arctic, so any gaps can be quickly and effectively addressed.”
Briefing media, the Secretary General added, “What is really new about [‘Arctic Sentry’] is that, for the first time, we will bring everything we do in the Arctic together under one command. By doing that – and we have seen the same in the Baltic region … – we will not only be able to leverage what we are doing much more effectively, having a bigger impact; we will also be able to assess what gaps there are …. Of course, we will fill them.”
The Baltic reference encompassed the alliance’s ‘Baltic Sentry’ and ‘Eastern Sentry’ activities, established in 2025 to counter asymmetric threats to seabed and shore-based critical infrastructure respectively. The two activities were integrated into NATO’s wider enhanced vigilance activity (EVA) structure for the region.
‘Arctic Sentry’ will be an EVA. JFCNF will collaborate with Allied Command Operations (ACO), which leads the Baltic EVA efforts, Rutte explained. He added that securing sea lines of communication (SLOCs) in the region will be a major ‘Arctic Sentry’ focus.
Whatever the perceived or actual nature of the threat as assessed around the GIUK Gap in early 2026, Russia remains NATO’s primary security concern.
In the latest version of the Alliance Maritime Strategy (AMS), published in October 2025, NATO said, “Russia is the most significant, direct and long-term threat to allies’ security …. Moscow’s military build-up, including in the Baltic, Black and Mediterranean Sea regions, and in the High North and the Arctic, along with its military integration with Belarus, challenge our security and interests.”
Establishing ‘Arctic Sentry’ under JFCNF operational command reflects wider, ongoing conversations regarding NATO command structure and leadership realignment. Such conversations are designed to strengthen the alliance against its core requirement – countering the Russian risk – by bolstering North Atlantic collective deterrence and defence through enhanced commitment and burden sharing.
Key developments in this latest re-organisation phase were revealed in early February. Here, Rutte explained, allies had agreed a new allocation of senior leadership posts, with European allies assuming greater responsibility. This, he said, was “re-distributing roles in ways that make sense for all involved”.
These adjustments will see European NATO country four-star officers take the helm of NATO’s three JFCs: Brunssum (to be led by Germany and Poland, on rotation); Naples (Italian command); and Norfolk (UK command). In the event of crisis or conflict, these commands take the regional lead at the strategic level. US three-star officers will lead NATO’s three theatre component commands, retaining command of Allied Air Command (Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany) and Allied Land Command (Izmir, Türkiye), and adding in due course Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM, Northwood, UK).
Thus, in what could be seen as quite a pragmatic approach, while NATO members from across Europe are taking on enhanced leadership responsibility within the alliance, the extremely robust US theatre operational command lineage laid down ensures the trans-Atlantic link remains clear. Effectively, European NATO allies now have more opportunities to step up into leadership roles alongside – not instead of – the United States.
The adjustments also highlight the importance and impact of an increasing level of flexibility in NATO’s operational command construct. The UK and US have essentially swapped command roles, with the UK to lead JFCNF and the US to lead MARCOM. The impact here is that a senior UK operator will bring by definition strong understanding of the North Atlantic region to JFCNF, augmenting its holistic focus across NATO’s northern flank; in turn, a senior US naval officer will bring broader maritime background to the theatre component command-level MARCOM job.
While these decisions emerged during a moment of uncertainty within NATO, it is worth re-iterating they were the latest phase in an evolutionary process of re-organising the alliance’s wider military command structure. This process got underway as Euro-Atlantic security began deteriorating in the years immediately prior to the Russia-Ukraine war erupting in 2022. Reflecting this evolutionary approach, the planned handovers to the new commanders and (in some cases) higher ranks will not happen immediately, but may do when the incumbent commanders rotate out.
Standing up ‘Arctic Sentry’ under JFCNF illustrated both the need for a more immediate response to geostrategic concerns about NATO security in the region and the continuing, evolutionary and flexible nature of the command structure reorganisation.
JFCNF appears optimally positioned and empowered to coalesce alliance interests and activities across the North Atlantic’s Arctic and High North regions. In December 2025 NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) – into which JFCNF reports directly – updated the geographic boundaries used to co-ordinate NATO military activities by adding Denmark, Finland and Sweden to JFCNF’s area of responsibility (which already included Iceland, Norway, and the UK). According to JFCNF, this realignment reflected the evolving security environment – including Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO accession – and reinforced NATO’s continuing commitment across a geopolitically very significant region. This significance is reflected in a core JFCNF role, dating back to its establishment in 2019: to bring warfighting readiness to the region, including securing what are strategic SLOCs across the North Atlantic.
‘Arctic Sentry’ neatly reflects JFCNF’s geo-operational remit.
“‘Arctic Sentry’ will be focused on the span of the Arctic. It is designed to be a multi-domain EVA, but also to enhance and be an umbrella over many of the activities we’re currently undertaking, while adding more activities,” Commander Arlo Abrahamson, MARCOM Chief Spokesperson, told Warsight. “[It] ensures we have coherence and focus across all these activities.” As a NATO three-star theatre-level maritime ‘hub’, MARCOM will play a central role in the organisation of exercises, operations and other activities conducted under ‘Arctic Sentry’ because the Arctic’s geography is maritime, Cdr Abrahamson explained.
It is worth noting that a report published by the Atlantic Council think tank’s Scowcroft Center on 12 February wrote that, in an assessment of five scenarios where NATO may be at risk of Russian attack once its war in Ukraine concludes, three of these five were maritime (seizing Svalbard in the High North, as well as Aland and Gotland in the Baltic).
‘Arctic Sentry’ activities include existing exercises, like the biennial Norway-led ‘Cold Response’, which took place this year in February/March, and MARCOM’s own ‘Dynamic Mariner’: an annual event set to occur in the High North for 2026. The alliance-wide ‘Steadfast Dart’, part of the ‘Steadfast Defender’ series occurring every three years, this year included securing SLOCs across the Atlantic and into the Baltic. New exercises will also be incorporated, like Denmark’s ‘Arctic Endurance’ activity that was established in 2026 as a year-round event designed to build alliance presence and deterrence around its Kingdom of Denmark North Atlantic territories, including Greenland.
Then there are NATO’s routine patrols to the region with its North Atlantic-focused standing naval forces. For example, the escort ship-based Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1) deployed to the GIUK Gap region twice in 2025 (including in December) and is set to sail there again in 2026. Especially when populated with four or five destroyers and frigates, plus support vessels, and when supplemented on station with ships from regional NATO navies, SNMG1 can very ably divide up its time and capacity across its Baltic and Arctic regional commitments, as it demonstrated in 2025.
While presence ashore across and around all ‘nodes’ along the GIUK Gap can help build surveillance and deterrence, using maritime forces around the region can provide flexibility in response where and when needed.
SNMG1 is already providing increased regional presence and effect. At a national level, NATO’s North Atlantic navies are stepping up to do more as well. For example, the UK announced on 14 February the deployment of its HMS Prince of Wales carrier strike group (CSG) on Operation ‘Firecrest’: a trans-North Atlantic deployment that will comprise working with SNMG1, supporting ‘Arctic Sentry’ and conducting Euro-Atlantic security operations with the US Navy (including embarking US F-35B aircraft on HMS Prince of Wales).
In a statement, the UK government called the deployment “a major show of force across the Euro-Atlantic and High North, reinforcing NATO’s deterrence at a time of rising Russian threats in the region”.
The rising threat raises the capacity question: at a NATO level, can member navies provide enough ships collectively so that SNMG1, for example, has sufficient platforms to split its presence across multiple regions for sustained periods; at a national level, are member navies operating and building enough platforms to allow them to support two high-level commitments simultaneously? For example, in the UK’s original ‘Firecrest’ announcement, the Type 45 air-defence destroyer HMS Dragon was declared as joining SNMG1 throughout 2026. That may still happen, but more immediately the ship has deployed to the Mediterranean to defend UK interests against risks emerging in the current US/Israeli conflict with Iran.
Yet despite these challenges, establishing ‘Arctic Sentry’ as an umbrella construct for NATO’s Arctic and High North activities is already generating new operational output.
“All these exercises and patrols are now coalesced into ‘Arctic Sentry’ vigilance activities …. Additional activities will add another layer to the effort,” Cdr Abrahamson said. “So, through existing exercises and operations, and through additional activities that will come about as a result of ‘Arctic Sentry’, we are heightening our state of vigilance and increasing our persistent understanding of the operational environment, which leads to enhanced deterrence and defence.”
