Large NATO drills in the frigid fjords of northern Norway may be just war games meant to hone the fighting skills of the newly expanded 32-nation military alliance. But for troops taking part, they are very real.

And that’s the whole point.

With drills underway now, NATO is baring its fangs in its biggest exercises since the Cold War, sending an unmistakable message to Russia that alliance members are ready to defend each other if needed.

Having watched Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now in its third year, the NATO training aims to cover all eventualities. That can include trying to catch troops off guard.

This week, crew members aboard the French frigate Normandie, one of France’s most modern warships, were roused from sleep and scrambled to hunt down and destroy a submarine that snuck into cold Norwegian waters.

The submarine belongs to Germany, also a NATO member. But for the purpose of the war games dubbed Nordic Response 2024, it was acting as an enemy vessel.

The Normandie crew spotted its periscope poking through the waves and sprang into action. The submarine had already “attacked” a nearby Italian ship, the aircraft carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi, scoring an imaginary torpedo hit.

The crew were determined not to let Normandie — a top-of-the-line vessel, in service only since 2020 — suffer the indignity of also being struck.

An urgent 7 a.m. call got Normandie's commander, Capt. Thomas Vuong, up from his bunk. He ordered the frigate's submarine-hunting helicopter to be readied for flight, waking its pilot.

“We spotted its attack periscope," Vuong told The Associated Press on board Normandie in an exclusive interview.

“Then it dived again,” he said. “We were asked to hunt for it. We succeeded.”

Once airborne, the Normandie's NH90 helicopter hovered over the waves and lowered its submarine-detecting sonar into the sea. The frigate also used its sonar, and together, they zeroed in on the sub's position and “attacked” it in turn.

“Intelligence confirmed to us that there were no friendly submarines in the sector, so we were certain that it was an enemy submarine," the helicopter pilot, Lt. Olivier, recounted. The French navy withheld his last name for security reasons.

"So the frigate was able to fire a torpedo and destroy the submarine," he added — but not for real, of course.

The frigate and its helicopter pinpointed the submarine with sufficient accuracy to be sure that it wouldn't have survived had actual torpedoes been fired.

The Normandie crew of 146 mariners got no advance warning of the German sub “attack," to test their readiness in the inhospitable environment above the Arctic Circle, Vuong said.

As of this week, NATO nations now also include Sweden. It formally joined on Thursday as the 32nd member, ending decades of post-World War II neutrality. Finland had already joined NATO in April 2023 in a historic move after decades of its military nonalignment.

In both countries, Russia's aggression in Ukraine triggered a dramatic shift in public opinion, leading to their May 2022 applications to join the trans-Atlantic alliance.

The Nordic drill in the northern regions of Finland, Norway and Sweden involves more than 20,000 soldiers from 13 nations and kicked off on Monday. It is part of wider exercises called Steadfast Defender 24. They are NATO’s biggest in decades, with up to 90,000 troops involved over several months. They're aimed at showing the alliance can defend all of its territory up to its borders with Russia.

German submariners are more familiar than Normandie with Norway's deep and narrow fjords and the cold Arctic waters that can complicate submarine detection, Vuong said.

The drill was “extremely beneficial, because we reach a very high degree of realism and so we better prepare our teams,” he said. “The fjords are a special environment, with a temperature profile different to what we know in the Atlantic."

“To be able to train our teams here, against this threat, is extremely valuable and extremely stimulating,” he added. “This is their playing field. So they know the hiding places.”

'Worth the wait': Swedish troops relish NATO leap

Sweden has taken the giant leap of becoming the 32nd member of the club of nations bound together by their Article 5 commitment to defend each other

Swedish marines on Friday peered out from their assault vessel as part of a vast NATO military exercise to simulate repelling an invasion of neighbouring Norway.

After a ceremony in Washington less than 24 hours earlier, the troops marked their country's first full day as a member of the US-led alliance after two centuries of non-alignment.

Sweden's push to join -– along with that of Finland –- was sparked two years ago by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Opposition from first Turkey and later Hungary held up Stockholm's entry for months longer than other allies hoped.

"I think it was definitely worth the wait," combat boat commander Karl-Johan Ryden, 21, told AFP, as he watched over the frigid Arctic waters.

"It's been a long process," weighed in Major Joakim Sjorgren. "But we always figured it's going to be a yes, some way along the way. So we've been prepared for it."

The Nordic Response exercise -– part of NATO's biggest drills since the Cold War -– is far from the first time Swedish troops have trained with alliance members.

Sweden has for years been a close partner of NATO and worked with its Nordic neighbours on defence.

But now Stockholm has taken the giant leap of becoming the 32nd member of the club of nations bound together by their Article 5 commitment to defend each other.

"I would say that for the tactical level, on the unit level, for soldiers and officers, this is not that big of a change because we have been training with NATO and having operations with NATO since the early 2000s," Sweden's commander for joint operations Carl-Johan Edstrom, one of the country’s top officers, told AFP.

"But for Sweden in general it's a big change. It's the biggest change for 200 years –- it's a mental shift."

- 'New era' -

Senior Norwegian military commander Vice Admiral Rune Andersen said that Sweden's membership -– on the back of Finland joining NATO last year –- opened up "a new era in how we do defence cooperation in the Nordic region".

"We've been working together for a long time, but the membership removes the rest of the hurdles," he told AFP aboard a Norwegian coast guard ship.

Andersen said Sweden could now be fully plugged into NATO's secure lines and its territory and capabilities put to the alliance's use.

"But perhaps more importantly is that it's only full membership of NATO that provides that mutual support within the Article 5 obligation on all sides," he said.

US Vice Admiral Douglas Perry, who heads NATO's Norfolk command that oversees the Atlantic and Arctic regions, said Sweden's membership now meant it could be incorporated fully into the alliance's new plans for a Russian attack.

"They bring a lot to the table," Perry said, pointing to Sweden's strategic location between the Artic and the Baltic Seas.

Sweden joins NATO at a time when fears of a possible conflict between the alliance and Russia have risen as Moscow's forces push back Ukraine two years into the war there.

Onboard the Swedish marine vessel, new recruit Vera Nylander leaned on a machine gun as she thought about the chances that exercises might one day become real combat.

"I'll take it when and if it comes," she said.

"I think we are ready, we are prepared for it and we are trained for it if it happened."

Russia isn't ready for the surprise NATO attack its strategists foresee

Russia isn't ready for the surprise NATO attack its strategists foresee

• Russian strategists believe their country must be ready for NATO conventional missile strikes.

• Russian media publicized their article just as NATO war games began.

• The missile strike they think NATO is planning is a mirror of how Russia itself would fight a war.

Russian strategists argue its military needs more robust systems to defend against a NATO surprise attack that would come in the form of conventional missile strikes, a warning that comes as NATO conducts a massive exercise near Russia's northern border.

A recent article in Voyennaya Mysl ("Military Thought") argues that a likely scenario is a "likely enemy" — presumably the US and its NATO allies — launching a massive barrage of missiles at vital Russian facilities, a strategy that looks a lot like Russia's. "An attack might begin with a rapid global strike alongside several massive missile and aviation strikes on the country's administrative-political and military-industrial infrastructure," according to an official TASS news agency summary of the article, which recommends expanding the missions and equipment of the Russian Aerospace Forces, or VKS.

How exactly NATO would attack Russia in this scenario is unclear, though the Russian analysts seem to be describing what the US military would call "multi-domain operations." The article speaks of "joint operative formations" that consist of "compact, highly mobile combined multi-role groups of troops capable of inflicting heavy losses on the administrative-political and military-industrial infrastructure in all spheres: on the ground, on the high seas, in the air, in outer space and in cyberspace."

The attack would be preceded by "provocations" to justify a war, as well as the deployment of forces near Russia. "The enemy will take potentially aggressive action, including provocations, for the purpose of controlling the situation, as well as intensify all types of intelligence activity. In addition, it may start deploying aircraft carrier strike groups and ships with guided missiles under the guise of exercises. Enemy aircraft, including strategic bombers and drones, will begin to perform regular flights near Russia's national borders."

The attack itself would begin with a massive air offensive (and by 2030, attack from space), "consisting of a rapid (instant) global strike and several (from 2-3 to 5-7) massive missile and air strikes," the article warned.

This perceived NATO strategy of massive strikes risks compelling Russia to use its nuclear weapons, especially tactical nukes, to defend itself. But it is not without some grounding. In October 2022, the former CIA director and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus warned Russia that the use of a nuclear weapon against Ukraine would prompt a heavy NATO response that would sink the entire Black Sea Fleet and "take out" the ground forces in Ukraine "that we can see and identify."

Perhaps not coincidentally, Russian media publicized the article just as NATO began Nordic Response 2024, a large, 11-day exercise involving more than 20,000 troops, 50 ships, and 100 aircraft operating across Norway, Finland, and Sweden. It will also be notable by the presence of new NATO members Finland and Sweden, whose accession to the alliance has Russia worried over the security of its vast northern frontier. In 2020, the US flew B-52 bombers in the Barents Sea, which abuts Russia's Arctic territories.

Predictably, the Russian experts urged more defense spending. This would include expanding the equipment and missions of the Russian Aerospace Forces, including the development of more advanced UAVs and other weapons, creating an automated fire control system (presumably AI-based), and "the improvement of reconnaissance, aviation engineering, airfield and other types of comprehensive support."

The call to boost spending on airpower comes as Russia's defense spending explodes, with the Kremlin diverting one-third of the national budget to finance the military and the war in Ukraine. That's triple the amount in 2021, before the war began, by some estimates. While the Russian Air Force has had some success in supporting ground troops — albeit at a heavy cost — during recent Russian offensives, its overall performance in the war has been surprisingly ineffective.

Ironically, the missile strike that Russian military experts accuse the West of planning is a mirror image of how Russia itself would fight a war. "Russian military thought has broadly cohered around the idea of 'active defense' in the event of a NATO-Russia war," Julian Waller, a Russia expert at the Center for Naval Analyses think tank in Arlington, Virginia, told Business Insider. "Such that due to expectations of overwhelming kinetic strikes in the initial phases by the West, Russia needs to be able to withstand these while also striking back at critical military and civilian infrastructure. This involves heavy usage of missiles, long-range fires, and VKS assets."

NATO navigates fine line between transparency, information security

Korzeniewo, POLAND – “We are ready.”

The three-word statement was highlighted in bold letters at the opening of NATO’s March 4 briefing, on the occasion of the Polish-leg of the alliance’s largest military exercise since 1988.

But even amid the resolute and calm tone of officials in the room, there was a palpable sense of apprehension among reporters.

A core theme of the speeches presented by NATO representatives revolved around transparency, specifically in showcasing what the Steadfast Defender exercise — and its subsidiary drill Dragon, led by Poland — would involve. Yet many were wary of answering questions related to Russia or lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.

On several occasions, officials were pressed about whether they had concerns over revealing their plans to Russia through events such as these, or even the possibility the Kremlin could intercept operational details.

“Of course we are concerned, everyone is concerned,” Brig. Gen. Gunnar Bruegner, assistant chief of staff at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, told Defense News. “[We need] to make sure we are safeguarding the critical information, but it does not relieve us from the requirement of making these exercises happen.”

“It is quite a balance you need to keep; you cannot showcase everything,” he said.

During a March 4 news conference, Maj. Gen. Randolph Staudenraus, director of strategy and policy at NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, told reporters that while the alliance does protect its communications, “we are also really trying to be transparent.”

The fine line between accountability and information security is one that some NATO members have recently grappled with. A notable example is the leak of a German discussion about potentially providing Ukraine iwth Taurus missiles. Russia intercepted audio from the web conference between German Air Force officials.

Through this, Moscow was able to get its hands on information regarding the potential supply of cruise missiles to Ukraine as well as operational scenarios of how the war could play out.

Russian officials said last month that the country views Steadfast Defender as a threat.

When it comes to that training event, Bruegner said, details provided to the media during briefings are meant to illustrate the bigger picture, but only in broad terms.

“The plans themselves and the details in there will not be made available to everyone. What you’re seeing here are slides NATO has unclassified,” he explained.

He also noted that an objective of the exercises is to showcase the integration of capabilities, and not necessarily what NATO would do in a contested setting.

“We for sure would not fly banners on the amphibious devices in a contested exercise, which would have involved having an opponent on the other side of the eastern benches of the river and would’ve looked different [than what we saw in the Dragon drill],” Bruegner said.