The New Norwegian Long-term Defence Plan

Published:

April 17, 2012

Updated:

May 12, 2025

On 23 March the Norwegian Government presented a fresh long-term plan for the Armed Forces. The document repeats the core security goals set after the 2004 re-orientation, yet it answers two new pressures at once: higher front-line costs in Afghanistan and sharper attention to the High North. The plan keeps the NATO pledge of a credible national deterrent but trims legacy overhead to give combat units more flight hours, sea days, and live-fire drills.

Parliament is asked to endorse the acquisition of 52 F-35A fighters and the base reform needed to run them. Ørland Air Base will host the main fleet. Evenes will take on Quick Reaction Alert and reinforce the northern flank. The choice uses old runways, so soil work is limited. Noise studies say the move leaves most nearby villages within tolerable limits.

The fighter order drives a temporary jump in the investment budget of 22–28 billion NOK spread across ten years. The Treasury offsets part of that bill by winding down expeditionary spending as the ISAF mission closes. About 634 million NOK released from Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif will pay for home training and new Home Guard kit.

Air-Force planners state that concentrating jets at two airfields frees air-defence crews, runway maintainers, and meteorology teams for forward tasks. The plan cuts duplicate jobs at Bodø and Andøya but adds billet slots in weapons integration, mission data, and Arctic survival. Fresher pilots, shorter logistic chains, and modern hardened shelters form the sales pitch.

The Government also locks in two other air branch milestones:

Maritime patrol transition. Five modern patrol aircraft will replace the ageing P-3 Orion before 2017, with forward alert held at Evenes.
Helicopter relief. The Sea King search-and-rescue fleet will retire after 50 years in service. A multirole platform with de-icing and rear ramp will fill the gap.

Navy tables emphasize anti-submarine warfare. The Barents Sea sees more traffic from Russian and visiting nuclear boats, so the Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates stay central. However, the class needs an updated sonar suite, and the plan sketches a mid-life refit around 2018. Coastal artillery remains disbanded; mobile Naval Strike Missile batteries cover the fjords instead.

The Army receives a modest head-count rise, enough to stand up an extra mechanised company within Brigade Nord and enlarge the Finnmark land defence. Heavy armour stays in the south, but the CV90 upgrade adds digital turrets and new sensors that match Arctic night fighting. Engineers will gain better bridging gear suitable for fast thaw floods.

Cyber forces graduate from a branch office to a unified defence cyber centre under the Chief of Defence. The new unit will own blue-team duties, secure joint networks, and work with the national police on counter-intrusion cases. Initial staff is set at 180 posts.

Home Guard reforms animate local debate. A slimmer roster of 45 000 soldiers will stand alert for high-end tasks, each man and woman issued personal kit, NVGs, and encrypted radios. Critics fear that reducing paper strength weakens surge capacity, yet commanders say small, full-time trained patrols trump large, poorly equipped lists.

The funding chart for the 2013-2016 period looks as follows:

Operating budget: stays constant in real terms at 39 billion NOK per year.
Investment spike: rises by up to 7 billion NOK in 2016 when F-35 payments peak.
Person-days abroad: drop from 1.1 million in 2011 to 450 000 in 2016.
Annual training man-days at home: rise by 18 %.

No new submarine order appears in the plan, though a study on Ula-class replacement sits with the Defence Materiel Agency. Navy staff argue that hull life expires in 2024–2026, so contract action must follow this Storting term.

Logistics follows a “one-warehouse” policy. A single joint depot in Trøndelag will replace separate storage sites. Bulk spares move by rail to Ørland, by sea to Ramsund, and by road to Skjold. The Defence Research Establishment claims this saves 200 million NOK over 15 years by cutting heating and guard bills.

The white paper underscores allied access. The Government pledges to pre-position U.S. and British munitions inside mountain caverns and to upgrade rail sidings to support heavy armour trains bound for exercises in Troms. In exchange, Norway expects predictable exercise rotations and reinforced air policing in the Baltic Sea.

Civil support tasks receive clearer wording. After the 22 July 2011 attacks, every Home Guard district must now pair with a specific police district, rehearse crowd control, and test encrypted comms once a quarter. Evacuation drills in Oslo tunnels and interactive crisis maps on governor desktops seek to shorten the first-hour chaos phase.

Climate resilience enters the plan for the first time. Remote garrisons at Porsanger and Skjold will install solar fields to cut diesel use. The Army will buy light amphibious rigs to cross sudden melt rivers. Bergen naval workshops will raise quay walls by 60 cm to meet projected sea-level trends.

Industry benefits too. Parliament ties the F-35 letter of offer to life-of-type workshare for Kongsberg on Joint Strike Missile production and maintenance of composite fuselage panels. Estimates show 3 400 domestic jobs at peak.

A risk annex lists three cost drivers for the fighter deal: exchange rates, weapons suite growth, and real-price inflation. The Ministry says currency hedging covers the first factor; open architecture limits the second; historical data run at 1.9 % real price per year, baked into the third.

Public opinion polls taken in early April show 61 % support for the plan. Mayors in Sør-Trøndelag welcome the jobs, though some local farm owners worry about expropriation around Ørland. Environmental NGOs stay mostly quiet after noise models exclude the sea eagle nesting areas from danger.

If Parliament signs off in June, bulldozers roll at Ørland in October. The first F-35 training pair will touch down in 2016. The full wing achieves operational status in 2019.

WHAT’S NEW – MARCH 2025 UPDATE

Norway has met the milestones sketched thirteen years ago and, in several cases, moved beyond them. The last two F-35As landed at Ørland on 3 April 2025, making Norway the first partner nation to complete its program of record. The fleet now stands at 52 combat-coded jets. Aircrews reached full operational capability in January 2024, and the Evenes QRA pair logged more than 850 intercept hours along the northern air corridor last year.

The fighter wing integrates the Joint Strike Missile after a live test at the Hebrides range in October 2024. Kongsberg opened an expanded missile assembly hall at Kongsberg Technology Park, adding 230 engineering jobs and securing export slots for Australia and Japan.

The long-awaited submarine choice arrived in July 2021 when Oslo and Berlin signed for six Type 212CD boats. Hull section work started at TKMS in Kiel, while Kongsberg took charge of the ORCCA combat system. Parliament cleared funds for two extra hulls in June 2024, keeping continuous industrial flow past 2033.

Five Boeing P-8A Poseidon aircraft replaced the P-3 in May 2022. Operating from Evenes, the squadron logged 1 260 sorties over the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap in 2024, proving the new acoustic processors against Russian nuclear boats. The last Orion left service the same month.

Army growth accelerated after Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Lawmakers authorised two extra manoeuvre battalions and a deep-fires regiment equipped with HIMARS launchers ordered under a U.S. Foreign Military Sales case. Brigade Nord now fields three heavy battalions and an organic UAV company with MQ-1C-ER drones.

Air defence shot to the top of the wish list once drones turned up over Ukrainian trenches. In February 2024 the Defence Materiel Agency placed a 4.8 billion NOK contract for four new NASAMS III batteries plus options. Kongsberg and RTX will co-develop a GhostEye-family radar with longer range and higher drone discrimination. Initial firing trials take place at Andøya next spring.

The 2024–2036 Long-term Defence Plan, presented on 5 April 2024, adds 600 billion NOK to force structure over twelve years. Defence will consume 2.2 % of GDP by 2026, passing the NATO floor. Funds cover the new submarines, additional P-8 mission kits, Arctic-grade logistics vehicles, and a permanent air defence school at Rygge.

Budget numbers for 2025 show the promised lift in real terms:

Total allocation: 110.1 billion NOK, up 19.2 billion NOK year-on-year.
Investment slice: 38 % of the budget, the highest since 1968.
Personnel pay: grows 5 %, tracking inflation, yet troop strength rises 4 % as reserve call-up days climb.

Norway’s Total Defence concept has moved from textbook to practice. Municipal shelter refurbishment speeds up after the Government issued grants in January. Bomb shelter space now covers 53 % of the population, higher than any time since 1991. Civilian-military exercise “Nordic Shield 24” drew 28 000 volunteers and tested satellite-backed logistics nodes at Kongsberg and Narvik.

Climate resilience measures recorded in 2012 largely paid off. Solar fields at Porsanger cut diesel burn by 62 %. Bergen naval workshops finished quay wall extensions in 2023 without cost overruns, and the yard weathered the record storm surge of January 2025 with no damage.

Industrial spill-over widens. Nammo secured a NATO framework order for 155 mm propellant after a joint venture with RTX’s propellant arm opened a new line in Raufoss. Kongsberg triples NASAMS launcher output, hiring 400 skilled staff.

Opposition parties argue the force plan still leans too heavily on air power, but opinion polls in February clock public support at 72 %. Rural councils near Evenes now push for a third runway to limit queue time during winter crosswind closures.

The 2012 ambition has thus morphed, not faded. Norway now fields stealth fighters, reels in new submarines, and funds ground-based air defence on a scale unimagined thirteen years ago. The High North stays under watch, and the joint force presents a stiffer threshold to any challenger moving toward the Barents gateway.

The New Norwegian Long-term Defence Plan

WHAT’S NEW – MARCH 2025 UPDATE

REFERENCE SOURCES

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