‘Collision course’: At Norfolk base, NATO eyes the threat of Russian attacks against North America

NORFOLK, Virginia — Top NATO military leaders fear that Russia is on “a collision course with the rules-based international system” that the transatlantic alliance has helped uphold for 75 years, and they say much of Moscow’s military might remains intact despite its ongoing, grueling war with Ukraine.

Key NATO officials told The Washington Times in exclusive interviews recently that the alliance, with an eye toward the complex, multi-domain threats posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his armed forces, is working to establish even greater interoperability between its member nations’ militaries.

And they stress that NATO, through its Joint Force Command (JFC) here in Norfolk, just a few hours south of Washington, is in a constant state of intense planning and preparation in the event the Russian threat could reach directly into North America.

Military leaders from Britain, Finland and France told The Times that NATO is not a one-way street in which the U.S. provides significant military aid and security guarantees for Europe with nothing in return. They say the alliance also is ready and willing to aid the U.S. in the event of direct attacks on America, including potential long-range missile strikes from Russia and Moscow’s continued use of influence operations, cyberattacks and other instances of irregular warfare.

“We’re also responsible for the defense of North America forward. This is how NATO acts as a mechanism for the U.S. to defend itself forwards,” said Vice Adm. James Morley of Britain’s Royal Navy, the deputy commander of NATO’s JFC Norfolk.

The Norfolk headquarters is one of three such commands, each responsible for a geographic area under the 32-nation NATO umbrella. The others, in the Netherlands and Italy, oversee potential threats facing Europe.

The Norfolk site, established in 2018 and led by Adm. Morley and U.S. Vice Adm. Doug Perry, commander of the Norfolk site, focuses on threats facing North America and elsewhere across a wide swath of the Atlantic theater.

“This is the threat as it’s felt from North America,” Adm. Morley said in an interview in his office on the sprawling JFC Norfolk grounds. “And [President Trump] has been very energetic about what that threat looks like. And programs such as the Golden Dome and all the work that is going on in [U.S. Northern Command] to recapitalize. Because the threat vector viewed from North America, from Russia, is north. In other words, it’s not a threat that comes from the east. The direct path of a missile fired from Russia to North America is over the North Pole, into North America.”

Looking to the future

The dynamic of U.S. military aid and security guarantees to Europe, through NATO, has been at the core of American foreign policy debates for more than a decade. Mr. Trump has made it a centerpiece of his national security philosophy and has insisted that European nations spend much more on their own defense rather than rely on the U.S. military as a backstop in the event of conflict.

Mr. Trump’s approach — criticized by some for being too rhetorically harsh toward NATO — has paid dividends. Each NATO nation has promised to spend at least 5% of its GDP on defense by 2035. Mr. Trump is now pressing NATO countries to stop importing Russian oil, to put economic pressure on Russia.

The notion of increased military spending has never been more important, as recent Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace over Poland led to the alliance for the first time shooting down Russian air assets in NATO territory.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has by definition made NATO more powerful and capable. Finland and Sweden joined the alliance in the immediate aftermath of that invasion, adding two new militaries to the NATO ranks and also deepening the alliance’s footprint on Russia’s doorstep along the 830-mile Russian-Finnish border.

But the Russia-Ukraine war, which has featured large-scale drone attacks by each side, the use of artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and other 21st-century capabilities and tactics, also has accelerated the push inside NATO to prepare for the war of the future.

“We have been in a very stable world … and then we see a world which is, really, derailing,” said French Adm. Pierre Vandier, commander of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, a separate NATO outpost on the Norfolk campus with an eye toward technology and preparing for tomorrow’s fights.

“We see conflicts, war again in Europe, and we see the mix of this war with new technology,” Adm. Vandier told The Times’ Threat Status weekly podcast in an exclusive interview from Norfolk. “So, it’s a moment where we need to invent something.”

The Russian army has faced staggering losses in Ukraine. Its reputation as one of the world’s most formidable fighting forces was in some ways diminished by its inability to steamroll the much smaller Ukrainian military, as many analysts expected in the early weeks of the war.

But Adm. Morley stressed that Russia’s air and maritime capabilities remain strong. Russia, he said, is still more than capable of conducting out-of-area submarine operations, long-range flights and other operations that could threaten North America, likely by way of the Arctic.

“Sadly, because of the course that Russia is on … they seem on a collision course with the rules-based international system that we have enjoyed for decades,” Adm. Morley said. “That is, I think, a great shame.”

Understanding NATO’s interoperability

Preparing for the next iteration of the Russian threat, officials said, requires deep cooperation and coordination between the militaries of all 32 NATO nations. To that end, nearly 400 NATO personnel are stationed at JFC Norfolk, with 27 of the alliance’s 32 countries represented.

“Our main task is to coordinate the effects of all the forces, all the allied nations,” said Brig. Gen. Mikael Salo of Finland, the assistant chief of staff J7 at JFC Norfolk.

The alliance regularly conducts multinational military exercises at a rate and scale unlike anything seen before in history. The U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Finland, Canada, and the dozens of other NATO members drill together across domains, with the goal of creating a force that is virtually interchangeable on land, in the air, at sea, and increasingly in space — even, to an extent, in the cyber domain.

The military term for that kind of cooperation — interoperability — has become a buzzword across NATO national security circles. But at its most basic level, officials said, it means that NATO aims to ensure each of its member nations’ militaries is fully capable of operating in lockstep with the others in the event of a conflict.

“How do you make Czech compatible with the Croatians, and with the U.S.?” Adm. Vandier said. “And that means more than the stuff itself — the caliber of your weapons, and the ammo — the tactics need to be the same. The planning needs to be understood by everybody. And then you go up to strategic interoperability, and that means even the goals you are fulfilling and the way you prepare and defend are to be synchronized.”

This month, for example, NATO maritime assets were holding joint exercises in the Barents Sea above the Arctic Circle. The warships from alliance countries, officials said, don’t simply sail together.

“It means that they’re communicating on encrypted radio systems at the tactical level,” Adm. Morley said. “They are sharing a common picture. The orders that are given by the strike group are received in those ships, and the ships are doing what the carrier wants them to do, not just their own thing.”

“There is no difference between a German frigate being connected into that strike group as opposed to an American” ship, he said. “And what we’re really aiming for is complete interchangeability.”