I call to order today’s Defence Committee evidence session on defence in the Arctic and the High North. It is a pleasure to have three eminent individuals giving evidence. We have, in person, Professor Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, who is professor of war studies at Loughborough University. We also have with us, virtually, Brigadier General (Ret’d) Robbie Boyd, who is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, and Dr James Patton Rogers, who is the executive director of the Brooks Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University. I extend a very warm welcome to all three of you. We are looking forward to a couple of hours of engaging discussion. It is also wonderful to have Mr James Gray here. He is a former parliamentarian and a former member of the Defence Committee; in fact, he chaired a similar session on the Arctic and the High North a decade ago. There may be a bit of déjà vu for you, but a warm welcome to your good self as well. Let’s get cracking with the questions. We will go first to Ian Roome.

Thank you, and thank you for the invitation, Chair. Reading the document, I was surprised at how few mentions of this issue there are; a search reveals perhaps one or two, which was disappointing for some of us, but I will come back to where some of those deficiencies may have been made up. The concept of the bastion is not new; during the Cold War, it governed our thinking about the north Atlantic and the European Arctic. The challenges remain the same in terms of Russian ambition to move out into the north Atlantic, but what has changed quite dramatically is, of course, the climate of the Arctic, the receding of the ice and the ability of some routes to be more accessible. What has also changed is that we are keenly aware of the riches of the Arctic—the oil, the gas and the rare earth minerals—which has already sparked a geopolitical competition. On top of that, there is the question of Russia. Those of us who are old enough will remember the Cold War; those born later will remember the return of Russia, as it is seen, although it is not really a return. Russia has always had interests in the Arctic; it is the predominant Arctic state, and it is burnishing its credentials with remilitarisation and a robust response to those who would seek to exploit the Arctic. I am sure we will come back to President Trump and his relationship with Mr Putin. What has also thrown us somewhat into disarray is the threat of the United States invading a NATO ally, but also that question mark over US intentions across what I call the wider North, as well as the High North. So it is commercial, climate, security.

I totally agree with the way that Caroline has put it. If I can build on that, rather than repeating some of the things she mentioned, the High North will, over the next 10 to 15 years, also provide us, through some of those passageways, with arguably the biggest geoeconomic change that Europeans have seen, certainly in our lifetimes. Those sea lines of communication are starting to become more and more exposed. As has been alluded to, one of them is certainly starting to be used a lot more, particularly by Russia and China—there is also an increasing Chinese influence and threat in the region, of course. That involves a variety of means, including not just security and defence, but information and also infiltration in places like Greenland and Iceland, which are very close allies of ours, particularly via the Joint Expeditionary Force grouping, as well as NATO. The opening up of those sea lines of communication is causing some very interesting concerns when it comes to who will provide security for those open routes as they start to develop. If you go to Norway, the Norwegians will sometimes tell you that they will be viable in five years because of the speed of ice melting; if you go to other scientists, they will say 10 to 15 years. But without a shadow of a doubt this is happening, and it creates opportunities as well as threats. The fact that the first of these routes to open up, along the Russian coast, is primarily dominated by Russia provides us with a concern over that being contested space. Even if we exploit these routes, and even if we see such things as autonomous container shipping—or semi-autonomous, which I would probably see as more logical—going between Japan and Rotterdam, there will be a need for security of those routes. I would argue that that is probably going to be provided less by our normal friends—and by that I mean the United States, who are going to be looking for more burden-sharing from European allies to look after these routes—and to be more of a responsibility possibly even for the European Union, through CSDP missions, as well as for the United Kingdom, through utilising our Joint Expeditionary Force leadership. For me, certainly from a military perspective, that is the greatest concern. There is also something that hovers in the background that has not been mentioned. We know a lot about what goes on in the High North, because we have had quite a significant space set of ISR assets over it for some time, and we know roughly how quickly things are melting and where opportunities and threats are emerging. That is partly linked to nuclear. The High North has traditionally been, and is by geography alone, the nuclear battlefield of the future. This is where Trump has mentioned the Golden Dome, as well as other discussions on nuclear. We are getting to a stage where the United States has to modernise its nuclear arsenal, probably in the administration—[Inaudible]. The UK is also going to have think about that. Primarily that is where it happens. We have this intertwining of space technology, of potentially new modern platforms going over this old battlefield, and it is an old battlefield but a very significant one, and geo-economics. That would be my overall summary to build on what has been said.

Yes.

Dr Rogers? You are on mute.

It is a pleasure to be here. I did not have the power to unmute myself, so thank you so much. To avoid repeating what my colleagues have so rightly said, and I agree with pretty much all their comments, I will focus in on perhaps the most obvious threat that we have. That is the at least 10 years of Russian remilitarisation of the Arctic, especially in and around the northern sea route. Once we started to see Putin’s pet project of his Arctic drone squadrons from 2014 onwards, then we started to see how Russia wanted to create its protective virtual net over the northern sea route. I call it a net for a reason, because it is something which can capture unwanted activity but also be expanded as an offensive capability when wanted and needed. I am happy to go into more detail as we progress through this session on what those capabilities are but, as was rightly pointed out just a few moments ago, we need to think about those sub-threshold threats but also threats to critical infrastructure. All of the capabilities in and around the High North, in the Arctic, in which Russia has been investing are capabilities that will allow Russia to monitor, map and if necessary attack key points of critical infrastructure, including subsea cables. It is here that the UK and our NATO allies are investing quite appropriately and accurately in some cutting-edge drone technologies—surface and underwater vessels and uncrewed aerial systems—that allow us to meet that threat if and when necessary.

The Committee is keen to understand the relationship between Russia and the Arctic. You have just given us a great introduction, and I have a few questions to follow on from that. What is the significance of the Arctic in Russian military doctrine?

The importance of the Arctic to Russia cannot be overestimated or overstated. It has been historically important. We can go into the deep history of how important the Arctic was for resupplying Russia during the Second World War, how key it was during the Cold War as a point of second-strike infrastructure nuclear weapons capabilities and how it maintains that role as a key point of Russia’s second strike nuclear infrastructure into this modern age and this new nuclear era. However, I think its importance has grown even more as the war in Ukraine has gone south for Russia. If you look at how Russia has been able to remove key resources from that region through at least eight Gabon-flagged ghost ships that transport key natural resources out of the Russian Arctic down towards the ports around Hong Kong in Shenzhen in China, you can see how the Arctic is not only an important point for Russia’s military posturing and its defence, but a vital economic bloodline that funds its war in Ukraine and will be protected at all costs. It was mentioned, as it was in the latest strategic defence review, that the Arctic will be opening up because of climate change. One of the important things to bear in mind here is that, yes, the Arctic is warming perhaps four times faster than the rest of the world—some scientists say up to seven times faster—but that depends on which part of the Arctic you are looking at. If you look towards the US, Greenland and the north-west passage, that is likely to remain ice-heavy for the foreseeable future. It is the areas around the Russian Arctic and the north-west passage that are warming at that record rate, so Russia has that advantage first with the northern sea route, which can reduce transit times between Asia and Europe by up to two weeks, reducing the cost of fuel and of crews. Russia is able to capitalise on that first and is very aware of that. That is exactly why Russia has been partnering up with China in certain aspects, in both military exercises and some levels of infrastructure investment, and why Russia is taking its available resources and investing them in the Arctic as and when it can. It is the future of the Russian economy and Russian military posturing, especially when you look at what has happened to the Russian Black Sea fleet. The Russian northern fleet is still incredibly powerful and able to project Russian power.

I have a question about Russia’s 2022 maritime doctrine and its investments in infrastructure. What do those investments tell us about its intentions in the region?

Again, I would build on what James has just said. We often forget this when we look at a normal map and think that Russia is over to the east and plot our strategy thinking about Russia as an eastern nation, but it is not; the world is a ball. When you go towards the north, you also come across Russia. Russia is surrounded by not just NATO allies, but friends and partners of NATO as you look at—[Inaudible]. When you look towards the High North, you have NATO allies to the north, and a large part of the Arctic Council belongs to NATO. You also see Japan and South Korea starting to impinge on that, particularly as these routes start to open. What that means in terms of Russian doctrine is that the High North has always traditionally been one of Russia’s buffer zones: a gap—an Arctic wasteland, originally—that provided it with a useful inhospitable and largely unoccupied gap and space between Russia and what it would consider its main threats, the US and Canada. Going back to my other point, the way that it would flex that in its doctrine would be reflected in its military doctrine from top to bottom. Going back to my earlier point about nuclear, of the Russian modernised ICBM fleet of something like 5,800 warheads, at least half will point to Europe over the top of the world. That, therefore, is where Russian doctrine starts. It starts to look at it from a perspective of deterrence. What we are seeing in recent rhetoric is Donald Trump’s resurrection of the Ronald Reagan Star Wars era of a promise of a Golden Dome, which is clearly making Russia nervous on that front. If you are able to nullify ICBMs, that takes away an awful lot of the deterrence theory. From a US perspective, it makes it a lot easier to budget for slightly less nuclear capability, or at least to justify it in that way in the future, if you already have a defence system in place. But Russia will switch to asymmetric methods of delivery, and some of those will take place underneath the Arctic sea ice—through new autonomous-type systems, as well as the simple ability to send those devices, often using human couriers or shipping them into port. Russia will be starting to look at that. My point is: watch how Russia begins to change its own deterrence system from that side. As a buffer zone, it is going to be nervous—not just because of the economic changes, which have been brilliantly pointed out. I fully agree with James: the most promising passages are, of course, going to be through Russia. It is already making claims that it is moving several million tonnes of goods back and forth. Clearly, from a Russian economic perspective, its main friend in this is China—particularly because of the liquefied gas that is being exported from the northern ports down towards China through those routes. That is significant. Then there are the resources, as has already been mentioned. There is also another interesting aspect to this on the economic side, which is that, as those routes start to emerge, Russia has the advantage of not only having lots of icebreakers to deal with some of the problems up there. Once the ice melts, it fundamentally goes under the sea, so you end up with something called sludge ice, which creates problems for shipping under the sea. You still need icebreakers and other types of shipping to help go through those passages. Russia is in a position where she can start to charge for piloting. That will be a huge economic benefit to Russia, as well as a little bit of a stranglehold, particularly when it comes to European shipping going from Japan to Rotterdam. It will be cheaper to do that route, even with Russian piloting, which means that a trade route could very much come under Russia’s umbrella if we are not careful. There are all sorts of law implications there, in terms of UNCLOS and other things, which we are going to start seeing play out. I think that sort of tries to cover where Russia is at the moment. The main critical thing to think about, from a Russian perspective, is its buffer zone, which, like elsewhere in its mind, is being eroded—this time by global warming. Back to you.

One final question from me—perhaps for Professor Caroline, if you can answer it. To what extent has the war in Ukraine diverted Russian resources from the Arctic?

We know that Russian brigades were moved south to Ukraine, but we also know that the Russians undertook a reorganisation—including moving the northern fleet under the control of St Petersburg—and that was to answer one of the consequences of the war in Ukraine: the fact that Finland and Sweden joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. That has led to a concentration of Russia’s ability to fight along a much longer border. Ukraine had that personnel impact, but also a geopolitical impact in forcing attention towards the enlarged NATO area. That has another consequence—if you will forgive me—which is that we speak of the High North, but I think it is now more appropriate to speak of the wider North, because the centre of gravity has moved south into the Baltics, with Russian ambition and hybrid activities against the Baltic states. That means that, when we think of the north, it runs across from the north Atlantic all the way through allies and friends. So, in my view, that pulls the High North into the wider North. The other thing is that it is quite easy not to pay due respect. Whatever the nature of Mr Putin’s unsavoury regime, Russia is an Arctic state. A quarter of its territory is in the Arctic, and 2.5 million Russians live there. As colleagues have pointed out, it is responsible for keeping the Russian economy going in terms of gas, coal and oil. The Russians will not leave the Arctic—they cannot. On top of that, Russia has a cultural and historical sensibility about the importance of the Arctic to the very soul of the Slavic people. Russia is changing, and the demographics of the Russian Arctic are not in its favour. A decline particularly in the female population has preoccupied President Putin, with all sorts of incentives to get Syrian and Ukrainian refugees to move up to Murmansk. We are looking at a power that sees itself as Eurasian, in the Pacific Arctic as well the Russian. The northern sea route has not yet yielded what Mr Putin would like; the tonnage of shipping is nothing like what he forecast last year. Coming back to China, I am indebted to James Gray, who has alerted us to the fact that the Chinese now plan very shortly to plant a flag at the north pole. China and Russia—that is an extremely interesting alliance in terms of trade and military exercises, as James said, but also ideologically. If we look at what is happening—I found this quite interesting in the strategic defence review—we are in an ideological as well as a military competition. That cannot be discounted, because Russia acts with China and the rest of the BRICs. In the High North, Turkey, India and South Korea all proclaim themselves to be friends of the Arctic. It is a complex picture.

That was super interesting; thank you very much. To bring it below the threshold into grey zone activity, hybrid or whatever you want to call it, what would you say are the main characteristics of Russian grey zone activity in the High North or the wider North? Are we effectively deterring that now, and does the SDR contribute to that future deterrent? You say the High North was mentioned only a couple of times in the SDR. What are they doing? Are we countering it now, and will the SDR help in that regard?

What I think is good about the SDR is that it points to the critical nature of our infrastructure and its protection. The UK has 60 undersea cables that bring us our internet and communications. They need to be protected, but looking further north and at where the Russians have acted in terms of cutting undersea cables, only two cables connect Svalbard—a Norwegian archipelago—down south, and one of those was cut. If the other is cut, that remote archipelago has food for only a month. In remote places—and the Arctic is remote—do we do enough? Probably not. Are we getting better? Yes we are. But the Russians’ grey zone activity is mischief making, it is disruption, it is under the threshold because, as the SDR points out, we rarely declare war; but we are at war in terms of the hybrid space, so it will be cables and it will be targeting societies. Here, the SDR is quite right: an all-society approach has to build national resilience, because if those cables are cut, it will, as we all know, lead to a banking crisis or an internet crisis. That is where I expect them, and they do act.

Is there anything else, other than undersea cables?

Yes, if you look at the footholds that Russia has, including two on Svalbard, there has been an uptick in Russian and Chinese scientific and social media activity there. Unlike the Finns, we have not quite recognised that as a pervasive threat to society. In the old days, we used to call it propaganda.

David Lammy visited there recently.

Indeed he did. Of course, the Chinese have just been warned by the Norwegians to take the lions down outside the research sector, because the governor of Svalbard is keenly aware that while it might not be overt, it is there, lurking. There is a Russian foothold in Barentsburg—in Norwegian and NATO territory. There are only 450 people at the moment, but the Russians have already made claims that the Svalbard treaty is illegal and unjustified, so we are seeing lots of games played out. We are not necessarily the target audience, but this gets some traction if you are looking at allies of Mr Putin taking on a rules-based order in the Arctic.

I will ask panellists to keep their comments centred around Russia and grey zone activity, because we will be covering UK policy in terms of the SDR as well as China later. Please could panellists focus in just on Russia and grey zone activity?

Russia has a raft of agencies and organisations that work from seabed up through country. The GRU, as we know, is extremely active; there are also proxies who sit outside Russia, the internet and social media, and then the physical disruption we have seen.

I have been really impressed with a lot of the panellists’ comments. I would like to re-emphasise the point about the Baltic states and the wider North, because that is really important and has a real impact on this. One thing that disappointed me a little bit about the SDR, and maybe just because it was strategic rather than heading down to—

As I mentioned, we will be coming on to the SDR later. Could we concentrate on Russia and grey zone activity?

The Baltics are really where we have a focus on grey zone activity at the moment, which is why the wider North point is well made, because we have not yet seen activity beyond Svalbard, further north. There is something really interesting happening as a net result of that, against Russia in terms of poise from our friends and allies. When Rutte started as Secretary-General of NATO, he talked very much about NATO being in a “warlike poise” against Russia at the moment. That was partly down to critical national infrastructure and this grey zone activity we have been seeing. “Warlike poise” is a very interesting choice of words, because it also leads to the question of how you counter that. A lot of discussions here in Brussels seem to be moving away—you could look at this as escalatory—from the traditional deterrence by denial of facilities and pieces of infrastructure, because we cannot cover everything all of the time, to a new poise that is being talked about, which is deterrence by punishment. What exactly that means from a NATO perspective, you can debate. Does it mean we take action against Russian or, indeed, Chinese shipping that is conducting these activities? Are they deniable activities or not? There is something in there that we need to be very aware of and watching closely as it starts to develop, because defeating grey zone activity usually requires grey zone activity. The point about the Baltic states is that the tactics or processes we develop in the Baltics and around the Baltic Sea with that in mind will largely be the ones we will eventually start to use in the High North as well, particularly those that have been successful. This is an inflection point. Where does the UK have a role to play at the moment? That is probably through the Standing Joint Force Headquarters activity, which is rightly and very well positioned to conduct an operation called Nordic Warden, which is looking at all this infrastructure and trying to co-ordinate with our other Joint Expeditionary Force partners responses to it. That is having a useful impact for NATO, because it is relieving NATO to get on with some of its other maritime-type tasks. But I think grey zone activity requires a grey zone response, and it is something we will have to watch very carefully, particularly among our allies, whose patience may be starting to wane faster than ours.

Thank you both.

Thank you very much. Let us move on to China and the Arctic with Jesse Norman.

Before we get to that, may I ask a question of Professor Kennedy-Pipe? You mentioned Russia and the Baltic. Can you comment briefly on the balance of forces and the changing dimensions of Russian emphasis of military strength between the Baltic, the Arctic and the High North? I think that is quite significant.

I think so too, and thank you for the question. With the enlargement of NATO, the Baltic has become a key area of concern for the Russians, because it is essentially NATO-dominated, so we have pushed the Russians into a position of understanding strength. Again, what the SDR did extremely well was point to our ongoing commitment to our friends and partners, particularly Estonia but also Latvia and Lithuania. The Russians are moving more concentration southwards, in so far as they are able, precisely because NATO has proved to be robust. In training exercises, we have seen intense Russian concentration looking at where we are training—train where you are prepared to fight. At the moment, the Russians are torn between the demands of Ukraine, the audacious Ukrainian attack in the Arctic over the last 48 hours, and that force posture. As I say, the reorganisation of what was the Leningrad Military District points to that concentration in the east and moving south.

So it is actually imposing a strain on Russia, which is trying to reinforce on the peninsula and further round, but is actually having forces drawn south.

Exactly so.

That is very interesting. We are focusing on the wider factors before we get back to the UK and the more specific issues for us. On China, Dr Rogers, can you talk about China’s ambitions in the High North and how you see that as presenting a security concern to the UK and to NATO?

Much like the northern sea route is a key strategic asset to Russia, it is seen as a key strategic and economic asset to China. I mentioned the resources that come out of the Arctic to China to fuel its economy, but when you look at the existing routes that are available to China for its global shipping and global trade, you see a number of key strategic choke points that make China vulnerable. We can talk about moving through the Malacca Strait and the trap, but as we move round into the Red Sea and through into Suez, you have not only violent non-state actor groups that are supplied by Iran in the region using drones to target international shipping, but the movement of your trade, your military vessels and your naval assets through a region that, as you then move through to the Mediterranean, is largely dominated by NATO partners and allies. If China can support Russia in its development of the northern sea route, and provide it with a capability that is protected and secured by a close ally—there are “no restrictions” between them, as President Xi says—it becomes a far more preferred and potentially secure route into the future for Chinese trade and shipping. It is clear that China, for all those reasons, is betting on the northern sea route right now. That is why we are seeing joint military exercises between Russia and China stepping up year on year since at least 2022. We have had joint naval exercises and joint coastguard operations that have moved into the Arctic Ocean. We had those controversial joint bomber patrols in 2024 that triggered a United States response and interception, and then we have had joint exercises around the Bering Strait as well. It is all those reasons—economic, military and the key point of international trade—that help us to see exactly how important the Arctic is for China.

Brigadier, can I come on to you for a further comment and to specifically explore that military co-operation? It is not just military, but commercial and trading co-operation. We know that China and Russia have signed a 50-year oil and gas agreement, and we know that China has its proxies in Ukraine, so there are all kinds of other reasons for thinking that China is allowing Russia to be pulled into its longer term geostrategic thinking. Can you talk about what the threat is for the UK and NATO coming out of that?

To build on something that James just said, which was brilliant, Jens Stoltenberg at NATO used to describe China as now coming towards us. A lot of us used to sit back and see that as being very much in the cyber domain and the information space, but of course, that is not the sole space because China has been coming for some time into the Baltics; it has been projecting into NATO’s more traditional area via the Mediterranean and other existing routes. To build on that point, what you are seeing here is that yes, there is a great trade opportunity for China, straight over the top of the world to get into European markets and elsewhere—that is absolutely right. It is a two-way pathway, isn’t it? You can go to the Asia-Pacific or you can come from the Asia-Pacific. So on the trade side there are mutual benefits, which may give us opportunities later from a European perspective. There is also a threat, though, because if China is indeed coming towards us, from a defence perspective it is also the fastest route. If those routes have already opened up, alongside your ally who is piloting and helping you get there, it means that your own People's Liberation Army Navy, which is significantly growing and has by far the biggest shipbuilding capability in the world, including the United States, is able to project itself faster into the north Atlantic; and if it can do that, it immediately starts to threaten NATO’s sea lines of communication, which run from the United States to Europe, because it will have more submarines and other warships in the area. That is quite significant, because it is going to take Europe something like 15 to 20 years to even think about replacing the United States in terms of production capability, manufacturing capability, and building up stocks and everything else just to fight on the European side of NATO’s battlefield. So for the next 15 years-plus, Europe is going to be heavily reliant on 155 mm ammunition travelling across the Atlantic to get into Europe via Rotterdam and other ports and then be transported further to the east—looking at it from an east-west perspective this time. So that threat, or the potential of it arriving faster than it could have done in the past, is quite significant. We should not undermine or underthink just how much the Chinese military threat would also be a problem here.

You mentioned the USA. Obviously, three minutes looking at the globe reminds one that the USA has no access to the High North apart from in Alaska, and it has managed to foster a dysfunctional relationship with Canada over the last few months in a way that might hinder its long-term ambitions in that area. What are the implications of this expansion for the US, and how does that play into our own strategic dilemmas?

Going back to the point I made earlier, if you are looking at it from a US strategic perspective, you suddenly have an awful lot of platforms going from Rotterdam to Japan—if you want to simplify that—that have not been there in the past. They may be on sea, under the sea, over the sea or increased space surveillance, but there are platforms from all nations to monitor and to secure that route. As I mentioned, that has a big impact on your nuclear deterrent strategy, because most of your nuclear deterrent is focused on travelling above the High North to those countries you wish to target, which include China as well as Russia. That is the most significant change, which introduces all sorts of security issues and problems if you are American. We also have to weigh up how much America would wish to do to support this. It does not matter which Government you go back to—whether it be Trump or Obama, or you keep going back—the Americans have long called for more burden sharing from Europeans to provide security. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility for the United States to turn around and say, “NATO is not going to do all of this.” If you look at it from a security perspective, recently—thank goodness—it is good to see that the United States reaffirmed that SACEUR would continue to be an American general. That is good, because it overlaps both our nuclear and our conventional way of fighting and deterring and that the US are still committed, but they are still looking for people to share that burden, and there is not really much in it. It is difficult, as you have quite rightly pointed out, for the US to become involved in providing security up there and dominating, particularly with Canada sharing a vast part of that space, as well as Denmark. Let’s not forget that in June 2022 the Danish people voted by a considerable margin in a referendum—James will be able to pick up on this; I know he has worked there for some years—to join the European Union common defence and security policy. They did that to attract European funding into Greenland, because they saw a lot of this coming, but also because of the reliance on whether the United States would be able to do it if engaged elsewhere. Here is a fundamental principle that all Europeans must hoist in, as well as Canadians: if the United States are engaged elsewhere—that is really talking about China and the Asia-Pacific—we must establish the principle, regardless of your political spectrum, of ensuring that Europe is able to stand on its own, not just in Europe, but looking now at the European Arctic and beyond. That takes you on a pathway towards closer co-operation with Japan and South Korea than we have had before. In terms of the US, it is a long answer, but there are very limited physical opportunities for them—unless Trump gains Greenland, which is not going to happen, or unless Trump gains Canada, which is not going to happen. So I think we could expect the Americans to be less interested in providing security and more interested in the complexities that the extra engagement in the High North causes for their own nuclear strategy, particularly when you have something like the Golden Dome suggested, and to concentrate on that. That throws all responsibility on to Europeans, and the United Kingdom as part of that, as well as Canada, for providing such security in the future, if I am right.

Dr Rogers, do you want to come in on how the US must feel constrained, from a military perspective, by its lack of ability to police those routes?

You are touching exactly on what is a sensitive point here in the United States right now. It is one that the Trump Administration has put its finger on and has done since its first Administration, and rightly so. I think it is safe to say that the United States neglected its foothold in the Arctic for many a year, and the Trump Administration has not decided to abandon the mission that it started during its first Administration; instead, it has doubled, if not tripled, down on it. That is not only to do with the fact that it is investing heavily in shipping. It is trying to resolve its major icebreaker issues through the ICE Pact with Finland and Canada, which continues despite tensions that we have diplomatically in other areas. The US is revitalising its own shipping industry as well. That is all part of a broader push for the United States to secure the US homeland from the Panama canal—to make sure that it is not infiltrated by Chinese influence—and all the way over towards the border with Canada and across, of course, towards Greenland. We can say that the United States will not get Greenland, but the United States does not need to get Greenland. The Kingdom of Denmark and the Greenlandic people are very open to increased US military and economic co-operation in Greenland. The United States has the right legally, as signed with Greenland—Professor Kennedy-Pipe can touch further on the key aspects of the agreement—to build the bases that it wants to and to expand the bases that it needs to. Pituffik, of course, is an incredibly important asset, as the world’s furthest north deep-sea port, which allows the United States to project its naval power as necessary across that region. So perhaps I would not share the concerns about the United States being as constrained as you think. When it comes to other agreements and allies in the area, Iceland in 2017 reaffirmed its defence agreement with the United States. That gives the United States an awful lot of power to have military capabilities in Keflavik and to expand as needed, as it has with its P-8s in the area. The United States is strengthening that foothold and investing heavily in that region and those military capabilities, including drones. To match that, and to make sure that it continues to be able to protect its sovereign control of its own territory, the Kingdom of Denmark—which will most certainly agree that it has also neglected its Arctic responsibilities and Greenland for an awful long time, despite repeated claims by its Governments that it will have millions of dollars of investment in Arctic defence; it dragged its feet and was unable to do that investment because there was not the political will to for at least the last 10 years—has now been shaken into a response. It has gone from a commitment of a couple of hundred million dollars to now, at my latest count, around $2 billion in Arctic defence to make sure that it can maintain its sovereign control of that region. I think it is safe to say that under the Trump Administration, the United States has woken up to its Arctic ambitions, which has woken up a number of other nation states and allies.

We know that NATO has been slow to act to threats in the past. Overall, do you think that the alliance is taking Russian and Chinese co-operation in the High North seriously enough?

May I just be really naughty and come back to Mr Norman? If you look at what the Americans are doing to the state of their universities and think tanks in terms of Arctic research, they are not serious about the future. The Woodrow Wilson Polar Institute has been absolutely ripped apart. To be an Arctic power, you need to be a scientific power—that is something the UK can do, but we can come back to that. My point is that I am not as complacent about what the Americans are letting the Russians and Chinese have in terms of Arctic research, because the Chinese and Russians are collaborating very closely and that is making us fall behind. The second thing was that, in international relations, once one issues a very strong statement—as we have—about what we are going to do, we provide our enemies perhaps with a timeframe for acting before we can get there. I think the ambitions are great, but I am worried about the timing. I am also worried about the silence in the report on things like the Royal Marines and the mountain leaders, who have been absolutely indispensable to UK Arctic policy. Are we doing enough, fast enough? No, we probably are not. That is the period of vulnerability before we can deliver on all those promises.

That is helpful. Dr Rogers or Brigadier Boyd, do you have anything to add about the alliance taking the threat seriously enough?

I will come in on that. Until recently, I spent nearly four years attending every North Atlantic Council and NATO Military Committee meeting—trust me, that was hard work sometimes. From a NATO perspective, we also have to understand something important: there is a confused command and control structure, here because NATO, and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, only has responsibility up to the north pole. Physically, it is only looking at providing deterrence, day-to-day defence and fighting up to the north pole, and it becomes an American-Canadian security problem thereafter. Because traditionally it has always been largely unoccupied, and mainly concerned with nuclear in terms of strategy, it has been easier to control—but no longer; it is getting occupied. There is a question mark here over how far NATO is able to project itself on the north, but in my experience article 5 and the mutual support clause are sacrosanct. I have absolutely no doubt that any of the Arctic Council members who are also part of NATO will benefit from article 5 and NATO turning to support them. You make an interesting point about where NATO is able to move fast enough. I go back again to my North Atlantic Council experience. In 2013, I was quite fundamental to the creation of the Joint Expeditionary Force, and I went around the Baltics, and Canada at that stage, to look at some sort of alternative in the region. One thing that all the nations, without a doubt, were quite concerned about was speed of response. A lot of the nations who ended up joining the Joint Expeditionary Force—particularly those with borders with Russia—saw the Joint Expeditionary Force as a way of taking action quickly and effectively in order to shape a NATO response, if necessary. NATO graduates its responses: it starts from article 4 and observes a problem on its borders, and then moves to article 5 if there is activity against us. In that sort of article 4 situation, or even before that, the JEF was seen as a very valuable tool.

General, we will be delving into the JEF in significant detail later.

Even better. But I think it highlights the point about NATO’s response. It is robust, but let us not forget that its boundaries extend only to the north pole. Unless we have some sort of alliance agreement that it extends even further, which would also have to bring in Japan and South Korea, NATO is somewhat restricted in its geography.

I know that climate change is projected to significantly open up economic activity in the Arctic and the High North, with increases in international shipping for trade, tourism, fisheries and so forth. The US Geological Survey has projected that about 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil is in that region, not to mention critical raw materials and much more besides. With respect to all that, what are the security implications? I am interested in the security implications. How should defence respond?

What do you mean by “security implications”?

We know about the projected increase in economic activity. I am more interested in how our armed forces should be looking into the potential defence implications. For example, we know that Russia and China recently conducted joint bomber patrols in and around Alaska. There is a lot of activity, which is why I am interested in the defence and security implications.

If we look at drilling or offshore activities, for example, how far are private investments secured by British defence? That would be one issue, because some of the ownership of critical infrastructure is in private hands. I am not quite sure how we connect them in the security/defence realm, particularly if they are multinational companies.

If we look at what is happening around critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, we have seen a lot of activity there. No doubt we will have to devote more resources. If I were answering this question, I would talk about devoting more resources to monitoring activity in the Arctic region. There are a lot of defence and security implications, but I do not want to answer my own question; I would rather have your views on record. General Boyd, I know you discussed this a lot in your previous notes, from what I have ascertained. This question is open to the panellists for the next four or five minutes: what do you think are the defence and security implications?

Let me just come in, and then I will switch to James, because I know he is a big expert on this. Making the assumption that this activity—the reclaiming of gas, oil and everything else you have mentioned—is on sovereign territory, then it becomes a sovereign requirement to protect, defend and deter any other activity around it. Therefore, we need capabilities to do that. I know this is linked more to AUKUS and keeping that moving, but I was reassured to see that our submarine capability will be continually built and expanded. That is very important, because the UK is good at that. Also, that is one of the vessels that can and does function all over the High North. When we come to that increasing requirement for defence to protect in this particular scenario, we now have to invest more in undersea vehicles—autonomous submarines, if you like—because it is easier to transit under the water up there than it is on the surface. Also, we are good at it. We have good industry that can be part of that, so I would say that this is a part of our defence spending that we need to increase. The other area that is linked to it, to provide that top cover, is of course developing capability for UAVs. In the first instance, UAVs struggle in some of the temperatures that exist up there, because you are hitting plus or minus 40° just to take off in some cases, in the first few feet. Some of that is really difficult, so we need to look at how do we expand those UAVs and operate in support of them, because it is a difficult environment. Going back to the point that was made about the Royal Marines and operating a lot in Norway to build that capability, I have been to Operation Clockwork—our exercises there—on several occasions when I was the military assistant to the joint helicopter commander, as he was at the time. One of the significant principles was it is really hard to operate equipment in those conditions, whether that is maritime, helicopters, UAVs or anything. It is the hardest place in the world to do that, so we need to develop how we do it, as well as making these things cheaper and more expendable, so that instead of overengineering a lot of our UAVs, we are taking the hit by just building affordable and therefore expendable UAVs on a far more regular basis in order to provide that coverage earlier on, before we advance them. This is calling and screaming out for the UK to provide security through unmanned systems particularly, in my opinion. James will be able to elaborate more, I am sure.

Dr Rogers, in addition, will you talk about the potential for inter-state tensions—with regards to all this economic activity—perhaps the need for greater collaboration to get rid of misunderstandings and how that could have an impact on the contribution of our defence in the region?

Absolutely. Let us try to map out where some of the core hubs of resource extraction and availability are. We talk about one third of the world’s untapped natural gas and oil potentially being available in the Arctic. Well, it turns out that a vast proportion of that is in the Russian Arctic, something that is not up for dispute and is firmly within Russia’s sovereign territorial domain. Now let us look at somewhere like Greenland, part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which is looking at expanding its economic co-operation with the United States. Here, we have a vast amount of rare earths and, in fact, perhaps many more resources that we just do not know about, because so much still needs to be mapped and investigated. That is incredibly important to the United States, because with China cutting off its supplies to rare earth materials—with tariffs and sanctions being put in place—for the United States to have a geographically pretty close supply of those rare earth and various other natural resources, Greenland becomes incredibly important. Either way, that is the Kingdom of Denmark, a key NATO ally, and the United States has the right to defend Greenland in perpetuity for as long as it sees Greenland as core to defence of the US homeland. We can talk about Alaska as well; the whole point of its original purchase was to investigate for resources—for gold—and to push Britain out of that area, and despite former President and Prime Minister Medvedev’s comment that the sale of Alaska by Russia to the US may well have been illegal, I don’t think we see Alaska being ceded back to Russia any time soon. When it comes down to control over natural resources, quite a lot of this is within the sovereign territorial domains of the nation states and is not up for any sort of discussion or competition. There are some competing claims to continental shelves that are continuing to be processed through the United Nations, and some claims that have been amicably settled, such as that between the Kingdom of Denmark and Canada most recently. When it comes to challenges and threats over resources, I would argue that there is something fundamentally important to the United Kingdom, a key resource that we need to protect and one that we do not discuss or perhaps value enough. That, of course, is our access to fishing grounds—our natural resource being fish. If we look towards the warming Russian Arctic, that warming ocean means that a lot of the fish stocks are moving towards those colder waters around Greenland. I have been working with oceanographers and marine scientists in Denmark, looking at how these shifts in climate change and the movement of fish might well cause tensions between Russia and NATO allies and might well mean that the United Kingdom and our fishing fleets will have access to more abundant stocks in that High North area. As we are starting to see Russia push some of its military assets out to directly confront Norwegian fishing fleets, however, we have to think that is something we may well face ourselves in the future. One way NATO has responded is by tracking Russian activity—something I will be happy to talk about in a bit more detail—and formulating a NATO drone wall that stretches from the very north of the Norwegian Arctic down to Poland, tracking the movement of Russian fleets and then putting our military assets in place to respond quickly, as needed. As Brigadier General Boyd stated, a lot of this is going to be about having uncrewed aerial systems with autonomous functions and machine vision that allow them to operate without a human pilot directly in control at all times, but being able to take control once suspicious activity is identified. I think that is all my core points on that.

Those are also the sort of things we discussed at the drone summit in Latvia last week. Given the lack of time, I want to move on to Michelle Scrogham, please.

Perhaps we can focus on the UK’s Arctic policy for a few minutes. We touched on the strategic defence review a little bit earlier, but what do you think the review actually tells us about this Government’s approach to the Arctic and the High North?

It is notable that the UK has never had an Arctic strategy—we have an Arctic framework. That is very interesting, and we have always been extremely careful through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to make it clear that we are not an Arctic state, but an Arctic friend and ally. I think that has been a wise and responsible route. We have also always stressed sustainability, thought leadership and science as what the UK can offer the Arctic in the broadest sense, and thought leadership on the indigenous peoples has also been an important part of that. That pathway, I think, should continue. We do not struggle, as some places such as the Republic of Ireland do, to be an observer at the Arctic Council. We are now embedded in that kind of soft power. In terms of defence, we are a full-spectrum military nuclear power, along with France; we will have to lead, depending on the vicissitudes of the Trump Administration in the Arctic. I think a clearer articulation of both poles is needed. Polar is a concept that is missing, and given that these are the fastest warming places on Earth and the places where geostrategic competition is playing out, I think that is something of an absence. Plus, the Arctic is not distant from the rest of the world. At the south pole, we have enduring interests in our overseas territories. So, it is an odd admission that these two places, these two hubs of geostrategic competition—one governed by a treaty, one not; one peopled, one not—make our leadership role really imperative. I would add—this is the reason for my hesitancy on the previous question—that international law does matter, and it matters in terms of the Law of the Sea. Sovereign distance, EEZs, are one thing, but there are many places that are ungoverned. There are many places where it is not clear where the responsibility lies—you won’t catch me on a cruise ship in the Arctic. Those domains, such as around Svalbard, are places where there are grey zone activities, which are unclear. We need a clearer articulation, if possible, of the importance of climate sustainability. James is quite right. Look at who is appearing around Antarctica: the Chinese, the Russians. Fish stocks seem rather prosaic, rather dull, but we have fought wars over cod. These places are ungoverned spaces and, as the ice recedes, UNCLOS article 234 may not apply in the Arctic. I am thinking of UK leadership on governance as well.

Professor Kennedy-Pipe mentioned so many of the key issues. I will add some comments on a couple of areas—I have mentioned fishing—that we might see as our vulnerabilities, as the United Kingdom. One thing that has worried me over the last three years is that we have had repeated incursions of fixed-wing drones in and around oil rigs and oil infrastructure off the coast of Norway, to the north of the North Sea—unidentified, uncrewed aerial vehicles that buzz around the infrastructure, highlighting that they are able to get through undetected and, I suppose, to map, carry out surveillance, maybe conduct espionage or hoover up metadata, as needed—and, of course, strike if wanted—putting pressure and a little embarrassment on the Norwegians, but perhaps also all of us in that area, to counter this drone threat. To return to another point—dual-use technologies. Professor Kennedy-Pipe rightly mentioned that the United States is currently making some rather swift and stark changes to its investment in scientific research in the Arctic. At Cornell, we have faced $1 billion in cuts to key defence-related projects. It is a strange and difficult time. But if you look at where China is investing in its scientific research in the Arctic, it is cosying up very nicely to a number of our key allies on joint scientific projects, such as with one of our closest neighbours, Iceland—where, of course, our Foreign Minister was very recently to sign joint deals on AI surveillance in and around Iceland. That same country has agreements with China to have aurora borealis research institutes. Colleagues here at Cornell, within my institute, have been conducting investigations and looking at the technical details of those research institutions that China wants to use to observe the northern lights; that same technology can be used to track communication between submarines. This is why the Select Committee in the United States has sent robust letters to Scandinavian and Nordic allies to sway them to move away from that scientific research with China. Again, as Professor Kennedy-Pipe said, if you want to be able to obtain that funding right now, perhaps it is through China that you go, with the United States cutting an awful lot of its funding in that area. Maybe that is where the UK can step up and use its scientific power and resources to fill some of those gaps.

Brigadier General, if you can bring it directly back to the SDR, do you think the Government’s approach towards Arctic policy is the right one?

I read the SDR again yesterday, as I have read the last few SDRs over the years, either at the MoD or elsewhere, from a NATO-role perspective. We make some great points in there, and we sum up our strategic needs. There is a list of stuff that we need to do in the UK. We know that, and it is articulated quite neatly within the paper. However, the SDR does not talk about the problem the Ministry of Defence will now have in terms of prioritisation—that is not generally shared anyway. Prioritisation tends to come from a need to do stuff sooner rather than later, and it is therefore often based on timelines, rather than the capabilities we see emerging in the future. For example, if we take what we have been discussing today and put a timeline of, say, 10 to 15 years before semi-autonomous shipping is going over the top of the world, if that is where we look at it—and we need to protect it, if it is what we want to see. We need to make decisions now on the sort of capabilities that we need to be purchasing, researching, developing and fielding, based on how we do our standard equipment programmes and everything else. The Ministry of Defence will now look at all those priorities and try to field them on a time-based system of what is seen to be the most urgent. The reflection you can make just by reading the paper is that it is not mentioned much. It therefore strikes me, slightly concerningly, that this will not hit the top end of the priority scale when it comes to funding everything else we need to do. Going back to nuclear, for example, we have to build a more survivable deterrent—we are building submarines, but quantum technology tells us that in the future we will be at risk of exposing them. We probably need to diversify our deterrent as a priority right now in Europe, because the French are not part of NATO’s deterrent strategy at the moment—or at least we do not think they would be, as they have not committed. That is part of it, but my real point is that if the MoD is now in a wrestling match between its departments as to what to fund as part of all these priorities, we have a real problem with funding. One of the finest pieces of innovation I have seen come out of the United Kingdom recently is not necessarily related to UAVs and undersea infrastructure. It is based on financial mechanisms, which we are good at. I am quite heartened, because I know there has been some good work done by this Committee. I give a big shout out to Alex Baker and Calvin Bailey—I know they are banging the drum firmly on this. We can see that this is starting to appear, but we have to look at new ways of funding all this. The UK almost needs to take a strategic pause and say, “Right. We cannot keep going around the circle of continually funding what we can for the next year and managing yet another black hole.” We have to draw a line and invest in the capabilities that we need for our defence and that of our allies, as well as our interests in the future, which include making sure our principal artery to the Asia-Pacific—which, without a doubt, will be going through the High North in the decades to come for our children—is in place and secure. The only way we will do that is through more creative and innovative funding mechanisms. The best one being touted and on the block at the moment—and there is big interest in Canada and across Europe, despite their own efforts—is the Defence, Security, and Resilience Bank concept, which is a UK idea. That is a way of drawing the line and going for longer-term loans, which will not harm our welfare and health budgets and so on, for big strategic decisions such as nuclear modernisation and future investment in the Arctic. As ever, the SDR strikes me as a great job, but the MoD now has a real problem with prioritising its funding. Sooner or later, we have to draw a line and take the hit, as we did before the second world war in many ways, by taking longer-term loans that will cost us less without harming our resilience at home. We have to look at such innovative funding mechanisms. I look at great UAV companies, and I help a few of them with advice. I see them walking into Downing Street. But I think the most brilliant piece of innovation from the last few years of British thinking is related to future defence financing. Perhaps that might be one tool—not the silver bullet, but one tool—that may help us to start investing in the future—[Inaudible.]

Given those restraints—you mentioned the black hole in the funding, and we all know what the challenges are—what priority should this Government place on the High North, as opposed to Ukraine or any other area of conflict?

It cannot at the moment, because it does not have the funding to do anything other than deal with the problems on its doorstep. I am in Brussels, so I am two hours away from Ukraine by flight, and you feel the realism in this town that, frankly, did not exist half a dozen years ago. There is a realism and an understanding of the threat that makes everyone want to invest and make sure that Ukraine is successful, particularly as the US potentially starts—

Not so much Ukraine, as we are looking at the High North. What do you think this Government should be prioritising for that area, given our constraints?

I am wary of the Chairman telling me off and saying, “JEF’s coming up”, but we have to think about using our established friendships and bilateral arrangements with northern nations, which are largely built around the Joint Expeditionary Force and the infrastructure we have already built with them, such as the standing joint force headquarters, which does not get a mention in the SDR. We must sustain that, because it provides us with our platform for providing security in the future, as we start to develop these new technologies, such as submarine UAVs, to assist us in protecting the shipping that is inevitably going to come over the High North. We should invest now and ensure that we are protecting those sorts of assets and relationships because those are the ones that we can easily extend to include countries like Japan and South Korea, which are wrestling with exactly the same problem as us. We also would not have quite the same constraints that we would have if we tried to put this before 32 allies in NATO itself. Going back to the point, it is a way of triggering a response by utilising our bilateral arrangements and the Joint Expeditionary Force. That probably requires us to embrace Canada—I recently wrote a paper with Ed Arnold from RUSI—which is now on a mission to reach out, through Mark Carney, within organisations such as the JEF in order to build those relationships over the next few years. Invest or continue to invest; do not allow cuts in order to invest in other things. Continue to invest in the infrastructure, such as those co-operation mechanisms, standing joint force headquarters and the JEF mechanisms that we have, because they will give us opportunities much further down the line just when we need them. That will give us access to other capabilities as well, because those allies are perhaps developing capabilities that we are not developing at the moment.

Can the panellists please keep their responses as concise as possible? I have six different segments still to cover, including the JEF. It would be greatly appreciated, because I want to cover all the ground in the next 40 minutes.

I am going to ask about our Type 26 frigates, which are our primary anti-submarine warfare capability. We are talking about the threat in the Arctic and the High North today. You have mentioned a number of changes that we need to make. Is the Type 26 the right body to build a system around? I am particularly interested in slush ice, where ice melts, goes under water, does not disappear and becomes very difficult for movement. Do we need to harden the hulls, or do we need a new, entirely different ship? Can you give us a sense of how far away we are from being able to operate successfully in what, with climate change, will be a very changed environment over the next 10 to 20 years? I will come to Professor Kennedy-Pipe first, please.

I will defer to Robbie, but having just looked at HMS Protector—our one ship that can operate in the north, but is usually in the south—it is due to last or be retained in service until 2038, and it keeps breaking down. Red-hull ships are certainly something with an Arctic and polar interest, but I would not claim to have Robbie’s operating experience, so I will sidestep the question and hand over to him.

So the Army guy will answer a Navy question. I get exactly the point you are making, but I would also add, from an ASW perspective, the importance of the P-8 and the air side as part of an entire system. Fundamentally, your question is right, but it goes back a bit to what we said before: until we decide that we are going to have to operate in this region, and make it clear that it is a requirement to do so, we are not going to see our shipbuilders adding to the costs of these vessels by reinforcing the hulls and doing everything that we need to do to make them far more survivable in that climate. It is going to cost more as well. It all boils down to making a strong political decision that we know we are going to have to operate there and that therefore we need to start enhancing our capabilities.

My question is whether, with various upgrades, such as hardening the hull and building autonomy around it—you mentioned having systems in there—the Type 26 frigate is capable, or whether you are suggesting that we will need an entirely new frigate in 20 years’ time.

I would say that it is probably not capable as it stands at the moment—certainly not for going over the top of the world, with those threats. This is also something that NATO is taking quite seriously. Allied Command Transformation is about to embark on a significant project to look at operating in the High North, in particular the European High North, with exactly that in mind: what are the future capabilities we need to build into all NATO’s fleets? That will inform us about whether they can fully deliver what they have to deliver. Again, there is a bit of a problem here, as I said. Partly because of geography and boundaries, SACEUR operates only up to the north pole, so how do we overcome that with some sort of command and control system? There is also a lot of interest in what the Americans are doing. I go back to the brilliant point James made earlier about the US: yes, conventionally, they can function in the High North, and probably slightly better than we can in some ways, although we build good ships—let’s be quite frank. That centres around JFC Norfolk, now in NATO—what was the sixth fleet. A lot of High North nations are banking on that headquarters as being the future command and control area; people from Iceland, Denmark and others are populating that headquarters.

Thank you very much. The Committee had the opportunity to visit JFC Norfolk only a couple of weeks ago, so we are aware of that. Dr Patton Rogers, the SDR, which you will have had the opportunity to read yesterday and today, specifies making upgrades to the Type 26 and enhancing the capabilities. It literally says that it “should be an exemplar of how private money is attracted to defence technology and linked to export-led opportunity under a new partnership with industry”. You have an international perspective. Can you give us a sense of the barriers in the UK to that actually taking place?

First of all, some of those barriers are being reduced by your own excellent work on the APPG for defence technology, so thank you for your continued work with that—it has been great to see how it has developed. One of the things that has been mentioned most recently in the UK—and, like you say, internationally, such as here in the United States—is how we need to bring in some of the new cutting-edge defence technology industry manufacturers, so that they can compete better and secure the contracts that have traditionally been going to the major defence technology companies. You can see how that has started to make an impact here in the United States. The Defence Innovation Unit in the Pentagon was set up a few years ago to provide seed funding for companies that have novel solutions to US defence demands, and that shift has pushed companies like Anduril and allowed them to expand. Anduril expanded so quickly from 2017 that it is now making the most advanced uncrewed underwater vehicles in the world, and producing them on budget and, surprisingly, on time for delivery to the Royal Australian Navy. So if we learn from some of the success stories here in the United States that were pioneered under the last two consecutive Administrations and continue to be invested in at this moment, avoiding being DOGE’d and cut, perhaps the UK can create similar Defence Innovation Unit-style accelerators that will allow us to capitalise on our own talent and our own—growing—smaller subsets of our defence industry where we are leading in some key elements of autonomy or where British nationals have created some of the biggest companies in the world when it comes to autonomous surface vessels, like Saildrone, owned and created by a British national. That is where I would state that the UK needs to concentrate into the future.

Thank you.

There has been a lot of talk about capabilities in the High North, and we have ventured into discussions about how our drones could be adjusted to operate in the High North. We have touched lightly on the P-8 and E-7, and that is the area that I would like to explore now. Noting that there are major challenges with operating any kind of propeller aircraft in those cold temperatures, I look at the SDR and some of what was pushed out, and there is clear signalling that actually P-8s are quite expensive and that we might have to upgrade our Protectors to fill this gap. Referring to what Brigadier Robbie said earlier, we do need to prioritise and get ahead of some of these things, so I would like to explore the numbers of P-8s, E-7s and ISTAR platforms because they are really pertinent questions and are not adequately covered in section 7.4 of the SDR.

You mention replacements for the P-8s, and in terms of numbers the UK has its purchase of 16 MQ-9B SkyGuardians from General Atomics in the United States. We want to make sure that our military have the capability to have versatile systems that can be deployed in multiple regions as and when needed, and one of the interesting things about the SkyGuardian is not only its 6,000 nautical mile range, but the fact that when General Atomics were producing this latest generation of the drone technology—it is a Predator or Reaper-style drone, which we call Protector, as you rightly say—they were designing it with Arctic use in mind. In fact, they have an entire promotional campaign about how these are the chosen systems for deployment in the Arctic. Although the High North and Arctic were mentioned only incredibly sparingly in the report, there was an awful lot of mentions of drones and autonomy, and here I would say that the UK is well placed with that investment in Protector. It can operate in those Arctic conditions, and for that reason it is being purchased by some of our closest allies in the region. We know that Norway is looking to invest in the same systems. If we go back to my discussion about the NATO drone wall that stretches from Poland up to the north of Norway, we see that Poland is also investing in those systems, and I see that, with our own SkyGuardians, we can add a contribution to that up towards the north—the top of the North Sea, and the Norwegian Sea—to aid our Norwegian allies in our surveillance and protection of that area. We have the assets available for that. In terms of the P-8s, I will hand over to our esteemed brigadier general.

Before you do, I will accept the sales pitch, noting that there is a different system for the SeaGuardian. Let us assume that this platform should fill the gap in some kind of persistent surveillance. Professor Caroline spoke earlier about the need to be consistently looking in the gap, however, so I would like to explore our need for space systems, because there is also a gap in section 7.5 of the SDR about the systems we should be using to support those structures. There will be a gap, because anything above 55° north will be a challenge to any of those systems. Perhaps you could expand on those significant vulnerabilities, Professor Caroline.

When we think of the Arctic, we tend to think of it as a flat place, but from seabed to sky, it is one of the most important places in the world for surveillance and for being able to survey the domain. If you look at Svalbard, that is where the Americans have most of their ground stations, in order to allow the satellites to operate. The dependence on American systems is an issue, given that there might be a fracture with the Trump Administration. It comes back to the question of where we want to invest, but certainly if we are looking at being a serious player in the High North, we need 24-hour surveillance, and we need systems—otherwise, we cannot operate; we are blind in the Arctic. I would also mention the scale of the Arctic. Even if you are talking about the Russians remilitarising three forward bases, and they have eight others, these spaces are enormous. The northern sea route alone is 3,500 km, and most of it is not passable for most of the year. We need satellites, and we need a space programme, but it comes back to cost.

Exactly. There are vulnerabilities with GPS, certainly in the High North. We know that we will have to fill those gaps, which brings cost-based decisions. Trying to fill them with a system that has vulnerabilities means we have a question about the balance of investment and also structural issues, because if they are to be committed persistently, they need to come out of the overseas projection capability. With that in mind, Brigadier Robbie, where do we spend our money?

Without going into the specifics of the capabilities, I would suggest that you have to look at your mixture and how you operate them. I remember going to see the Norwegians with the Chief of the Defence Staff a few years ago, and the Norwegians told us that they were not going to buy any UAVs that were going to function anywhere near the Russians or the Russian border, because the Russians will simply shoot them down—they do not have human beings in them, therefore there is not an issue—but they do produce capabilities. To go back to the point that we cannot have a human being looking at everything over the vast distances we are talking about, space helps to some extent, but as you quite rightly pointed out, it is not entirely reliable because systems like GPS can be jammed, will be jammed and are being jammed. We therefore need to continue to develop capabilities such as the quantum compass, which takes the need for GPS away for our systems. There are various investments in companies that are working on these sorts of technologies we need to think about, which help to overcome that and give us a bit more autonomy for those systems. It is a careful mixture. You do not want all UAVs, because it makes it easier for the Russians to just keep knocking them down and denying it; you do need some sort of manned system up there. In the same way, you do not need autonomous ships going back and forth—you still need a man or a woman on the bridge in order to demonstrate that this is a sovereign capability. Then that takes you into all sorts of other UNCLOS scenarios, piracy and all sorts of things that we can discuss elsewhere. It is about a mix. It is about a combination of capabilities, rather than putting all the eggs in one basket.

Just to close the loop, I will come back to you, Dr Rogers. I want to draw people’s attention to the need to make decisions early in this regard, because space is very expensive and you need to put those platforms up. Similarly, with the larger platforms—we have spoken about P-8, and I would like to come on to E-7—we need to get ahead of some of those decisions, so maybe some of these drone systems are gap-filling. We should also consider how we invest in quantum technologies to cover some of the vulnerabilities—with GPS, it isn’t just about jamming; it is about some of its inherent failures. We need to learn to build on-board reliance—reliable navigation systems—more broadly.

Absolutely. When it comes to discussions around quantum technologies, of course the investment needs to be there, but we are still figuring out, theoretically and practically, exactly how quantum systems will work, in terms of both encryption and de-encryption. Quantum computation capabilities largely still evade us, despite those quite amazing advancements by Microsoft that were reported recently. I would say that the real-time, right-now advances in defence technology that are pertinent to us are developments in full autonomy. Recently, the United States successfully launched its Global Hawks across a polar route without having to have that GPS connection, because they are deployed on a fully autonomous setting. They have a preset surveillance route that allows them to patrol the region and then come back. When they are able to report back—when a connection is re-established—they send the data back as quickly as possible. Those sorts of things are available now and can be deployed. They will be useful elements for us to fill those gaps, as you say, before we make decisions about things like E-7. We should also keep in mind Brigadier General Boyd’s comments about the fact that we need crude assets in the air too so that Russia doesn’t think it can shoot down these potentially non-escalatory, cost-free systems, much like it knocked down a US Reaper drone over the Black Sea. So, yes, they are gap-fillers.

On the numbers and persistence of P-8 and E-7—I note that aircraft do not require GPS to fly around—our numbers are very small, and they are certainly not persistent. Three E-7s do not give you a persistent look.

It is not my area of capabilities. I would not want to speculate on that and give you the wrong information, so I defer to my colleagues.

I think you are right on the principle. We need persistent surveillance capabilities, whether it is space or a mixture of UAVs and manned systems. Your principle is absolutely right: it has to be persistent. That means that we have to make capability choices that allow us to have a 24/7 capability. Frankly, it doesn’t take much for analysis by Russia or China to work out where the gaps in our surveillance would be if we don’t.

Thank you very much.

I am going to ask about the Joint Expeditionary Force, which the panel has mentioned several times. I would like to be annoying and ask for a very brief top-level summary of the role that the JEF plays in defence and security in the High North and the Baltics, and what direction that might go in. I am going to push you to be as quick as possible, because I have a number of supplementary questions.

I have alluded to some of the basics. What the JEF is doing at the moment, through the Standing Joint Force Headquarters group, is providing an operation called Nordic Warden with all JEF nations. They call it JEF-plus; other nations can link into it. It is fundamentally breaking down the critical undersea infrastructure in order to monitor and respond to any activity above, next to and even beyond it—heading to it—identify particularly Russian and Chinese activity. That is an operation that is happening now. Well done to John Healey for initiating that over the Christmas period as quickly as he did. That helps NATO, frankly, because it means that NATO’s other assets can concentrate on the deep-water battles and other concerns, such as Russian submarine activity and so on. It is a welcome benefit, but the knock-on effect is that the JEF already developing co-operation mechanisms, tools and techniques that it will be able to push out into the High North, particularly where CUI protection is needed. It also provides that command and control structure, because it triggers nations based on political will. The strength of the JEF is that it is not a treaty-based organisation. It was effectively formed not to oblige nations to come, but for nations to send capabilities when they could and when they felt they should. That has been significantly successful, because these are like-minded nations: not only do we share regional geography with them, but we have very similar thinking on how we should be tackling defence in future, and we have a similar perspective on the threats that we face. The JEF is a good springboard up to the High North, and it is also quite highly respected in NATO. You will see it all the time at the beginning of exercises, before it tasks across. It is also a huge bargaining chip and is helpful for us in terms of working alongside European missions, such as those policing-type missions that the Europeans may end up doing there in future through common defence and security policy as part of EU activity.

That is immensely helpful. I have a follow-up question. JEF is made up of 10 countries; you mentioned that there is an operational footing already, which Secretary of State John Healey led on with Nordic Warden. You have identified that it is not treaty-based; it is about like-minded countries sending capabilities. In this hearing, we have discussed how, to operate successfully in the High North, we need to increase our capabilities, particularly as regards autonomy, drones, and uncrewed surface vessels. The country that has got the best of these is Ukraine. It had massive success in 2023 in the Black Sea with uncrewed surface vessels, and it had massive success over this weekend with drones deep inside Russia. Some people, including the Ukrainians, suggest that it would be wise for JEF to welcome Ukraine as a member of that organisation. I would like your view on that, particularly as it relates to capability sharing.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Ukraine, absolutely, and we are doing that on a day-to-day basis. For example, one of the critical lessons from Ukraine—I sat in on a session quite recently with them—was that we must get away from dual-use capabilities and move straight into military capabilities, because that is what is fundamentally useful against Russians. If you are a European, you will find that very difficult, because all of your financial mechanisms are established for dual-use capabilities rather than for single-use military-only capabilities. That is something to bear in mind. Some of the lessons are good and work well, but it is a different environment. What works well in the Black Sea in relatively sunny conditions does not necessarily work well at minus 40 and beyond in the Arctic. We have to be a little bit careful and selective about what we do pick. I think we could have a mechanism whereby the JEF can, with other nations if necessary, project where it wants to project. You could potentially see missions where it went to do stuff around Ukraine—if that was politically where people wanted to go, and not use a NATO solution or whatever. The only place that you could really expand to in the first instance is probably Canada, which is one of the original invitees for the High North; I have written about that recently. But for potential expansion, there are also like-minded nations such as Ireland and Belgium, which were not initially invited. You are then looking beyond; I have already mentioned Japan and South Korea and how they could integrate. That is the way the region is focused: it mainly looks east and north, because of where we are geographically. I can see us supporting Ukraine, but I do not think that bringing it in quite fits with the way in which we initially sold the JEF to the Baltic states and the Nordic states, as well as the Netherlands in the first instance, because there was a tight grouping of regional co-operation and security based around it. But you could expand up to Canada.

You make an interesting point about the different climates and environments in, for example, the Black Sea and the High North. JEF focuses not only on the High North, but on the Baltic states. I do not think that it is minus 40° in the body of water between Finland and Estonia at any time of year. Some of the capabilities in the Black Sea that Ukraine has deployed, as well as those on land, would absolutely work in a JEF area of operations. Professor Kennedy-Pipe, do you think JEF should look at inviting Ukraine to be a member?

The one-line answer is that it would be very useful to learn the lessons from Ukraine, but can I say something before that? We have talked about the technology, but not about the politics. What JEF provides is the political wherewithal among like-minded countries to fight in extremely difficult conditions. Again, I would mention that the Royal Marines or the special forces were nowhere in the review. We have a shortage of mountain leaders, and they will be on the frontline. What we absolutely have done is pull Norway away from its ambivalence about Russia, and Russia has done a lot of that itself. If we look at the Nordics and JEF, that is the politically motivated group that will be the first line of defence. I also think, old-fashionedly, that you need the human element in war. You cannot simply rely on systems, so I would make a plea that JEF is absolutely indispensable. The Ukrainians are agile and redoubtable. I would say yes to learning lessons, but I also think that the UK should be really proud of what it is doing in JEF. If you look across the board, the UK leads and is respected. That is hugely important.

Thank you for highlighting the Royal Marines’ Arctic capability, which was my first bit of training after the initial training. I would say that the Royal Marines were mentioned in the SDR.

Oh, I did not see it. I will look.

But not in the context of the High North.

Oh, you had a picture.

It is in writing.

On that high note, I call Ian Roome.

There is no doubt that it is absolutely indispensable, given its sheer scale, size and ambition. James is quite right that the US neglected its Arctic credentials for many years, but it is indispensable. I am sure you expected me to mention the relationship with Greenland, and you will have seen the shenanigans, if I can put it like that. But the Americans do not need to do any more, as James has alluded to: that 1951 treaty gives them exactly what they want on Greenland anyway. What I think is more interesting is that Mr Putin has said that it is none of his business what the Americans do with Greenland. There is an extremely interesting game being played between the Americans and the Russians in terms of the sphere of influence in the Arctic, and I do not think that we look at it enough. I think that they both understand some of the limits of where they are pushing to against Svalbard and against Greenland, but we cannot do without the Americans. There is another thing that I think the defence review needed to say more on. I will probably be told that it is in there, but the diplomacy of defence struck me as being quite absent from that document. Diplomacy is what will have to smooth out some of the excesses of the Trump Administration. It might be unpopular to say it, but eventually we will have to deal with Russia in the Arctic, because it is the indispensable Arctic player.

It was crucial from 1996 onward. It had as its hallmark the idea of “High North, low tension”, but it never discussed hard military matters. I see it as an avenue that we should definitely keep going. The Danes have already taken up the chair. It is a place where, however unsavoury Mr Putin might be, discussions with the Russian coastguard over some of the indigenous peoples take place. Diplomacy will probably be quiet and sanctions-led, but there are avenues where we cannot move without the Russians, such as search and rescue.

I am glad that you mentioned search and rescue, because one of the critical capabilities that we will need to develop across all the emerging routes will be SOLAS—saving lives at sea—and our ability to pick up crews, albeit that they will be reduced in future if there is semi-autonomous shipping. That is a very important point that will certainly be a focus of attention for Mark Carney and his team in Canada when they look at their own capabilities and prepositioning of stocks, as well as building more infrastructure in the High North, which I am led to believe will be critical to their own defence plans as they increase spending. On the question about shaping NATO, if the United States turns around in Brussels and says to NATO that it will not provide security for the European, Japanese and South Korean commercial fleets, which are going back and forth—generating big geoeconomic benefits for Europe and Japan, but not so much for the US, which already has Asia-Pacific ports—then that is what it is going to say. That is my point: we have to look for alternative mechanisms whereby we can demonstrate to the US that the UK and Europe in the round can provide this sort of security for our benefit economically without having to rely on the US. But the US is indispensable—that is a great word that has been used—because of its strategic enablement capabilities. It will take decades for the Europeans to replace that—or for us, if we were to do that. We need the US; we need it engaged in NATO permanently. Strategic enabler capabilities such as space and intelligence, and frankly up to and including nuclear, are critical to this region. What the US says will go in NATO, but I think we have alternatives: as I say, we have JEF, and CSDP maybe. Building on the frameworks and relationships with our European allies for that sort of thing in future seems logical. It will not just be the Trump Administration who call for burden sharing. If America goes sensible again tomorrow—sorry for using that phrase, but you get where I am coming from; I have had dinner twice with Trump, so please entertain me on this—and if we are looking in future at a totally different Administration, we are still going to get the same requests for fair burden sharing, if the Americans are engaged elsewhere. They know that they have to be prepared to be, because of the threat that China poses. I think that sums up everything on the US side from me.

I am happy to keep it succinct. Yes, of course the United States is absolutely indispensable, but the United States believes that it is making sensible and pragmatic decisions at the moment about where it is going to focus its military investment and its military forces. Yes, it sees Greenland as absolutely integral to defence of the US homeland, but where does the US draw lines in its military response to Chinese or Russian incursions in the European Arctic? Does it project right out to Iceland, or does it keep within its bounds and its legal agreements with Greenland, with the ability to project from its own base there? That is perhaps where we see that major gap in the European Arctic and our ability to defend ourselves, a gap that we have to fill in that burden-sharing role in NATO. The discussions here and in the United States—I briefed the Department of State a couple of weeks ago and I am heading to Congress in two weeks—are focused on the US, Alaska and the Pacific end of the northern sea route and the Arctic, with Alaskan subsea cables and interconnectors. It is about being able to survey and patrol that region to see what is coming in and out, in terms of Russian and Chinese military and commercial transit. So let’s not rely entirely on the United States: yes, it is incredibly important, but we have our own gaps in Europe, especially as the US is pivoting towards its Pacific focus. That was two minutes—my apologies.

Thank you very much. This has been a very thought-provoking session that will help to inform policy, as well as informing Members’ contributions in the Chamber on the Arctic and the High North. I thank Professor Kennedy-Pipe, Dr Rogers and Brigadier General Boyd for their excellent contributions to today’s Defence Committee evidence session on defence in the Arctic and the High North.