Norwegian Defense Chief Eirik Kristoffersen emerged as one of the biggest winners in state budget allocations on Monday, securing a hefty 21 percent increase over last year. He met the news with characteristic calm and concern, though, stressing instead the needs to “fix the current structure” within defense, cut costs while developing more efficient programs and, not least, keep supporting Ukraine.
The big budget boost is aimed at meeting long-term goals and ensuring that Norway will not only satsify but surpass NATO’s goal of spending 2 percent of gross national product (GNP) on defense. Confirmation came during a meeting between Kristoffersen and foreign correspondents in Oslo Monday morning, when the Norwegian government proposed funding its sprawling defense establishment with NOK 110.1 billion in 2025. That’s up from NOK 90.9 billion this year, and the new funding amounts to 2.16 percent of Norway’s GNP.
“The government is prioritizing security for the country in more uncertain times,” said Defense Minister Bjørn Arild Gram of the Center Party. “We’re strengthening defense nationwide and our ability to retain national control. With this budget, Norway is taking on greater responsibility for its own and its (NATO) allies’ security, in line with a new long-term plan for the defense sector.”
Now Kristoffersen will need to put the new funding to work, guided by the 12-year-plan to modernize the military. Critics have cautioned against simply boosting budgets and handing over too much money to the defense department without making sure investments are under control. The defense research institute FFI claimed last spring that the military, for example, has chronically under-estimated the costs of operations and maintenance when ordering everything from frigates to F35 fighter jets. The state’s own national auditor has highlighted delays and other problems with capital investment in the military, too.
Kristoffersen, however, called the defense expansion “a huge effort” subject to cost control that involves close cooperation with industry, in order to develop and maintain enough military hardware and replace stocks sent to Ukraine. His top priorities also involve ongoing support for Ukraine, improving Norway’s own defense capability and playing a role in the so-called “green shift” to tackle climate change. Kristoffersen had just returned from a trip to Svalbard in the Arctic, where the ice keeps melting at an alarming rate and the permafrost is under siege. That has a direct effect on military operations as well. He was traveling on to Iceland later on Monday.
One of Kristoffersen’s biggest concerns, however, is on the personnel side of Norway’ defense forces, where the Army alone has said it needs to triple staffing over the next 12 years. Defense Minister Gram has also said that around 13,600 young Norwegians will be called in annually, part of what’s viewed as the largest expansion of the Army since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Norway is also poised to take part in special military exercises in the Pacific next year, and has been asked to send personnel to NATO’s new Nordic operations for joint exercises and ongoing defense presence in Finland and elsewhere along the Russian border.
That raises questions of whether Norwegian defense personnel may already be spread too thin. Kristoffer responded that recruitment is “very good. We don’t have a problem with that, like many other countries do,” he said. The Norwegian military has become a popular place to launch careers. Norway currently calls in as many as 10,000 young Norwegians every year and Kristoffersen said there’s always more candidates than military jobs that need to be filled. Only one out of six win a spot and they tend to stick around for at least a while “because they like it,” Kristoffersen said. “They like to work together, there’s a sense of purpose.”
The problem is how to retain the recruits and their talents for the long term, Kristoffersen said. There’s now a lack of officers in the age range 35-45, he said, because so many have moved on to other jobs in the private sector. The Army, Navy and Air Force have invested a lot in them, through formal education and training programs, but then recruiters for higher-paying jobs in business and industry lure many away, especially to security firms and high-tech enterprises.
“They’re very popular in the private sector,” Kristoffersen said. “We end up with the same people everyone else is competing to get.” He said he and his colleagues “have done a lot of research on this,” and what can be done to keep military-educated recruits in the military.
He said the military is now “very worried” about whether it’s recruiting the right people back at the conscription stage, and that “more balance” is needed in the recruitment process to find those “who share our values,” and, hopefully, are more eager to serve their country than fill their bank accounts. “And when they leave, we need to be more flexible to get them back,” Kristoffersen said. That, however, can be too expensive if private business offers much higher salaries and benefits.
That’s why the current costs of some areas of defense may need to be cut in order to have more funds available for other needs. Some of that also may be achieved through what Kristoffersen calls the “integration” of Norwegian forces with their new NATO allies in Sweden and Denmark. He thinks Norwegian defense personnel need “to stop thinking just North-South (referring to Norway’s length) and more East West” given the new integrated exercises and operations that can be done with Swedish and Finnish forces. “Being an ally now is much more than being a friend,” Kristoffersen said. “We’re not just cooperating anymore. We’re integrating.”
He’s now in his fourth year as defense chief, and has been through the pandemic, the sudden and dramatic retreat from Afghanistan and the invasion of Ukraine. Then came the addition of Finland and Sweden as NATO allies, which can allow for so much more than cooperation but real integration aimed at “total defense” of the Nordic area. “Not a Nordic bloc,” Kristoffersen stressed, “but a real total defense on land, at sea and in the air.”
That can quickly expose areas of duplication that can be streamlined or eliminated to cut costs, along with areas where some have higher expertise. The most important thing, Kristoffersen said, is “to make sure our fleets of jets or ships can work together. They have difference qualities. We need to get the most out of them.”
Norway’s defense chief strongly believes, meanwhile, that “technology is driving the future of the armed forces.” It’s developing so rapidly, though, that orders of various military hardware can be outdated by the time they arrive for use. “The war in Ukraine has also shown us how fast things are changing in wartime,” Kristoffersen said. A major question he wrestles with is “how we can prepare for change, instead of just having to react when something happens.”
Kristoffersen said he agrees with NATO’s newly departed leader Jens Stoltenberg that “we should have done more for Ukraine from 2014 (when Russia declared annexation of Crimea), preferably earlier.” That could have been a deterrent to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Putin ordered eight years later: “The whole idea behind NATO is ‘credible deterrents,’ to prevent war,” Kristoffersen said.
Now, two years after Putin’s invasion, the demands on industry to produce military hardware are huge. Most all nations, not least Norway, are rebuilding their defense and while needs are high (especially, Kristoffersen agreed, for air defense systems in Norway) he worries industrial capacity is too low. “So prices are going up,” he said, by as much as two- or three times what they were before the invasion. “So we’re investing more and getting less,” he said, another reason that NATO allies need to cooperate more and find more efficient ways to work efficiently.
He pointed to the rapid mobilization of US forces from the time it was attacked at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. It only took two-and-half years until US and western allies could in turn invade Normandy in June 1944, push back the occupying German forces and win the war in Europe less than a year after that.
Today constantly developing drone technology “shows how fast things can (still) change,” Kristoffersen said. “We need to be more flexible in our investment, to have production lines ready.” Mobilization, he thinks, “is a big discussion we need to have.”
Kristoffersen doubts, meanwhile, that Putin wants to invade more neighbours that would start a war with NATO. “The costs for Russia in this war (Putin’s war on Ukraine) have been huge,” he claimed, both in terms of money and Russian lives. “The numbers (of Russian casualties) are so high, it’s basically shocking.” Kristoffersen also thinks Putin knows that he would not win a war against NATO, claiming “NATO is much stronger than Russia.” While Russia’s naval and air forces in the far north remain “mostly the same,” Russian brigades formerly posted near or along its northern borders have been sent to Ukraine, where the losses are large.
Norway and Finland are nonetheless reinforcing their borders to Russia and Norway is investing much more in defense in the north, possibly with a new Finnmark Brigade based on or near the Varanger Peninsula. “We’re investing more in defense in the north, that’s very important in the sensitive areas,” Kristoffersen said. “We need to be there.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund