Overview
- At Bardufoss, Canada’s Mark Carney joined Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Norway’s Jonas Gahr Støre to declare allies ready to defend the High North.
- Cold Response 2026 involves roughly 25,000 troops from 14 countries training for extreme winter operations in northern Norway.
- Norway reported consecutive F-35 scrambles to intercept Russian aircraft in international airspace, and Moscow announced missile tests in the Barents Sea.
- Ottawa is funding two heavy icebreakers—one under construction in North Vancouver for delivery in 2032 and another partly assembled in Finland for 2030—each costing more than C$3 billion.
- Canada says the ships will be unarmed, year-round platforms for surveillance, intelligence gathering, search-and-rescue and science, while Germany and Norway moved to deepen space cooperation to bolster regional monitoring.