The company will have around 35 paid trials this year with navies testing its tech, Heiden told Defense News at the Euronaval maritime-defense exhibition outside Paris on Nov. 4. Those tests include several for the German Navy through various local defense-prime partners, as well as for Sweden, the United Kingdom, Belgium and France.

Optics11 beams light through optic fiber to detect acoustic vibrations underwater, either for static monitoring or towed array sensors, and Heiden said the technology is more sensitive and has higher resolution than passive sonar using piezoelectric detection. The firm is developing a towed array for the Royal Netherlands Navy for the future Orka-class submarines ordered from France’s Naval Group.

“Every navy knows that this is the technology of the future,” Heiden said.

The Optics11 portfolio includes OptiBarrier, a stationary seabed monitoring system, and OptiArray, a towed array that can be deployed from submarines and unmanned vessels.

The CEO said Optics11 will probably raise funds next year, and do so at a unicorn valuation, referring to a startup valuation that exceeds US$1 billion. The startup raised around €100 million in funding in the past 15 months, through equity financing as well as €25 million in venture debt financing from the European Investment Bank, according to Heiden.

Optics11 is not yet profitable, and Heiden expects the company to become cash-flow positive in 2028.

The CEO said nearly everything around underwater data collection is “extremely secret” and a lot of information around navies using Optics11 technology is classified. He said the company’s products are currently deployed in war zones, “and yeah, I can’t say anything about that either.”

Optics11 has a technology lead in optical-fiber sensing after years of deep-tech research that would make it hard for a competitor to enter the market with anything similar, at least in markets including Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, according to the CEO. He said he’s not sure where China or the United States stand in terms of developing similar technology.

The optical fiber technology used by Optics11 was initially used in medical applications, and is so sensitive it can detect cells dividing, according to Heiden. For underwater use, the company’s fiber-optic sensing can detect an oil tanker at 100 kilometers, the CEO said.

Most of the company’s “really crucial developments” of the past seven to eight years rely on trade secrets rather than patents to protect intellectual property, due to the sensitivity of the technology, Heiden said. The Dutch government provides specialists to help the firm protect its data, and vets company employees working on classified technology.

“You can’t publish this, you can’t patent it, so it all has to be kept secret, and we’re getting great help from the Dutch government to keep it truly secret,” Heiden said.

Heiden said he holds monthly discussions within the company to make sure employees disclose if, for example, they are being threatened or their families are being put under pressure.

The Optics11 strategy is to build and sell its products locally, both to reduce supply chain risk for customers and because governments want to see their defense investments flow back into their own economies. “We’ll identify who the local prime is, and then we’ll work with them to fully integrate our technology,” Heiden said.

Should Optics11 raise money next year, the funds would partly be used to finance its expansion in the Middle East and South East Asia, where the firm is opening offices and hiring staff with “the goal to operate in a highly localized manner.”

Optics11 already works with partners including Saab, Rheinmetall, Fincantieri, Thales and Exail, Heiden said. The firm is a technology supplier for Ocean Infinity, which was picked by the U.K. to manage the anti-submarine surveillance program as part of Britain’s Atlantic Bastion initiative.

The higher sensitivity of optical fiber compared to traditional sonar translates into a “much larger” amount of sensing data per cubic nautical mile, which Optics11 processes using its own edge-computing software, the CEO said.

“Initially I thought we could work with a partner, but our data density is so high that we couldn’t derive any value from third-party sonar processing software,” Heiden said. “That’s why we started building that kind of software ourselves, and it’s now an integral part of our offering. So we’ve really built a serious R&D operation here.”

Artificial intelligence has helped cut down the effort required to develop software, with Optics11 now employing ten developers, according to Heiden, who said that as recently as 2024 and 2025 he had still been planning for around 60 to 80 people in software development.

“That means you can invest that money in acoustic specialists who have a much better understanding of how sound travels through the ocean, which will allow you to optimize your algorithms much faster and make them more precise for sandy seabeds, rocky seabeds, that sort of thing,” the CEO said.

Optics11 has been working with the Royal Netherlands Navy for at least eight years, with the Dutch military providing millions of euros in subsidies, steering the direction of development, as well as testing the company’s technology on submarines, according to Heiden.

Attracting funding was still complicated for Optics11 in early 2024 due to financial firms excluding defense firms from investment portfolios, something which “completely changed” in November that same year after a vessel dragged its anchor in the Baltic Sea, severing several cables, Heiden said.

“All of a sudden all kinds of investment firms were willing to work with us,” Heiden said. “That was really driven by our ability to listen underwater, companies were prepared to seriously invest in that. So seriously, in fact, that over the last fifteen months we’ve raised about 100 million, which is quite a substantial amount.”

The combined tonnage of combat ships built by China in the two years through to December 2025 amounted to 636,208 tons, compared to 270,509 tons for the United States, according to data compiled by Flottes de Combat and French maritime industry association Gican.

China accounted for more than a third of the global naval tonnage constructed in 2024-25, based on the Euronaval report. U.S. lawmakers and congressional researchers have warned that China’s greater shipbuilding capacity, combined with delays and bottlenecks in U.S. naval shipbuilding, could hurt America’s ability to keep up with Beijing’s expanding fleet.

“We are seeing a fairly substantial expansion of naval forces, and consequently of shipbuilding,” said Philippe Missoffe, the general director of Gican, in a press briefing here on Tuesday. “We’re seeing an increase in power capabilities, particularly nuclear-powered attack submarines for example.”

Global naval construction overall was booming in the period, with 1.47 million tons of combat vessels built in 2024-25, compared with 959,671 tons in the prior two years. The value of global naval construction amounted to $123.9 billion, climbing from $81.8 billion in 2022-23.

The value of Chinese combat-vessel construction was US$43.5 billion in the latest two-year period, compared with $26.8 billion for the U.S., the report said.

China has reversed roles from 2022-2023, when production of the country’s naval yards amounted to 202,520 tons, compared with 245,703 tons for the U.S., according to the previous edition of the shipbuilding report published in 2024.

The U.S. fleet of combat vessels of more than 200 tons amounted to 3.11 million tons as of Jan. 1, 2026, compared to 1.44 million tons for China’s fleet, the report showed, That compares with 3.22 million tons for the U.S. and 1.3 million tons for China two years earlier.

Russia was in third place in terms of naval construction in 2024-25, with 149,056 tons built, followed by India with 76,430 tons and Italy with 53,700 tons. Turkey, France, Japan, South Korean and Romania rounded out the top 10 of naval builders.

The four-day Euronaval show, the world’s biggest maritime-defense exhibition, is set to kick of in Paris on Nov. 3. The number of exhibitors will be more than 40% higher than in 2024, according to the organizers.

The redeployment of U.S. troops from Europe will be an ongoing process for several years, even if there’s no exact timeline, Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said in a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday, following a meeting of NATO military chiefs.

“What we’re basically saying is, as the European pillar of the alliance gets stronger, this allows the U.S. to reduce its presence in Europe and limit itself to providing only those critical capabilities that allies cannot yet provide,” Grynkewich said. “So we should expect there to be a redeployment of U.S. forces over time as allies build their capacity.”

The remark comes as Polish government leaders expressed concern about the Pentagon abruptly canceling a planned rotation of an armored brigade combat team of more than 4,000 soldiers to the country on NATO’s eastern flank.

The military chiefs discussed the U.S. decision to redeploy the armored brigade combat team, which Grynkewich said doesn’t impact what he called “executability” of NATO’s regional plans. He said the U.S. is withdrawing a total of 5,000 troops from Europe, with the armored brigade combat team accounting for a large part, as well as the cancellation of a long-range fires battalion deployment.

Grynkewich said planning is ongoing to redeploy “additional minor elements” accounting for another several hundred troops.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed animosity towards European NATO members, prompting concern in European capitals about whether American commitments to the alliance still hold. The Pentagon said earlier this month it will withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, whose Chancellor Friedrich Merz has criticized Washington’s handling of the war with Iran.

The withdrawal of additional troops is a decision for U.S. political leadership, according to Grynkewich. He said the timeline will “vary broadly” across different capabilities as NATO members meet spending commitments agreed in 2025 in The Hague and as they meet their capability targets.

NATO’s top military commander said a lot has happened since 2022, as the Baltic countries, Poland and “many others have really built up their ground combat power. So there’s substantially more capability in the ground domain than there was previously.”

Grynkewich name-checked the Canada-led Multinational Brigade in Latvia, which he said is fully operational and “highly effective,” and noted Germany continues to build up a brigade in Lithuania.

“As allies build up their capability, the United States is able to pull capability back and use it for other global priorities,” Grynkewich said.

The general said he’ll continue work in his joint role as the commander of U.S. European Command and NATO’s top military commander, “to ensure we’ve got the right coverage in the right places to maintain deterrence.”

The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown war is now shaped by “speed, mass, software, drones, electronic warfare, space and data, areas where we have a lot to do,” said Adm. Pierre Vandier, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, at the press conference.

While NATO needs more missiles, artillery shells, air defense, high-end capabilities and stockpiles, those will not be sufficient on their own, according to Vandier. He said legacy platforms are not obsolete, but “the decisive question is the force mix” of combining ships, aircraft and tanks with robots, drones, sensors, software and new effectors.

 ”More of the same is necessary, but more of the same will not be enough by far,” Vandier said. “If we want mass and speed, we need to know how we can build fast, produce at scale, adapt quickly, and still deliver real operational effect. And we need to identify which part of our industrial base can actually deliver it.”

Analysts studying military matters and geopolitics disagree.

While countries including the U.K. and France have said they’re ready to “contribute to appropriate efforts” to ensure safe passage through the Strait, those plans remain in the preparatory stage for now. Western navies operating in the narrow waterway would be well within range of Iranian missiles, cheap drones and even artillery, defense analysts say.

“No, it isn’t easy,” François Heisbourg, a special adviser at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, said in a response to Trump’s statements posted on Bluesky. “If it were, you presumably wouldn’t be asking us to help you clean up the mess you made.”

The Strait of Hormuz is a relatively constrained maritime waterway, around 50 kilometers wide at the narrowest stretch, though the water is deep enough for fully laden very large crude carriers, or VLCCs — the industry term of art for the biggest oil tankers — to navigate most of the strait. Iran controls the northern coast of the Persian Gulf and along much of the Gulf of Oman, with the Strait of Hormuz the choke point between the two.

“The Strait of Hormuz reminds us that geography matters,” said Frank Hoffman, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, in an online commentary. “Iran holds a significant advantage there with the ability to range the narrow international shipping channel with small boats with rockets and guns, and an array of anti-ship cruise missiles.”

Iran had more than 1,000 fast attack craft specifically designed for swarming larger naval vessels, an estimated stockpile of more than 2,000 naval mines, shore-based anti-ship ballistic missiles with ranges of more than 700 kilometers and drone swarms capable of saturating point-defense systems, Roxana Niknami, a professor in European studies at the University of Tehran, wrote in a March 5 analysis for the European Institute for Studies on the Middle East and North Africa.

“Any naval presence will be at considerable risk from Iran’s still-extant ability to launch drones and missiles from any point along the coastline,” said Emma Salisbury, a non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Without allied contributions, controlling the Strait will likely be extremely difficult, and those contributions are certainly not forthcoming at the moment.”

The Strait is a vital passage for world trade, according to UN Trade and Development data, with 38% of the world’s traded crude oil, 29% of liquefied petroleum gas and 13% of traded chemicals passing through the waterway in the week before the U.S. and Israel started striking Iran on Feb. 28.

India, Taiwan and South Korea are highly dependent on Hormuz.

Iran has been targeting commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf with missiles and drones, resulting in 17 confirmed incidents between March 1 and March 16, with ships damaged and at least 11 seafarers dead or unaccounted for, according to the International Maritime Organization.

Trump said the Strait of Hormuz will have to be “guarded and policed, as necessary,” by other nations that use it, in a post on his Truth Social account on March 20. The president said the U.S. would help with the effort if asked, though that shouldn’t be necessary once the threat of Iran was removed, saying it would be “an easy military operation for them.”

In another post, he called NATO without the United States a “paper tiger,” unwilling to join the fight against Iran. “Now that the fight is militarily won, with very little danger to them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver. So easy for them to do, with so little risk. Cowards, and we will remember.”

Taking questions from reporters on Friday, the U.S. president called reopening the Strait “very simple” and “relatively safe,” but demanding in terms of the volume of ships.

The narrow nature of the Strait would put naval vessels operating there in about the same range as the drone-swarm kill zone in Ukraine, said retired U.K. Air Marshal Martin Sampson, executive director for the Middle East at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in a webinar on Wednesday.

“Smaller, lower-caliber, one-way drones have not had the opportunity to come into play in this conflict so far,” Sampson said. “But Strait of Hormuz operations may well bring different capabilities to bear. So the nature of the operating environment fundamentally changes.”

Meanwhile, China is watching and learning, and U.S. capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz will be of direct operational relevance to the Indo-Pacific theater, according to Sampson.

“Whatever the U.S. deploys there is likely to compromise some of its advantage that it feels that it’s developing and able to deploy in the Indo-Pacific, a priority region,” Sampson said.

Iran’s capabilities today mean the operational challenge of reopening the Strait of Hormuz today is “categorically more demanding” than in 1988, according to Niknami. Meanwhile, the U.S. without allied support doesn’t have the assets for strike, escort and mine-sweeping at the same time, said Salisbury at the FPRI.

The American operation Earnest Will to protect Kuwaiti-owned tankers from Iranian attacks in 1987 and 1988 was “a different world,” said Nick Childs, IISS senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security, in a webinar with Sampson. He said the U.S. at the time had a fleet of nearly 600 ships, compared to fewer than 300 today, and the Navy already overstretched.

The Strait of Hormuz is a more challenging environment than the Red Sea, with lower warning times, according to Childs. Additionally, even residual Iranian capabilities may be more potent that those of the Houthis in the Red Sea, while facing warships with limited capabilities and with questions around strategic stockpiles of munitions, he said.

The mine threat was underestimated in Operation Earnest Will, and mine countermeasures remain a weakness today, Childs said. While the U.S. has Littoral Combat Ships that can be equipped for mine clearing, those were never meant to be in high-intensity operations, and like any other mine clearing assets, would need protection if combat operations were still underway, according to the researcher.

Allies in the Gulf region have modern ships that could contribute to escort or mine-countermeasure missions, but with “a limited ability, actually, to look after themselves in that such a situation, let alone protect others,” Childs said.

Childs said some estimates suggest Iran has 5,000 to 6,000 mines of different types, and if its mine-laying assets are destroyed, Iran could in a worst case just “roll down mines off the back of a dhow.” He said that just the threat of mines could make shippers reluctant to send their vessels through the Strait.

“Mines have two warheads,” Childs said. “One is a high-explosive warhead, and the other one is a psychological one. Just the threat and thought of the possibility that there might be a mining threat may be enough to maintain that stranglehold.”

British Prime Minister Kier Starmer said on Monday the United Kingdom “will not be drawn into the wider war,” while German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said “this is not our war.” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said member states have no appetite to expand their maritime-security operation in the Red Sea to the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf.

Iran declared the strait closed to traffic on March 2, following the start of strikes against the country by the U.S. and Israel two days earlier. While saying the U.S. doesn’t need anyone’s help, Trump has simultaneously called on allies to aid in securing navigation in the waterway, reportedly going as far as to threaten consequences for the NATO alliance if European countries reject those demands.

“The feeling is, this is not Europe’s war,” Kallas told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. “Of course we are allies with America, but we don’t really understand their moves recently. We haven’t been consulted, and we don’t really understand, what are the objectives of this war.”

The EU’s foreign-policy chief said there is no willingness on the part of member states to change the mandate of the bloc’s Aspides naval mission, tasked with securing navigation in the Red Sea, and “nobody is ready to put their people in harm’s way in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran has attacked more than a dozen commercial vessels with drones, missiles and small boats in the strait since the start of the conflict, while multiple media reported the country has started laying sea mines, citing U.S. intelligence. The Strait of Hormuz is relatively narrow, around 50 kilometers wide at some points, well inside the range of Iranian coastal attacks.

Around 20% of the world’s oil consumption transits via the waterway, and Brent crude oil futures have jumped to more than $100 a barrel following the closure, causing anxiety among economists and policymakers about the impact on the global economy.

Trump in recent days explicitly linked U.S. involvement in NATO and support to Ukraine to the efforts by allies with what he called “a very small endeavor, which is just keeping the Strait open.” The president on Sunday told the Financial Times that “if there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he is working on a mission of European and non-European partners to escort shipping to “gradually” reopen the waterway, but only once the hottest phase of the conflict is over.

Setting up a mission of warships accompanying tankers through the dangerous passage would be a “complex undertaking,” requiring collaboration with “all stakeholders in the maritime transport sector,” including insurers, Macron said at defense Cabinet meeting here today.

“We are not a party to the conflict,” Macron said. “And so France will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context.”

France has sent around half of its fleet of major surface combatants, including the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, to the Middle East to protect navigation, French citizens and allies in the region, though the country has emphasized the deployment is strictly defensive in nature.

Germany’s primary responsibility is towards NATO territory, and any deployment outside the alliance area would require both an international framework and a mandate from the Bundestag, the country’s parliament, Pistorius said in Berlin on Monday. The defense minister said he sees “no reason whatsoever” for such a move, saying “it is not our war, we did not start it.”

Germany is calling for diplomatic solutions and a swift end to the conflict, and more warships will likely not contribute to that, according to Pistorius.

“What does Donald Trump expect from, let’s say, a handful or two handfuls of European frigates in the Strait of Hormuz to accomplish what the powerful U.S. Navy cannot manage there on its own?” Pistorius said. “That’s the question I ask myself.”

The U.K. will defend itself and allies, but will not be drawn into the wider war, Starmer said on Monday. He said the country is in talks with allies, including European partners and Gulf states, on a viable collective plan to restore freedom of navigation as soon as possible, to ensure stability in the market and ease the economic impacts, emphasizing no decisions have been made.

Starmer said ultimately the Strait of Hormuz will need to be reopened, “not a simple task.” U.K. assets in the region that could help with reopening the strait are autonomous mine-hunting systems, according to the prime minister.

Smaller NATO allies have also been keen to keep their distance from the conflict, with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre saying on Sunday that “it is not our war,” with the outlook for how the conflict will develop “pretty unclear.”

“We are not part of this war, we did not initiate it, but we are all affected by it,” Gahr Støre said. “It should be the responsibility of the concerned parties to find ways of ending the hostilities that now have great impact around the world.”

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb responded positively to a suggestion that Europe could make demands on the U.S. regarding Ukraine, in exchange for assistance in the Gulf.

“I think it’s actually a really good idea,” Stubb said at a Chatham House meeting in London on Tuesday, in response to an audience question. “I’ll talk about it with my colleagues.”

New naval designs increasingly incorporate containerized payloads, and the commanders of the United States, Italian, Dutch and British navies cited advantages including mission flexibility, quickly getting firepower on the water, and at-sea replenishment.

Italy’s new Thaon di Revel-class patrol frigates have been designed to carry containerized mission modules, while the Netherlands announced a class of multi-role support ships mounting containers loaded with anything from air-defense missiles to electronic-warfare kit or assault drones. The United States Navy has said its new frigate will be fitted with containerized mission packages.

“All our future ships, they will be specifically designed for this kind of capability,” said Adm. Giuseppe Berutti Bergotto, chief of staff of the Italian Navy, speaking at the Paris Naval Conference. “The primary role of the ship will be the same, but the ship needs to have this capability to be ready to attack different missions.”

The modularity of the patrol frigate “was a great idea” that the Italian Navy is now trying to apply to all its construction, according to Berutti Bergotto. He said the navy has also experimented with fitting different containers with different payloads on the deck of a commercial vessel.

“If you look at modularity, it’s like Lego, building blocks are already there, you just need to put them together,” said Vice Adm. Harold Liebregs, the commander of the Royal Netherlands Navy, on the sidelines of the conference. “But keep it simple. Don’t over-integrate.”

The Netherlands has said its modular support vessels will be able to mount a containerized version of the Barak ER surface-to-air interceptor from Israel Aerospace Industries, as well as the company’s Harop long-range loitering munitions.

Liebregs said introducing modularity is sometimes “easier said than done, because not every Lego block now is good enough,” but modules such as air-defense missile systems are available and ready to be plugged in. He said navies have to accept they will have to learn along the way, “so just start somewhere as soon as possible.”

The Dutch navy needs to be ready for war by 2028, and “one of my main challenges is to bring more firepower to sea,” Liebregs said. The multi-role support vessel concept is one possible solution, and fitting such a ship with a container full of Barak missiles would quickly provide some “very capable air-defense capability,” allowing for mass and dispersed operations.

Such ships would have reduced crews of six to eight sailors, and roles might also include escorting Russian vessels in the North Sea, “saving a lot of very expensive warships,” according to the Dutch commander.

“It’s an affordable way to augment our fleet,” Liebregs said. “These kinds of ships are very adaptable, and it fits very well to short-cycled innovation, the thing we very much need.”

The United Kingdom’s Royal Navy is running its own modular mission-system program, and is now trialing what it calls “mission pods” that were produced in the autumn of last year, said Gen. Gwyn Jenkins, the United Kingdom’s First Sea Lord and chief of naval staff. He said standardization of data and power cable connections is key.

“We’re all on this journey, I think,” Jenkins said. “As long as you’ve got commonality across the system, then we can position those mission pods around our different naval bases with allies, give ourselves the ability to come back in and change pods, go back out to sea in any format, replenish at sea with different pods.”

Modularity will allow naval vessels to adapt to future threats as well as new technology, such as the on-board power required for future direct-energy weapons, Berutti Bergotto said. He said navies also need to be able to make changes during ship construction to take into account emerging threats and remain relevant at sea.

He cited his command of the Horizon-class destroyer Andrea Doria, which was commissioned in 2010 with cathode-ray tube monitors because that was the available technology six years earlier.

“When you commission the ship, this ship lasts for 20 years, pretty much,” the Italian admiral said. “You cannot have, after one year, an old ship.”

The U.S. attempted to include modularity in the Littoral Combat Ship program but failed to predict the complexity of building effective modules, and under-invested in that area, according to U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle.

“We’ve learned from that mistake,” Caudle said. “Going forward with our small surface combatant, we’re going to put more energy into this from the acquisition side, the research and development, and how to containerize payloads that we need” to make that ship type effective.

“When you put that ship to sea with modular force packages, things that can be containerized, from ordnance to unmanned systems to towed arrays — the sky’s the limit on what you can modularize there on that platform,” Caudle said. “Then we can build them quickly, fill them.”

Modularity will allow the U.S. Navy to tailor the “high-low mix” to create force packages that might be more suitable to deal with a threat than a carrier strike group or amphibious strike group, according to Caudle.

Caudle said modularity goes beyond payloads, and can also boost U.S. shipbuilding capacity, with the admiral citing large surface ships such as liquid natural gas tankers that are built in modules. The U.S. has historically built its combat ships as a single unit, with the Virginia-class submarines the first move into modularity, according to the sea service chief.

“You’re going to see us extend that methodology to all of our ships going forward,” Caudle said. “What that does is allow more shipyards to enter the actual shipbuilding game and add capacity to an oversubscribed yard structure by tailoring what they can do to add value to how we build our ships and deliver them quickly.”

The operation, dubbed Nordic Warden, was activated last week, the U.K. said in a statement on Monday. The expeditionary force will uses artificial intelligence and data from sources including the Automatic Identification System used for ship positioning to calculate the risk of every vessel entering “areas of interest,” according to the government.

Finland last month seized a Russia-linked vessel called Eagle S suspected of having dragged its anchor for nearly 100 kilometers in the Baltic Sea, rupturing the Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia. That follows damage to two fiber-optic cables in the Baltic in November, potentially linked to anchor dragging by a Chinese-flagged vessel, a similar incident in 2023, and underwater explosions that damaged the Nord Stream gas pipeline in 2022.

“Russian aggression is not simply confined to Ukraine,” U.K. Secretary of State for Defence John Healey told parliament in response to questions on Monday. “We’re deeply concerned about the damage and sabotage to undersea cables.”

Some military analysts, such as Anders Puck Nielsen at the Royal Danish Defence College, have suggested Russia may step up sabotage efforts and hybrid warfare as it faces growing losses and difficulties on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Vessels identified as being part of Russia’s shadow fleet have been registered into the system so they can be closely monitored when approaching key areas of interest, the U.K. said. If the system determines a potential risk, the expeditionary force will monitor a suspicious vessel in real time and send out warnings to JEF partner countries and NATO allies.

The JEF is monitoring 22 areas of interest including parts of the English Channel, the North Sea, the Kattegat and the Baltic Sea from its operational headquarters in Northwood in northwest London, the government said.

Nordic Warden will help protect against “both deliberate acts of sabotage as well as cases of extreme negligence which we have seen cause damage to underwater cables,” Healey said in the statement. He said Nordic Warden, which was first trialed during the summer of 2024, allows for monitoring of large sea areas with a comparatively small number of resources.

The shadow fleet was estimated to include about 591 tankers operating in the Russian oil trade, according to data compiled by S&P Global in April, up 33% from a March 2023 estimate.

The U.K. has sanctioned 93 oil tankers used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to “soften the blow of sanctions and bankroll his illegal war in Ukraine,” the government said. The U.K., Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Finland and Estonia last month agreed to request proof of insurance from suspected shadow vessels traveling the Baltic route.

The JEF is a high-readiness force that was established in 2014 and which today has 10 members, including all five Nordic countries, the three Baltic States, as well as the Netherlands and the U.K.

The program to buy at least five and possibly six frigates will represent Norway’s biggest defense investment ever, surpassing the acquisition of F-35 fighter jets, Defence Minister Bjørn Arild Gram said in a briefing on Tuesday. The country plans to make a final decision on a future strategic partner in 2025.

Norway is looking to join an existing frigate program to speed up fielding, thereby obviating upgrade investments in the country’s existing Fridtjof Nansen-class frigates. All major naval forces within NATO are in the process of adding new frigates, and Norway said it wants to establish a strategic partnership with a close ally rather than just buy a stand-alone vessel type.

“The new frigates represent the largest acquisition planned for the Norwegian armed forces in the coming years,” Gram said.

The country plans to invest several hundred billion Norwegian kroner in its navy, as well as significantly increase operating budgets and personnel, according to Gram. One hundred billion kroner is equivalent to around US$9.1 billion.

Norway is an important maritime state within NATO, and the High North is the country’s most strategic area of interest, important to both Norway and the alliance, Gram said. The ambition is for the Royal Norwegian Navy to be able to operate continuously in the ocean areas off Norway, according to the minister.

Defense officials envision a strategic frigate partnership that includes joint acquisition, operation and maintenance, as well as continuous development and upgrades of the ships during their service life. Gram said the new vessels will require upgrade and support for several decades, and Norway is looking for a partner that will commit for the entire service life of the future frigates.

The country isn’t just considering the capabilities of each potential partner country, but also coinciding strategic interests, including in the High North, according to the minister.

France started sea trials of its first Defense and Intervention Frigate this year, with another four ships planned, while Germany laid the keel for the first of four F126 frigates. The U.S. is constructing its first Constellation-class frigate, based on the French-Italian FREMM multi-mission frigate, although that program has run into delays. Meanwhile, the U.K. has seven frigates under construction, including four Type 26 anti-submarine warfare vessels and three Type 31 frigates.

The four countries are working on significantly different-sized vessels, from France’s brand-new FDI frigate displacing 4,500 metric tons, to Germany’s F126 frigate that will displace around 10,000 tons. Norway’s current Fridtjof Nansen-class warships, built by Spain’s Navantia, displace around 5,200 tons fully loaded.

Norway has a longstanding maritime cooperation with France, and while the French have a more global focus than the Norwegians, they’ve shown increasing interest in the High North, the defense minister said. The U.K. and Norway also have particularly close security and defense ties, and the Royal Navy has long been a main partner for the Norwegian forces, according to Gram.

The Nordic country also has security ties with Germany, with cooperation traditionally mainly within the land domain, though the countries are cooperating on submarines and anti-ship missiles, Gram said. Meanwhile, the U.S. is Norway’s most important ally, cooperating in all domains with a focus on the North Atlantic, according to the minister.

A key consideration in the final decision will be the ability for Norwegian technology and industry to contribute to both development and sustainment of the future frigate, according to Gram.

The Norwegian government in 2023 reached out to 11 countries with frigate programs, which in addition to the four nations picked for further talks included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and South Korea, according to Gram. The frigate program was included in the country’s long-term defense plan proposed in April.

The company will provide its Naval Strike Missile, which is being installed on the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships and Constellation-class frigates, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. The fixed-price contract is valued at 10 billion Norwegian kroner (US$896 million), with options that could lift the cumulative value to about 12 billion kroner.

The company will also supply the missile to the U.S. Marine Corps for the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, or NMESIS.

Kongsberg said in September it would open a new missile production facility in Virginia, with the company citing demand for its Naval Strike Missile and the air-launched Joint Strike Missile. That follows the opening of a new factory for both missiles in Norway in June and plans to build a new missile plant in Australia,

“This contract is an example of the strong demand we see for our strike missiles across NATO and allied nations, which is why we this year have opened a new missile factory in Norway and announced two facilities in Australia and the U.S.,” Eirik Lie, the president of Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, said in the statement.

The Naval Cruise Missile was first deployed by the Norwegian Navy in 2012, and has also been selected by NATO partners including Poland, the U.K., Spain and the Netherlands.

The subsonic missile has a range of more than 100 nautical miles or 185 kilometers, weights 407 kilograms and has a length of 3.96 meters or 13 feet, according to Kongsberg. The missile uses a high-resolution imaging infrared seeker for autonomous target recognition, and its sea-skimming capabilities and low signature allow it to survive enemy air defenses, the company says.

The Iver Huitfeldt will join U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian once parliament gives final approval, expected on Feb. 6, Denmark’s Ministry of Defense said on Monday. France transferred a second frigate to the Red Sea region eight days ago, while Belgium is sending the frigate Louise-Marie to join a nascent European Union mission there.

The frigates will strengthen the multinational fleet defending commercial shipping from Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, who have been attacking vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with missiles and drones. A.P. Møller-Mærsk, the world’s second-largest container shipping company, is headquartered in Denmark, while third-largest container shipper CMA CGM is based in France.

“As a major seafaring nation, Denmark has a clear interest in contributing to maritime security,” Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said in a statement. “The Houthi attacks against international shipping and thus the security of international waters are deeply worrying and a serious threat to the international world order.”

The Houthis have vowed to attack all ships in the Red Sea that are linked to Israel, in response to the war in the Gaza Strip. Trade volume going through the Suez Canal has fallen by an estimated 42% in the past two months in response to the attacks, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, which says the waterway handled as much as 15% of global trade in 2023.

The French air-defense frigate Alsace transited the Suez Canal to the Red Sea earlier this month to join the Languedoc already in the area. Alsace, together with the U.S. Navy destroyer Carney and the Indian Navy destroyer Visakhapatnam, helped extinguish a fire onboard the tanker Marlin Luanda on Jan. 27, after the vessel operated by Trafigura and transporting a cargo of naphtha was hit by a Houthi-fired anti-ship ballistic missile in the Gulf of Aden.

The U.K. frigate HMS Diamond over the weekend used its air-defense missiles to fend off a drone attack from the Houthis in the Red Sea. The American, British and French navies have been regularly engaging Houthi missiles and drones since December, and the U.S. and the U.K. in the past month have been carrying out strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen in retaliation.

Operating a multinational coalition allows vessels to be taken out of the operational theater before they run out of ordnance, with partners able to take duty stations, Adm. Sir Ben Key, First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff of the Royal Navy, said at the Paris Naval Conference last week. He said the region around the Red Sea has a number of “really effective ports,” for example in Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as in Oman, that allow for resupply of missiles and engineering support.

The U.S. is working to develop reloading at sea, with U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro having asked for experiments to see what that might look like “sometime this summer,” U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said at the Paris conference.