NATO is testing drone warfare tactics drawn from Ukraine’s battlefield experience during Cold Response 2026, the alliance’s largest Arctic military exercise this year. The drill, running March 9 through 19 across northern Norway, brings together roughly 25,000 troops from 14 allied nations to practice defense and deterrence in sub-zero conditions. At the center of this year’s exercise is a question that has grown urgent since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine: whether counter-drone methods proven in eastern European combat can protect artillery units operating in extreme cold.
Cold Response 2026 Draws Allied Forces North
The exercise, formally designated CORE26, spans Norway’s Nordland, Troms, and western Finnmark regions, placing allied forces in some of the most demanding terrain NATO operates in. The Norwegian military describes it as the country’s largest exercise of the year, a biennial event designed to stress-test cold-weather operations across land, sea, and air domains.
Norway formally notified the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe under the Vienna Document, listing participating land-force nations and confirming the exercise’s transparency obligations. That diplomatic step signals the scale of the operation and the political weight behind it. Canadian officials, including Mark Carney, are heading to Norway to observe the drills, according to Associated Press reporting that also cites participation from about 25,000 troops drawn from 14 countries.
The U.S. Air Force has also deployed personnel to the exercise. U.S. Air Forces in Europe confirmed that American airmen arrived in Norway to take part in what the command described as an effort to enhance allied defense and deterrence in an Arctic environment. The presence of air components alongside ground artillery units creates the kind of joint operating picture where drone integration, and drone defense, become essential.
Ukraine’s DELTA System Enters NATO Training
The drone tactics being tested in the Arctic did not emerge from a NATO planning office. They were forged in Ukraine’s war with Russia, where small unmanned systems have reshaped how artillery operates, targets, and survives. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence announced that its DELTA situational awareness system debuted at a NATO counter-drone exercise, marking the first time the platform was used in an allied training environment. In that announcement, the ministry said Ukraine proposed specific scenarios built around first-person-view drones, friendly-drone coordination, and mass drone attacks, according to a detailed statement from Kyiv. Those scenarios are now being considered for inclusion in NATO’s broader exercise programming.
This transfer of knowledge matters because NATO’s existing doctrine was not designed for the kind of cheap, swarming drone threats that Ukrainian and Russian forces now deploy daily. FPV drones, which cost a few hundred dollars each, can destroy armored vehicles and disrupt artillery positions with minimal warning. Artillery units in the Arctic face an additional problem: the cold degrades battery life, warps airframes, and limits the range of electronic countermeasures. Any counter-drone system that works in temperate conditions may fail when temperatures drop well below freezing, or when snow and ice interfere with sensors and communications.
From Dutch Testing Grounds to Arctic Snow
The pipeline connecting Ukrainian drone expertise to Arctic operations runs through a series of NATO exercises that have accelerated since 2024. In September of that year, Ukraine joined a NATO drill at a Dutch base to test anti-drone systems, an event that brought together dozens of firms and multiple nations to evaluate technology against evolving threats including FPV drones. That exercise served as a proving ground for systems that could eventually be adapted for harsher environments.
The progression from a controlled Dutch airfield to Norway’s frozen interior represents a significant step. Arctic conditions introduce variables that temperate testing cannot replicate: ice buildup on rotors, GPS disruption near the magnetic pole, and communication blackouts caused by atmospheric conditions. Artillery units that rely on drone-fed targeting data need those feeds to work reliably at minus 30 degrees Celsius, not just on a mild autumn day in the Netherlands. Cold Response 2026 is therefore less about showcasing hardware and more about discovering which concepts survive contact with ice, wind, and darkness.
Russia’s Northern Drone Buildup Adds Pressure
The urgency behind NATO’s Arctic drone push is not theoretical. Russia has been expanding its unmanned surveillance capabilities along the Northern Sea Route, the shipping corridor that runs across its Arctic coastline. Alliance officials quoted by Reuters reporting warned that Moscow is moving toward a posture where unarmed surveillance systems could be supplemented by armed platforms. The same reporting captured a blunt assessment from NATO-linked sources: “We’re all having to catch up.”
That admission reflects a gap between what NATO has practiced and what a real Arctic conflict would demand. Russian forces have spent years integrating drones into their northern military infrastructure, while NATO’s Arctic exercises have historically focused on conventional maneuver warfare, amphibious landings, and cold-weather survival. Adding counter-drone and drone-assisted artillery tactics to the Cold Response template represents a shift in how the alliance thinks about northern defense, emphasizing electronic warfare, airspace management, and rapid data-sharing as much as physical endurance.
Why Artillery Units Are the Test Case
Artillery is the natural starting point for this integration because it sits at the intersection of two trends. First, drones have become the primary threat to artillery positions in modern high-intensity conflict, exposing gun batteries and ammunition dumps that once relied on camouflage and distance for protection. Second, artillery is also one of the biggest beneficiaries of unmanned systems, using small quadcopters and fixed-wing drones to spot enemy movements, adjust fire, and assess damage with a speed that traditional forward observers cannot match.
In Ukraine, this double-edged relationship between drones and artillery has produced a constant battle of adaptation. Units that fail to harden themselves against aerial surveillance and loitering munitions are quickly located and struck. Those that succeed often do so by dispersing their guns, limiting radio emissions, and surrounding their positions with overlapping layers of jamming, decoys, and short-range air defenses. NATO planners see Cold Response 2026 as a chance to test whether those methods can be transplanted into a landscape of frozen valleys, limited road networks, and long polar nights.
For artillery crews in northern Norway, that means learning to operate under persistent drone observation, including simulated enemy FPV teams hunting for gaps in their defenses. It also means using their own drones in ways adapted to the climate: launching from sheltered positions to shield batteries from the wind, pre-warming batteries to prevent power loss mid-flight, and rehearsing rapid recovery when icy conditions force a drone down far from friendly lines.
Adapting Ukraine’s Lessons to the Arctic
Translating Ukraine’s battlefield experience into Arctic doctrine is not a simple cut-and-paste exercise. Many of the counter-drone tools that Ukrainian forces use, such as vehicle-mounted jammers and mobile command posts, must be winterized to function reliably in deep cold. Cables become brittle, touchscreens freeze, and generators struggle to start. Cold Response 2026 offers a controlled environment to identify these failure points before they appear in a crisis.
At the same time, some aspects of Ukraine’s approach may prove even more valuable in the north. Decentralized decision-making, where small units are trusted to launch and counter drones without waiting for higher headquarters, fits well with the reality of Arctic operations, where terrain and weather can isolate sub-units for hours. Digital tools like Ukraine’s DELTA system are being examined not only for their technical features but for the workflows they enable (rapid integration of sensor data, intuitive mapping, and the ability to share a common operational picture across services and national contingents).
For NATO, the broader objective is to ensure that exercises like Cold Response do more than rehearse familiar scenarios in a new climate. The alliance is trying to build a template for Arctic operations in which drones are assumed to be ever-present, overhead, on the horizon, and in the hands of both friendly and hostile forces. That requires rethinking how artillery positions are sited, how convoys move, and how commanders balance the need for electromagnetic silence with the hunger for real-time intelligence.
As Cold Response 2026 unfolds, the lessons drawn from Ukraine’s drone war are being written into the snow of northern Norway. The outcome will not be measured in scored hits or simulated kills, but in the quieter metrics of readiness: which systems froze, which concepts failed, and which tactics allowed artillery units to fight, and survive, in a sky increasingly crowded with unmanned machines.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
