Cross-Border Collaboration on NATO Flights

13 NATO countries have signed a letter of intent on the development of flights across country borders in NATO airspace.

By Trine Jonassen, High North News October 17, 2023
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Article by High North News

The Norwegian Minister of Defense, Bjørn Arild Gram (Center), and Poland’s NATO representative, Tomasz Szatkowski, during the signing of the letter of intent for exercise and training across country borders in NATO’s air domain. (Photo: NATO)

In practice, the signing entails that Norway will participate in work to see how NATO allies can exercise and train across country borders in the air domain.

“Allied training and exercising is important to the defense of Norway, especially when we have a united Nordic region in NATO. At the same time, this signing emphasizes the significance of national sovereignty and that future solutions for cooperation across country borders are owned by the countries participating in such a cooperation,” says Gram in a press release.

Any future cooperation including Norwegian participation will be processed according to normal decision-making processes.

“We have good experiences from the cooperation with Finland and Sweden within cross-border exercise and training. This cooperation has shown that this type of training, with air forces across country borders, is cost efficient and can contribute to increasing the collected operative ability,” concludes Gram.

A total of 13 allies in the defense alliance signed the letter of intent: Albania, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey. In addition to Sweden, which is still unclear regarding NATO membership.

“This mirrors the participating nations’ commitment to ensuring that allied civilian and military authorities can cooperate on the use of airspace for NATO exercises and training, and other airspace activities in several regions in Europe,” reports NATO.

In a press release, NATO reports that the increased use of national airspace requires close coordination between civilian and military authorities to provide airspace solutions securely and flexibly.

“As the recent Air Defender 23 exercise showed, NATO’s ability to train at scale in the air domain is a critical element of the alliance’s general deterrence and defense.”