The previous article in this series — The Nordic Synthetic Training Gap — concluded with a question. This article answers it by proposing a concrete standing training ecosystem for NORDEFCO forces within the NATO JFCN framework — and making the case that it can be built within two to three years. The question was:

Who will take responsibility for building and operating the synthetic training ecosystem that Nordic defence increasingly requires?

Here is my proposed answer to it.

Not abstractly. Concretely, with a view to the architecture, the investment logic, and the political and military decisions required to move from where the Nordic-Baltic defence training community stands today to where it needs to be.

The argument is straightforward:

The conditions for a standing, multi-domain, multi-nation LVC training ecosystem for NORDEFCO forces within the NATO Joint Forces Command Norfolk (JFCN) framework already exist. What is missing is the decision to assemble them.

Where We Are: The Episodic Training Trap

Nordic defence training today is characterised by episodic ambition. Large exercises — Nordic Response, Cold Response, Arctic Challenge — demonstrate impressive multinational integration. For two or three weeks, the architecture comes alive. Headquarters connect. Units train together. Simulation environments are federated across national boundaries.

Then it ends.

The lesson-learned infrastructure is packed up. The simulation networks are torn down. The exercise control teams disperse. The scenario libraries are returned to storage. The multinational relationships that were built through weeks of shared operational stress begin to fade.

This is not a criticism of those exercises. They are strategically valuable and operationally demanding. But they are not a training system. They are a series of events.

The distinction matters enormously.

A training system is always on. A training system means that when a brigade headquarters in Bardufoss needs to rehearse a corps-level defensive scenario next Tuesday, it can do so. When an Estonian battalion¹ needs to integrate into a Nordic combined arms exercise without a major multinational exercise on the calendar, the architecture is there to support it. When JFCN needs to verify the readiness of a Nordic corps-level headquarters on two weeks’ notice, the tools and the trained teams exist to do that.

The Nordic-Baltic defence community is not yet at that point. But the distance to that point is shorter than most defence planners assume — because more of the foundation is already in place than is commonly recognised.

The Strategic Frame: NORDEFCO Within NATO JFCN

Understanding what needs to be built requires first understanding what NORDEFCO has become.

NORDEFCO — the Nordic Defence Cooperation framework — predates the current threat environment. It was originally conceived as a cost-sharing and interoperability initiative. What it has become, following Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO, is something considerably more significant: a coherent military cluster with a shared strategic geography, a common threat orientation, and — increasingly — a shared operational concept.

The natural NATO command home for this cluster is Joint Forces Command Norfolk (JFCN), NATO’s primary command for the High North and North Atlantic. JFCN is responsible for the strategic domain within which NORDEFCO forces would operate in a major contingency. That makes JFCN the logical frame for NORDEFCO’s collective training architecture.

This creates both an obligation and an opportunity.

The obligation: Nordic forces must be able to train and operate together, not merely to national standards, but to NATO corps and operational command standards. That means common doctrine, common C4IS interfaces, common constructive simulation environments, and — critically — common training metrics that feed into JFCN readiness assessments.

The opportunity: NORDEFCO states collectively possess almost every component required to build exactly that architecture. What they lack is agreement on how to assemble it into a persistent capability rather than a recurring exercise event.

Norway currently holds NORDEFCO’s chairmanship. That is not a ceremonial role. It is a window — one that should be used.

Two Levels, One Architecture

The architecture proposed in this article must serve two distinct yet connected training requirements.

The first is tactical. Brigades, battalions, and companies, combined arms teams, air-land integration at the brigade level, maritime-land coordination, special operations integration. This is where the training load is highest and where day-to-day synthetic training capacity matters most.

The second is operational. Division- and corps-level headquarters and component command staffs training within the JFCN framework. Multi-domain operations planning. Integration of land, maritime, air, space, and cyber effects at the operational level. Readiness assessment against JFCN standards.

These two levels are not separate problems requiring separate solutions. They are complementary layers of the same architecture.

A corps- or division level constructive exercise without trained brigade staffs playing subordinate roles is an abstraction. A brigade-level live exercise without a corps-level context lacks strategic coherence. The architecture that connects them is not an optional integration feature — it is the point.

This is not a novel concept. It is how the most effective training architectures in NATO already work — the US Army’s National Training Centres are the most prominent example. But the Nordic community has not yet consistently applied this logic at the multinational level.

That is what needs to change.

The Architecture: Building a Standing Training Ecosystem

The standing NORDEFCO training architecture does not need to be designed from scratch. It needs to be assembled from components that already exist or are already being procured. In the live domain in particular, the Nordic community already has assets that most other NATO regional groupings would envy.

The Live Layer — Protect What Already Works, Build Toward Open Standards

This is where the Nordic community is furthest ahead, and where the greatest risk of self-inflicted damage also lies.

All Nordic nations currently operate SAAB’s GAMER combat training system for instrumented live training. This is not a coincidence. Since 2008, Norway and its Nordic neighbours have been actively driving multinational instrumented training interoperability, and GAMER has become the de facto common standard for the region.

The result is a live training layer that is already, today, functionally multinational. A Norwegian mechanised unit can exercise alongside a Swedish or Finnish unit and produce a common instrumentation picture, a common after-action review, a common set of training data.

It must be protected.

The long-term architectural answer to vendor dependency in the live domain is already being developed at the NATO level — and the Nordic nations have been active participants in shaping it.

The NATO Modelling and Simulation Group’s Urban Combat Advanced Training Technologies – Live Simulation Standards (UCATT-LSS) programme is building the standards framework that will eventually make vendor lock-in in the live training domain structurally impossible. The Nordic community should understand where this framework currently stands — and what that means for procurement decisions being made right now.

The standards being developed under this framework are substantial:

• STANAG 4816 U-LEIS — the UCATT Laser Engagement Interface Standard — defines how laser-based engagement systems communicate and has achieved meaningful industry adoption.
• U-FOM (Unit Force Object Model) is a credible second standard with growing industry support.
• U-NITE (Network Interface for Training Equipment) and U-LINK are on the horizon — near enough to be visible, not near enough to be relied upon for current procurement decisions.

When all of these standards are adopted by industry at scale, the Nordic live training community will be able to procure from any compliant vendor without compromising interoperability. That is the right long-term goal. But it is not the current reality.

Today, only U-LEIS has achieved meaningful industry adoption. U-FOM is a credible second standard with growing support. U-NITE and U-LINK are on the horizon — near enough to be visible, not near enough to be relied upon for current procurement decisions.

This matters enormously for Norway’s immediate procurement decisions.

Norway’s pending Future Army Combat Training System procurement — Project P5066, the FACTS programme — is Norway’s re-acquisition of the capability that the Combat Training Centre at Rena has provided for the Army since 2004. The programme represents a significant upgrade and expansion of Norway’s instrumented live training infrastructure, both at Rena and, critically, across the Army’s garrisons – particularly in Northern Norway. It is also a potential fault line.

If Norway selects a solution that is not fully interoperable with the GAMER-based infrastructure already operating in Sweden, Finland, and Denmark — because UCATT standards will eventually solve the interoperability problem — it risks creating a regional live training interoperability gap that will take years to close.

The procurement logic is therefore clear: P5066 must be evaluated against the interoperability standards that exist today, not those still in development. U-LEIS compliance is a baseline. U-FOM compliance is a strong preference. Interoperability with the existing Nordic GAMER infrastructure must be a mandatory, non-negotiable evaluation criterion.

This does not foreclose on future UCATT-aligned procurement. It means that today’s procurement decision does not create a regional interoperability gap that the UCATT framework will eventually heal, but which will cost years of degraded Nordic live training interoperability in the interim.

Beyond P5066, the live layer’s growth path follows the UCATT roadmap: as U-NITE and U-LINK achieve industry adoption, NORDEFCO’s standing training architecture should migrate toward full UCATT compliance. The geographic spread of Nordic training areas — from Rena to Rovaniemi to Revinge — is an asset that a standing architecture can exploit in the meantime. Instrumented nodes, connected through the persistent classified training network, allow units across the region to exercise together without requiring co-location.

The Virtual Layer — Infrastructure Is the Bottleneck

The virtual situation is more advanced than many realise, and the remaining gap is narrower than the technology challenge it is often framed as.

All Nordic NORDEFCO nations now hold enterprise licences for Virtual Battlespace 4. VBS4 is a whole-earth virtual simulation environment in use across most garrisons, supporting everything from individual soldier skills to training to section, platoon, company, and battalion collective training, as well as mission rehearsal, distributed command training, and operational experimentation. The licences exist. The software is deployed and a training culture around VBS4 is more or less well established across Nordic militaries. The fact that every NORDEFCO nation is operating on the same virtual simulation platform is a structural advantage that should not be taken for granted — it is a foundation that most regional groupings would need years to build.

What does not yet exist is the network that connects these national VBS4 environments into a persistent multinational training space.

This is an infrastructure problem, not a software problem.

Connecting Nordic VBS4 environments into a standing multinational virtual training network requires permanent, classified, high-bandwidth network connectivity between national training nodes — not a bespoke technical solution, but an infrastructure commitment.

The technology to do this exists and is in routine use within NATO’s classified network infrastructure. The NCIA has established interconnection frameworks for exactly this kind of distributed simulation environment. The incremental technical challenge is not significant. The incremental infrastructure commitment — permanent bandwidth, permanent access agreements, permanent network operations — is what requires a political and resource decision.

The virtual layer’s critical path is infrastructure permanence. Once the network is persistent, the training capacity of the combined Nordic VBS4 enterprise expands dramatically, at essentially zero marginal software cost.

The Constructive Layer — The Hardest Problem, and the Most Important Decision

Constructive simulation is where the Nordic-Baltic community faces its most complex challenge — and where the architectural decision made in the next two to three years will shape the training ecosystem for a decade or more.

The complexity arises from a straightforward fact: NORDEFCO nations are not using the same constructive simulation systems at the tactical level, and the systems they are using do not share a common data model that enables seamless federation.

Norway currently operates JCATS — the Joint Conflict and Tactical Simulation — at the tactical level. Denmark has been a prominent JCATS user for years, giving the two nations a natural common baseline. Sweden and Finland have been exploring alternatives, including MASA Sword, which offers a significantly different approach to constructive simulation through AI-driven force management. An emerging third option — Battle Road, selected by the US Army as its Next Generation Constructive simulation platform — is beginning to attract attention, though it currently lacks HLA support.

This divergence matters because constructive simulation interoperability is structurally different from live or virtual interoperability. In the live domain, GAMER provides a common instrumentation layer. In the virtual domain, shared VBS4 licences mean national environments run on identical software. In the constructive domain, different platforms with different data models require High Level Architecture (HLA) federation to interact — and HLA federation between dissimilar systems is substantially more complex than federation between instances of the same platform.

HLA enables different constructive systems to exchange data and operate within the same synthetic scenario. But HLA is an interoperability layer, not a seamless integration solution. What flows between federated constructive systems must be carefully defined, and the federation agreements that govern what each system publishes and subscribes to require significant technical effort to establish and maintain.

The operational consequence: a NORDEFCO training architecture built on HLA federation between different national constructive systems is achievable, but it is complex to configure, demanding to maintain, and vulnerable to divergence as national systems evolve at different rates.

This points to a clear architectural conclusion: if constructive simulation is to function as a persistent capability within a NORDEFCO training ecosystem, the Nordic nations should converge on a common tactical constructive platform.

The question then becomes which platform?

JCATS has significant strengths that should not be dismissed. It has a large and deeply experienced international user community, most notably the US Army Europe Training Command, which operates JCATS extensively for corps and division-level exercises across the European theatre. It is HLA-compliant. It currently does not federate with JTLS-GO, the NATO standard for operational and theatre-level constructive simulation, but a technical solution for that problem is viable. Norway and Denmark already have substantial JCATS expertise and scenario libraries. Running a large JCATS scenario requires experienced, specialist operators who are scarce and costly to retain. In practice, Norway has addressed this by training new cohorts of conscript operators for each exercise cycle – meaning the system i rarely exploited to its full potential, as operator proficiency remains marginal.

MASA Sword represents a different design philosophy. Its AI-driven force management significantly reduces operator burden, enabling smaller training support teams to run more complex scenarios. Its interface design is more modern, and its integration capabilities are broad. It is also HLA-compliant and has demonstrated federation capability in NATO exercises.

Battle Road is the most intriguing emerging option. The US Army has selected it as its Next Generation Constructive simulation platform — a fact that, if it reaches full operational deployment, would create a compelling long-term interoperability argument for Nordic adoption. However, Battle Road currently lacks HLA support, which is a non-negotiable requirement for integration into a multinational federation architecture. Until Battle Road achieves HLA compliance, it cannot be considered for the NORDEFCO constructive layer role.

The near-term constructive architecture therefore points in one direction: a common Nordic tactical constructive platform, HLA-compliant as a hard requirement, capable of federating upward into JTLS-GO for operational-level exercises, and shared across NORDEFCO nations to eliminate the complexity and fragility of cross-platform federation.

The operational level constructive layer is less contested. JTLS-GO is the NATO standard for operational and theatre-level simulation. It is accredited within the JFCN framework and used at multiple Allied commands. Cold Response 2026 demonstrated the potential of a JCATS and JTLS-GO integration. The Norwegian Division ran a distributed Constructive exercise for Brigade Finnmark within the framework of the instrumented field training exercise, where JCATS stimulated the Norwegian C4IS systems. Coordination between the constructive corps-level exercise that ran on JTLS-GO and JCATS was handled through a-man-in-the-loop manual transfer/synchronisation. This solution functioned but was far from an ideal solution. It nonetheless constitutes a concrete proof of concept for what the standing training architecture for NORDEFCO must deliver as a matter of routine. The natural architecture for the NORDEFCO constructive layer is therefore a common Nordic tactical constructive simulation — whichever platform is chosen — connected through HLA to JTLS-GO for operational-level events, with the federation architecture maintained as a persistent standing configuration rather than rebuilt for each exercise.

The Federation and Data Layer

This is the layer that converts components into a system.

A standing NORDEFCO synthetic training network requires a permanent, classified, multinational network connecting training nodes across all participating nations. This network must support not only exercise traffic, but persistent system management, scenario library updates, configuration control, and routine administrative functions. It cannot be a network that is stood up for exercises and dismantled between them.

The security architecture is manageable. NATO already operates classified networks at multiple classification levels. NORDEFCO nations already connect to these networks. The incremental requirement is a dedicated training partition — permanent bandwidth, agreed interconnection points, and the network operations function to maintain it.

The data layer also serves the analytics function: capturing training outcomes, measuring command performance against defined metrics, and feeding the lessons-learned cycle that connects training to operational readiness assessment. This is not a technical afterthought — it is the mechanism through which the training ecosystem demonstrates its value to operational commanders and defence ministries.

The Governance and Scenario Layer

Technology without governance is hardware. Governance transforms hardware into capability.

A standing NORDEFCO training architecture requires a small, permanently staffed coordination cell — most naturally located within or adjacent to an existing NORDEFCO structure — with the authority and resources to:

• Maintain the scenario library and the common operational environment database that underpins all training events across all echelons
• Manage system configuration, accreditation, and security approval processes across the multinational network
• Coordinate training calendars to enable both scheduled exercises and on-demand training events
• Own the training standards framework that defines what readiness in this architecture actually means
• Interface with NATO JFCN’s training and exercise function to ensure that NORDEFCO training feeds into, and benefits from, the Alliance-wide training calendar

This cell does not need to be large. Comparable NATO training coordination functions operate with deliberately lean core staffs. A NORDEFCO equivalent at initial operational capability could function effectively with significantly fewer people than most planning assumptions would suggest – provided those people have genuine authority and a clear mandate.

The Investment Logic: What This Actually Costs

This is where the political argument becomes important — and where Norway’s chairmanship creates a specific responsibility.

The investments required to stand up a basic operating capability for this architecture are, relative to current Nordic defence budgets, very small.

Consider the components:

• Network infrastructure: The persistent classified training WAN is the single most important capital investment. Nordic nations already operate national classified networks. Interconnecting them into a training-dedicated partition is an infrastructure decision, not a technology development effort. Cost: modest, relative to capability delivered.
• Constructive platform convergence: If NORDEFCO nations agree on a common tactical constructive platform, licence costs are shared, and the per-nation cost of the common platform is likely lower than what individual nations are currently paying for fragmented national solutions. The transition cost — scenario migration, operator retraining — is real but bounded.
• Scenario library and common operational environment: This is primarily a personnel cost — experienced scenario designers, knowledge managers, and training coordinators. It is the most important investment in terms of sustained operational value, and the hardest to resource appropriately, because these are skilled specialists rather than commodity hires.
• The governance cell: Permanent staff, modest facility requirements, and the political agreement to host it somewhere. This is the hardest investment to make — not because of cost, but because of the political negotiation required to agree on host nation, staffing formula, and mandate.

The total investment to reach initial operating capability — a standing architecture capable of supporting tactical and operational training events across the NORDEFCO community on a routine basis — is likely in the range of €50–100 million for initial setup, with annual sustainment costs well below that figure.

Against the backdrop of Nordic defence budgets that now collectively exceed €25 billion annually, this is not a significant sum.

What it is, is a decision.

The Mindset Shift: From Event to Ecosystem

The most important barrier to building this architecture is not financial or technological.

It is conceptual.

Defence training culture in most NATO nations — including the Nordic and Baltic states — is built around events. Exercises are planned, resourced, executed, and evaluated. The exercise is the unit of account. Success is measured by the quality of individual events.

A standing synthetic training ecosystem requires a different mental model. The ecosystem is the unit. Individual training events are instances of that ecosystem in use.

This shift has profound implications for how training is resourced, staffed, and prioritised.

In an event-based model, simulation infrastructure is stood up for an exercise and then dismantled. Staff expertise accumulates during the exercise and then disperses. Scenario development is done once, for a specific event, and then archived. Each exercise effectively starts from a lower baseline than it should.

In an ecosystem model, infrastructure is always on. Staff expertise is maintained continuously. Scenario libraries are living documents that evolve with the operational environment. Training events are bookings on a calendar, not construction projects.

The military organisations that have made this shift — most notably the US Army’s Combat Training Centre enterprise — report dramatically improved training efficiency. Not just because the technology works better, but because the institutional knowledge that makes training effective is preserved and compounded rather than rebuilt for each event.

Nordic and Baltic military culture is well-suited to this model. The operational discipline, staff professionalism, and interoperability mindset already present across the NORDEFCO community are exactly the cultural preconditions that make a standing ecosystem viable.

The missing ingredient is the institutional decision to build it.

The Political Argument: Norway’s Moment

Norway’s chairmanship of NORDEFCO in 2025–2026 coincides with a moment of unusual strategic clarity.

Sweden and Finland are now full members of NATO. NORDEFCO has a coherent political and military identity within the Alliance. The strategic threat environment is providing continuous political justification for defence investment. Nordic defence budgets are rising. And the Alliance is watching to see whether the Nordic community will self-organise into a coherent military capability cluster — or remain a collection of nationally excellent but structurally separate forces.

A standing synthetic training architecture is the clearest possible signal that the Nordic-Baltic community is doing the former.

It is also a platform for the kind of multinational training cooperation that goes beyond exercises and into persistent interoperability — where staffs in Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm, and Copenhagen can train together on a Tuesday afternoon without convening a multinational exercise planning conference.

The investment case for politicians is simple: the Nordic-Baltic region is spending more on defence capability than at any point since the Cold War. The question is whether those capabilities will be exercised in an architecture that allows them to compound — where each training event builds on the last, where staffs maintain proficiency between exercises, where readiness is a continuous state rather than a periodic event.

That is an unacceptable gap in a security environment that never takes holidays.

There is also a procurement argument that politicians should hear directly: the decisions being made right now — P5066 in Norway, constructive platform explorations in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, Finland’s MASA Sword experience, the CV90 and Leopard 2A8 simulator procurements across the region — will either build toward a common architecture or away from it. These decisions are being made nationally, without a coordinating frame that would allow them to be made coherently.

As chair, Norway has the standing to convene that conversation. It has the operational credibility, built on nearly two decades of Nordic live training interoperability leadership, to make the argument. And it has, in the current NORDEFCO chairmanship, the institutional mechanism to act.

The Steps to Get There — Fast

Moving from concept to initial operating capability does not require a decade of study. It requires a sequence of decisions.

1. Political mandate. NORDEFCO nations agree, at the ministerial or heads-of-state level, to establish a Standing NORDEFCO Training Architecture as a shared capability. As the current chair, Norway proposes this mandate and drives it to agreement within the current chairmanship period.
2. Protect the live layer. Norway formally states that P5066 FACTS procurement criteria include full interoperability with Nordic GAMER infrastructure as a mandatory, non-negotiable requirement. This decision alone prevents the most immediately damaging potential fragmentation of the live training layer.
3. Converge on constructive. NORDEFCO defence ministries commission a 90-day technical assessment of tactical constructive simulation options, with HLA compliance and JTLS-GO federation as hard requirements. The assessment produces a recommendation on common platform convergence, with a timeline and cost model for transition.
4. Network foundation. The persistent classified training WAN is established, connecting national training nodes through existing NATO network infrastructure. This is the enabling backbone for everything that follows, and it should be the first capital project approved under the political mandate.
5. Governance authority. A small, permanently staffed NORDEFCO Training Architecture coordination cell is established with a clear mandate, an identified host nation, and appropriate resources. This cell owns the architecture going forward.
6. First standing events. The architecture hosts its first routine training events — tactical level first, then operational. These are not new exercises. They are bookings on a calendar, distinct from the major exercise programme, demonstrating that the ecosystem functions as a persistent capability rather than an exercise enabler.
7. JFCN integration. The standing architecture is formally connected to NATO JFCN’s training and exercise function, enabling NORDEFCO training events to feed into JFCN readiness assessments and enabling JFCN to task training events within the NORDEFCO architecture as part of its standing readiness management function.

The timeline from political mandate to initial operating capability, based on comparable NATO initiatives, is two to three years. Not ten. Not five. Two to three — if the decision is made with genuine commitment and the governance cell is empowered to act rather than coordinate.

The Strategic Question — Answered

The Nordic Synthetic Training Gap article asked: Who will take responsibility for building and operating the synthetic training ecosystem that Nordic defence increasingly requires?

The answer is: the NORDEFCO nations, collectively, through a standing governance structure with a clear mandate and appropriate resources — initiated by Norway during its chairmanship, and grounded in the architectural foundations that already exist across the region.

The technology is ready. The components exist. The enterprise VBS4 licences are in place. The live training network is already multinational. The budgets are available. The strategic logic is unambiguous.

What remains is the decision.

Not to study the problem further. Not to commission another working group. Not to wait for the next exercise cycle to see whether integration improves organically.

The decision to build the system — and the discipline to protect what already works while building what comes next.

The Nordic-Baltic region is acquiring the most capable military forces it has fielded in decades. Those forces deserve a training ecosystem that is permanently available, architecturally coherent, and capable of sustaining readiness across the full spectrum of multi-domain operations.

That ecosystem does not yet exist in a standing form.

It needs to.

And the window to build it — with aligned political will, rising budgets, converging procurement timelines, and the strategic imperative of the current security environment — will not remain open indefinitely.