Planning for NATO exercise Nordic Pine 23 initiated

Nordic Pine is a NATO exercise that is training participants in hybrid threats to renewable energy systems.

The planning process for the NATO exercise Nordic Pine 23 was formally initiated on Wednesday in a meeting at the VTT office in Esbo, outside Helsinki, Finland.

The exercise director, Freddy Jönsson Hanberg, met with the Finnish SNR, dr Nikolaos Papakonstatinou to discuss scenario, objectives, training audience, planning schedule and training sites.

Last year the exercise Nordic Pine 22 was conducted for the first time in Sweden with particpants from local, regional and private energy companies as well as governmental agencies and corporations (like the Swedish Energy Agency, Svenska kraftnät, the Civil Contingecy Agency, the Defence Research Agency, Vattenfall).

- RISE, Research Insitutes of Sweden, has played a key role in developing the exercise, Freddy Jönsson Hanberg emphasises. Without RISE there would not have been an exercise, and it is thanks to RISE that VTT in Finland was involved in the exercise. In Nordic Pine 23 RISE will provide resources in many different aspects, not least providing facilities and technology for the Joint Exercise Centre.

The exercise emanates from the NATO science and technology organisation, STO, and a systems analysis study called SAS-163, “Energy security in the era of hybrid threats”, that has been ongoing since 2020. From the 1^st of January 2023 the next study has commenced under the name SAS-183 with the same scope.

Freddy Jönsson Hanberg is endorsed by the Swedish Defence Research Institute as the official Swedish representative in SAS-183 and also appointed EXDIR (Exercise Director) for the exercise Nordic Pine. Last year the exercise was conducted in Sweden, this year the main focus will be on the Finnish training site but there will be a training site in Sweden and the Joint Exercise Centre will be situated in Sweden as well.

- It is a challenge to exercise on three different sites, but this year we will be able to gather the participants physically on each site. Last year, due to real life crisis developments, we had to conduct the exercises as on online exercise, which was not according to plan. It worked out, but it as a lot better to gather training audiences physically on each site, according to EXDIR Freddy Jönsson Hanberg.

The exercise will take place in the autumn of 2023.