NATO members aren’t regularly buying weapons together, limiting how quickly and cheaply they can build up stockpiles, a senior alliance official said.
Tarja Jaakola, NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense industry, innovation, and armaments, said that allies can acquire weaponry most cost-effectively by jointly purchasing it.
Having multiple countries trying to independently develop similar weaponry means fewer resources per program and higher per-unit costs than working together.
But she said that’s often not what is happening.
“When I talk with the industry, the industry keeps telling me many nations still approach them individually with their individual requirements. And that is something that we should avoid,” she told UK think tank Chatham House.
Every time Sinéad publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!
Stay connected to Sinéad and get more of their work as it publishes.
Instead, “we should look at how much can we collaborate, work together,” Jaakola said. She said shared systems also make it easier for allies to operate together in a war.
She said that countries need to “make sure that we use the taxpayer’s money cost efficiently,” especially given that “the cost escalation within defense systems is higher than in the civilian market.”
She said that allies should be embracing collaboration, co-production, and joint procurement: developing, building, and buying weapons together. NATO is made up of 32 countries, some of which are small. Internal competition for resources and contracts isn’t desirable.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has driven worries of wider war across the alliance and a flurry of defense spending. As more money flows into defense, questions are being raised about traditional development and acquisition processes.
The traditional defense development cycles are too slow, and the resulting arsenals are too small. Ukraine is demonstrating that it can build and modify weapons more quickly and cheaply than its partners typically can.
Officials across the alliance have noted the issue and advocated for joint production.
NATO has been increasingly pushing for greater joint production and encouraging allies to take out multinational contracts. The alliance said last year that member states are invited to “make joint procurement the preferred procurement choice.” The European Union, where most of NATO’s members are based, has also changed rules to incentivize joint procurements.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said that joint procurement should reduce costs for alliance members when buying gear.
Many leaders in Europe feel the same. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said last year that joint procurement would “reduce costs, reduce fragmentation, increase interoperability, and strengthen our defence industrial base.”
“We are living in the most momentous and dangerous of times,” she warned. “The real question in front of us is whether Europe is prepared to act as decisively as the situation dictates. And whether Europe is ready and able to act with the speed and the ambition that is needed.”
Jaakola said that one “very good example” of effective joint production is the interceptor missiles for the US MIM-104 Patriot air defense system. There is increasing co-production for them, including Germany’s establishment of facilities to produce missiles there. But her comments suggest there is much more to be done.
A briefing presented last year to European Parliament members revealed that joint procurement across the union was far below targets, even though it said doing so would allow for better industrial leverage, better interoperability, and annual savings of several billion euros.
Jaakola also said that NATO militaries need to change how they develop weapons. She said Ukraine has shown how weapons can be developed and fielded far faster than in NATO systems.
She said it’s an “important lesson that we need to learn from Ukraine” and that NATO needs to “actually see how we can change our own mindset and our own way of working when we talk about capability development.”
NATO is expanding its footprint across the Arctic and North Atlantic, increasing patrols and joint operations as Russia’s submarine forces grow more active, two Western officials told Business Insider.
Across air, land, and sea, NATO’s presence and overall activity in the region have more than doubled over the last two to three years, said Vice Adm. Rune Andersen, chief of the Norwegian Joint Headquarters.
Andersen said that the surge is “partially a response to increased Russian out-of-area deployments with the submarines” and “a need to keep track of that.”
Russia maintains one of the world’s largest submarine fleets, with an estimated 64 active boats. The Northern Fleet, based in the Murmansk region on the Barents Sea, operates dozens.
To get from Murmansk to the Atlantic Ocean or the Mediterranean and Baltic seas, Russian submarines often sail west through the Arctic before turning south and going through the North Sea or the waters in between Greenland, Iceland, and the UK — a naval chokepoint known as the GIUK gap.
Every time Jake publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!
Stay connected to Jake and get more of their work as it publishes.
In recent years, Western military officers have increasingly called attention to the growing Russian naval presence — specifically its submarines — in the Arctic and the North Atlantic, and have stressed the need to monitor this activity to avoid surprises.
The Royal Navy tracks a Russian submarine through the English Channel.
Royal Navy
If the Russian submarines make it out of the relatively “shallow water and out into the deep Atlantic sea, it becomes more difficult once they’re out in the really big ocean to track them,” said Col. Martin O’Donnell, the spokesperson for Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, or SHAPE, which commands all NATO operations.
“Not that they can’t be tracked, but the difficulty — if you don’t pick them up, if you’re not sensing, if you’re not monitoring things — that increases exponentially and poses a threat not just to Europe, but also to the United States in that regard,” O’Donnell said.
NATO militaries have a range of tools for anti-submarine operations, including frigates, other submarines, helicopters, and other patrol aircraft, and some allies have recently invested in acquiring additional capabilities.
Last month, European nations participated in NATO’s Arctic Dolphin 26 exercise off the coast of Norway, with defense of the North Atlantic and GIUK gap top of mind.
There are, however, other reasons behind NATO’s expanded footprint in the North Atlantic beyond just the Russian naval concerns, O’Donnell and Andersen acknowledged.
The back-to-back accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO, which was triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, increased the number of Arctic states within the alliance from five to seven. Helsinki and Stockholm brought more troops, ships, and aircraft into the alliance’s Arctic defense.
NATO militaries, including the US, use P-8 Poseidon aircraft to monitor Russian naval activity.
US Air Force photo by Senior Airman Viviam Chiu
O’Donnell also said that alliance activity in the North Atlantic has increased since December, when JFC Norfolk — NATO’s newest joint force command — added Finland, Sweden, and Denmark to its area of responsibility. It now leads the alliance’s new Arctic Sentry deterrence operation.
More generally, there is a greater understanding among NATO states that the North Atlantic and Arctic regions are becoming more strategically valuable, making it critical for allies to maintain a strong deterrent posture there, Andersen said.
The region is full of natural resources, and melting sea ice is creating new trade routes. To prevent Russia and China from gaining military and economic influence in the High North to the detriment of alliance states, NATO’s leadership wants allies to continue prioritizing Arctic security.
One of the key benefits of Arctic Sentry, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said last month, is that “we now have a one Arctic approach, where allies synchronise activities, enhance and expand regular presence throughout the region.”
“It is bringing together what you already have, and adding on top, based on a gap assessment, what we need to do more,” Rutte said.
NATO is deploying a Turkish drone carrier to the Baltic Sea to boost its surveillance and defense in response to “repeated” Russian airspace violations, the alliance announced on Friday.
The TCG Anadolu will support Eastern Sentry, a defensive operation the alliance launched in September after Russian drones crossed into Polish airspace, forcing a military response.
The Turkish drone carrier is deploying toward the coast of Latvia, where it will contribute to air surveillance and defense along NATO’s eastern edge. Allies have been surging fighter jets and warships to the Baltic region in response to Russian drone incursions.
Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, one of three operational-level NATO headquarters, said in a statement on Friday that the deployment of the Anadolu follows “repeated airspace violations” that have been attributed to Russia.
JFC Brunssum called the deployment “a clear signal to the east” and said that it “sends an unmistakable message” that NATO is prepared to defend its territory.
A Bayraktar TB3 drone lands on the flight deck of the TCG Anadolu earlier this month.
Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images
It’s unclear when the carrier will arrive on station and how long it will remain there. The Turkish defense ministry could not immediately be reached for comment, and neither JFC Brunssum nor NATO’s Allied Air Command responded to a request for additional information.
The first-of-its-kind TCG Anadolu is the Turkish Navy’s only drone-carrying amphibious assault ship. It was commissioned in 2023 and is now Ankara’s most advanced vessel and flagship.
The 750-foot-long vessel was originally intended to carry helicopters and F-35B fighter jets, but after Turkey was kicked out of the F-35 program over its purchase of Russian surface-to-air missile systems, Ankara decided to repurpose the Anadolu for fixed-wing drones.
The Anadolu can carry Bayraktar TB-3 and Bayraktar Kızılelma combat drones, systems made by the Turkish company Baykar, as well as attack helicopters.
JFC Brunssum said the carrier is the largest ship in NATO’s Steadfast Dart fleet, which is comprised of 17 vessels, including amphibious landing ships, frigates, destroyers, and submarines.
Iran and China have also built their own drone carriers, and Portugal expects to receive one later this year.
Alarms blare over the factory floors, and work at Patria’s Hämeenlinna facility grinds to a halt.
The soft thrum of an explosion echoes through the campus. Moments later, roughly 700 workers continue making their armored vehicles bound for Japan, Sweden, Slovakia, and other countries. The blast is not a test-firing of its new combat vehicle, but part of the construction for its expanding manufacturing facility.
Patria, Finland’s largest defense company, is planning to nearly double production at its main hub just north of Helsinki, clearing rocks with explosives on-site to make way for several new assembly lines.
Construction crews are paving the way for a new assembly line in Patria’s Hämeenlinna facility.
Matthew Loh for Business Insider
The Hämeenlinna factory manufactures Patria’s 8×8 armored personnel carrier and a relatively new, up-and-coming vehicle: a wheeled 6×6 troop transport that’s receiving surging demand from northern and western Europe.
Work on the 25-foot-long, 17-ton vehicle began in 2020 under a joint program between Finland and Latvia called the Common Armored Vehicles System. Both countries sought a cost-effective, mass-produced armored vehicle that could be used by their militaries for interoperability.
Every time Matthew publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!
Stay connected to Matthew and get more of their work as it publishes.
Latvia has since sent at least 42 of these vehicles to Ukraine, armed with heavy machine guns and rolled out in batches over the last year. The vehicle can cross tundra and even rivers while shielding up to 10 troops it carries from land mines and artillery fire to get them to forward positions.
Latvia handed over 21 of its promised Patria 6×6 vehicles to Ukraine in November.
Alexander Welscher/picture alliance via Getty Images
When Business Insider visited Patria’s factory, representatives for the company — which is majority-owned by the state of Finland — said the firm wasn’t authorized to share details about the 6×6’s performance in Ukraine.
But the CAVS 6×6 program has been quickly drawing attention from the rest of Europe: What began as a partnership between two countries has expanded into a consortium of seven member states.
Sweden joined the Common Armored Vehicles System program in 2022, followed by Germany, Denmark, the UK, and Norway in subsequent years.
Finland and Latvia have placed orders for just under 500 of these vehicles, while Sweden has requested 415 of the 6×6s to be delivered over the next five years. Stockholm’s latest order for 94 vehicles, announced in early December, priced each one at about $1.75 million.
Germany has become the program’s largest buyer, signing contracts in mid-December to acquire 876 of the 6×6 vehicles, valued at $2.3 billion. These vehicles will be split into four variants, including one that features a mortar turret.
Meanwhile, Denmark, which joined the program this year, has already placed an order for 129 6×6 vehicles.
The UK and Norway are still negotiating 6×6 orders with Patria.
Inside the CAVS 6×6
The CAVS 6×6 can accommodate roughly 10 troops, along with a typical crew of two or three, and features up to NATO standard level 4 armor designed to withstand direct hits from large-caliber machine gun fire, mine explosions, and nearby artillery blasts.
The CAVS 6×6 competes with other wheeled troop transports, such as Rheinmetall’s Boxer and General Dynamics Land Systems’ Stryker, the latter of which is extensively fielded by the US Army.
The Finnish company said it can tweak the vehicle for each customer’s needs, but a typical model features climate control that enables the vehicle to operate in temperatures as low as -40°F.
“Inside, it will be comfortable enough to easily survive. We are talking about temperatures of the plus centigrades,” Mikko Rantanen, Patria’s director for 6×6 vehicle programs, told Business Insider from inside the rear compartment of one of the vehicles.
Patria’s 6×6 can sit roughly 12 to 13 people total.
Matthew Loh for Business Insider
The 6×6’s rear interior is spartan: Cloth-covered metal-frame seats and headrests for five people on either side, with space behind each seat for equipment and small arms.
There’s just enough room for a soldier to sit with their knees touching the opposite passenger’s. A few fire extinguishers inside are connected to an automatic suppression system that can detect a blaze in the rear cabin.
The interior of Patria’s 6×6 features a relatively simple design, with metal seats and storage compartments for firearms and equipment.
Matthew Loh for Business Insider
Screens allow troops to see outside the vehicle through exterior cameras, while a rear hatch provides the option of fitting a machine gun or crewed weapon module on top of the 6×6.
On the right-hand side of the vehicle, a small passageway also lets troops pass between the rear compartment and the driver’s cabin, which resembles that of a truck and features an automatic gearbox.
The driver’s cabin of the 6×6 is like that of a truck’s. The vehicle is driven in auto.
Matthew Loh for Business Insider
Optional propellers on the 6×6’s underside enable it to transition seamlessly from traversing land to crossing small bodies of water, such as rivers or lakes.
“We can enter the water without needing preparation in this configuration,” said Rantanen.
A showcase vehicle of the Patria 6×6 sports propellers for when crews have to move the APC through water.
Matthew Loh for Business Insider
However, the 6×6’s speed in the water is just under 5 mph, and Rantanen added that it’s not meant to be a landing craft or amphibious assault vehicle.
On land, it’s designed to drive at speeds of over 60 mph, easily cross trenches that are four feet wide, and surmount obstacles about two feet high.
Screens in the 6×6 show what’s happening outside the vehicle. The passageway here leads to the driver’s cabin.
Matthew Loh for Business Insider
Moving fast in the Arctic
Building weapons and vehicles specifically for arctic terrain is a specialty for contractors in Finland, a country renowned for holding off the Soviet Union for over 100 days in deep snow and dense forest during World War II.
Patria said that while the 6×6 can be outfitted for various terrain types, including the desert, the arctic domain is its forte.
The CAVS 6×6 is designed to cross both snow and marsh terrain.
Patria
Snow isn’t the only challenge in arctic warfare. Few roads are available on Finland’s border with Russia — the priority threat for NATO — and its vast hinterland is peppered with thousands of small lakes and marshland that can bog down armored transport.
“In the wintertime, it’s snow,” said Petri Hepola, Patria’s executive vice president for sales and marketing and its chief program officer for the F-35. “In the summer, lots of wet soil and swampy areas. One of the most important features is how fast you can move your troops and tools through these areas.”
The wet terrain in the summertime for northern regions means the 6×6 has to be capable of moving fast in both mud and snow.
Patria
Finland and Norway are the only two members of Patria’s 6×6 program that share Arctic borders with Russia.
However, as northern Europe, especially the Baltic and Nordic states, grows increasingly concerned about conflict with Moscow, the Kremlin has been bolstering its military presence in the high north, repopulating key bases and transforming its Arctic fleet into a separate strategic theater.
Since Finland joined NATO in 2023, alliance forces have been rushing to train on the country’s terrain and frigid temperatures, making it one of the most active spots for joint exercises in recent years.
“Our products have been surviving very well in that environment,” Hepola said.
Gearing up for 2027
With an order backlog of nearly 2,000 6×6 vehicles, Patria hopes its new facility in Hämeenlinna will be ready for production by 2027. The factory campus serves only the tail end of the entire manufacturing cycle, which can take weeks in most cases, or several months for more complicated variants.
Inside, hundreds of workers conduct welding, surface treatment, assembly, tests, and other final processes that can each take weeks to complete. Dozens of vehicles line the factory floors, and dozens more sit in parking lots, each marked with a flag to designate the country for which it has been modified.
Patria vehicles are seen during the official opening ceremony for a new production facility in Latvia in 2024.
GINTS IVUSKANS/AFP via Getty Images
Before delivery, each one is supposed to be driven at least 200 km, or 124 miles.
Rantanen, director of the 6×6 program, said Patria has been integrating counter-drone systems, such as jammers, on the vehicle.
Armored vehicles in Ukraine have especially struggled against pervasive minefields and small drones with explosive payloads, some of which are controlled via a fiber optic cable connection that can’t be jammed. In response, soldiers there have relied more on firearms such as shotguns and machine guns to counter such attacks.
Rantanen said Patria hasn’t yet officially added any kinetic weapons that can take down drones.
“The drone threat is currently evolving at such a speed that it’s hard to keep track of it closely,” he said. “But we are hard at work for the countermeasures against drones as well.”
In less than 10 seconds, Kelluu’s silver airships can soar from the ground to high above eastern Finland’s treelines, their motors puttering and their noses pointed skyward.
Gas blimps were first invented in the 19th century, but the Scandinavian startup is betting on a modern version of the old concept to help the West guard its territory.
Kelluu, a Finnish company located about 50 miles from the Russian border, is launching small, propeller-driven airships filled with hydrogen, which it believes can fill a gap in battlefield and border surveillance.
The startup is already finding success with NATO, being the first to secure a deal with a Western nation through a new innovators’ program run by the alliance.
Militaries or law enforcement agencies could equip a fleet of such remotely piloted airships with cameras and sensors, rotating them to monitor regions around the clock. Kelluu said its airships can be automated, meaning a human operator only has to set a target destination.
Airships won’t be easily survivable on an immediate frontline, but can surveil rear areas or combat zones near the fighting for long periods.
Small drones, meanwhile, typically can only fly for a few hours, while spy planes are often expensive, scarce, and need an onboard crew. Satellites have to wait to pass over a specific region to gather intelligence.
Niko Kuikka, the startup’s head of engineering, told Business Insider at Kelluu’s workshop in Finland that its airships can fly for half a day.
“Our customers don’t care so much what we are flying with, but they pay us to stay up in the air for 12 hours. That’s our specialty,” said Kuikka.
About as long as a city bus and six-and-a-half feet wide, Kelluu’s airships are tiny compared to the Zeppelins of World War I. The ship carries fuel, a propeller, and an onboard computer, and can be configured to transport an additional payload of up to 11 pounds for other gear such as sensors. Altitude can allow high-definition cameras or radar to survey a wider area.
Kuikka said a smaller size can be an advantage for Kelluu’s airships, which are designed to fly at top speeds of 33 mph.
Kelluu’s airships are designed to fit into regular shipping containers and are lightweight enough for one person to launch.
Matthew Loh for Business Insider
They’re cheaper and easier to mass-manufacture, so a customer wouldn’t have to worry that losing a few airships might disable an entire fleet, he said.
Kelluu declined to disclose its pricing, but said its airships are meant to be low-cost.
“Having a kind of sitting duck in the air that costs a vast amount of money isn’t going to make sense,” Kuikka said.
‘Free interference’ from Russia
At Kelluu’s workshop, employees perform the final assembly of the airship and fill it with hydrogen, a lighter-than-air gas that serves to both lift its frame and power its propeller. In the upstairs attic, a team of about 10 computer engineers finetunes in-house software and a user interface for monitoring the airships.
Kelluu has a small team working on software in a room above its assembly workshop.
Kelluu
The main team is based in Joensuu, a small city of 78,000 people just west of Russian Karelia.
That location is a key advantage for the airship company, Kuikka said.
Because Joensuu is so close to the border, it has to deal with frequent jamming from both Russia and Finland, or as Kuikka and his team call it: “free interference.”
While other firms may have to pay for tests, Kelluu’s airships must be resistant to electronic warfare to work in the first place, he said.
“We get all sorts of jamming and spoofing from the other side of the border, and also from this side of the border, so we have been proven to be pretty resilient against this sort of GSS denial,” he said.
Kelluu is also about 340 miles south of the Arctic Circle, so its team had to build its airships to withstand icy winds and temperatures that dropped in January to -15°F.
Kelluu’s airships are being tested in the Finnish winter, which the company says makes it ideal for Arctic conditions.
Kelluu
As such, the startup is positioning its airship as a particularly useful means of monitoring future Arctic bases or territories. The theory goes that the longer its fleet can stay aloft in rough conditions, the fewer people are needed on the ground to maintain and operate the airships.
“We are hoping to soon have an asset that can run multi-day missions, so you need even fewer persons working out there,” Kuikka said.
Catching NATO’s eye
Joensuu once heavily relied on Russian tourism, an income flow sapped dry in 2022 after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted Finland to stop issuing tourist visas to Russians. The following year, Finnish authorities closed the country’s 833-mile land border with Russia.
Helsinki, like much of European NATO, is now grappling with the question of how to guard its eastern borders. The Finnish government is already raising concerns about illegal immigration, which it says Moscow is intentionally orchestrating as a gray warfare tactic.
Kelluu was founded in 2018, well before these issues drew public concern. It began by building airships for civilian use, such as monitoring power lines.
Kelluu provides a digital user interface for monitoring airship fleets.
Kelluu
Now, the war is turning it into a rising star in Europe’s defense industry.
Kelluu was one of 14 firms picked by NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic, or DIANA, to enter the second phase of the alliance’s 2025 program.
The accelerator program is trying to connect allies with startups and defense contractors, pushing governments to adopt new tech into their militaries within two years. Roughly 2,600 companies or parties initially submitted proposals to DIANA this year.
After several showcases, Kelluu was the program’s first company to land a deal with an allied country under a new “Rapid Adoption Service” to conduct national trials, a program spokesperson told Business Insider.
Neither NATO nor Kelluu named the member state, but Fabrizio Berizzi, challenge manager at DIANA, praised Kelluu’s airships as “strongly versatile in terms of maneuvering and endurance” and useful for 24/7 surveillance.
“The airship solution proposed by Kelluu fills the gaps on aerial platforms operating in altitudes in between the typical UAS and aircraft airspaces,” he told Business Insider in a statement, referring to uncrewed aerial systems.
A Kelluu airship can immediately point its nose upward after launch and climb quickly into the sky.
Screenshot/Kelluu
Berizzi highlighted the airships’ jamming-resistant capabilities, saying that they can operate in “electromagnetic contested and congested environments.”
Each airship is also “difficult to detect from radar due to its low radar cross section, or radar reflectivity,” he said.
Building thousands of airships
The material of the airship’s metallic, mirror-like skin is a company secret, the firm said. When asked if it helps avoid radar detection, the company declined to answer.
But Kuikka said the core feature of Kelluu airships is that their structure allows them to be filled safely with hydrogen, which is flammable and more dangerous than helium but provides better lift; it is also lower cost than helium.
These airships are built with a semi-rigid frame, meaning they have some structural integrity but primarily derive their shape from the gas within. Zeppelins, by contrast, had fully rigid frames, while other airships like the $21 million Goodyear blimp would collapse if they were deflated.
Janne Hietala, Kelluu’s CEO, said that lighter-than-air technology is often overlooked in the defense industry, especially with disaster stories like the Hindenburg marring its history.
Other militaries have also deployed airships, though they are typically much larger. Israel, for example, deployed a large airship in 2024 that it said was later hit by Hezbollah.
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
NATO evaluators were surprised, he said, when they assessed the company’s airships during trials, which included naval showcases in the Atlantic.
“Nobody kind of believed us,” Hietala said. “When they looked at the specs, they were like: ‘Well, the wind is going to blow it away.’ But when we actually deploy, they’re like: ‘Oh, it actually works and makes sense.'”
Kelluu now maintains a small active fleet of just under 20 airships, but Hietala said it’s focused in the near future on scaling up mass production capacity.
Some of its airships are already being deployed in other countries, such as Latvia, for testing or client use. Kelluu now manages and operates the fleet for its clients, but is discussing the possibility that some militaries may want to operate their own airships.
“Our intention in Europe is to manufacture more than 500 for the Western world, and we expect to eventually have 3,500,” Hietala said.
