The Joint Expeditionary Force: Anti-Access/Area Denial in the High North
The Memorandum | No. 14.2026
The Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) faces an increasingly contentious security environment amid conventional, nuclear, and sub-threshold threats from Russia. The United Kingdom (UK), as the JEF’s framework nation, should pursue a multilateral Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) network as a Joint Integration Option (JIO) to maximise its Atlantic Bastion, Shield, and Strike operational concepts while complimenting Nordic partners’ planning in the High North.
A2/AD is a well-established operational concept, intended to prevent an adversary’s entrance into, and freedom of operation within, a specific geographical space. Despite its association with the United States’ (US) thinking on Chinese and Iranian strategy, A2/AD is a universal concept, which leverages geography to achieve localised sea denial.
With an explicit rationale, the JEF could better support NATO escalation management by addressing smaller-scale conventional and hybrid threats, enabling the alliance to maintain a focus on high-risk strategic objectives…
A JEF A2/AD network would therefore draw upon member states’ geography to integrate layered sensors, long range precision strike, naval combatants – including Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) – air power, and Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD). This would cultivate a tighter threat perception, a cohesive deterrence package, mutual support, and improved minilateral preparedness for emerging maritime crises, thereby maintaining the partnership’s first responder role but with a renewed strategic focus.
With an explicit rationale, the JEF could better support North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) escalation management by addressing smaller-scale conventional and hybrid threats, enabling the alliance to maintain a focus on high-risk strategic objectives, such as supporting Ukraine and conducting Enhanced Vigilance Activity (EVA).
Expanding the joint integration framework
Although JEF Operating Models are bifurcated as Joint Response Options (JROs) and JIOs, only the former has been utilised to support reactive activity against Russian aggression across the Joint Operational Area (JOA) of the High North, North Atlantic, and Baltic Sea.
Despite being bound by available resources, JROs have proven effective. NORDIC WARDEN, for instance, was activated just 13 days after the suspected Russian sabotage of the Estlink 2 undersea data cable in late December 2024. This eclipsed NATO’s BALTIC SENTRY response by a week, enabling the JEF to shape the operational environment to NATO’s benefit.
By tapping the unrealised potential of JIOs through an A2/AD network, the JEF could further codify capability procurement and integration, while simultaneously improving readiness and overall coordination. This would facilitate more regular and scalable joint military exercises, such as 2024’s Exercise JOINT PROTECTOR and 2025’s Exercise TARASSIS.
Implementing the A2/AD JIO
The JEF’s ability to maintain the conventional edge relies on the effective leveraging of land-based strike; Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR); and air combat systems, alongside surface and sub-surface combatants. As the key enabler, information sharing underscores all elements of an A2/AD network.
At the multilateral level, the group could create a ‘JEF Eyes’ intelligence agreement. In maintaining cohesive situational awareness, such an agreement would need to draw upon an expansive web of passive and active sensors, with additional intelligence sourced from the cyber and space domains. This would assist the JEF in hedging against US retrenchment from European security.
This intelligence would be integral to enabling precision strike through road-mobile anti-ship missile launchers, located within JEF nations’ territory to support the denial of adversarial operational freedom. Mobile launchers offer diverse flexibility for their deployment. However, a common denominator (one which the JEF should seize) is the ubiquity of the Naval Strike Missile (NSM).
The Naval Strike Missile
As the NSM is claimed to be ‘interchangeable between ships and trucks’, this provides the JEF with a common munition. Partnership-wide procurement would support interoperability, interchangeability, and supply chain cohesion. Doing so would also support diverse mission sets both on land and at sea – the latter enabled by the ongoing integration of NSM aboard British, Norwegian, and Danish vessels.
On land, NSM platforms can draw upon high operational mobility to conduct rapid deployments, even in remote environments. This was demonstrated in October 2025, when a Royal Air Force (RAF) A400M Atlas transport aircraft transported a two-seater tactical vehicle simulating the American Navy/Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS), armed with two NSMs, to a remote Norwegian island. Alternatively, JEF members may seek to follow Denmark in procuring the NSM Coastal Defence System: a lorry-based system equipped with four launchers.
Regardless of its form, mobile land-based systems will play a critical role in deterring adversarial action, whether concentrated near maritime chokepoints like the Danish Straits, or when drawing upon operational mobility to be deployed at range to High North coastlines.
IAMD and the Nordic Airpower Concept
In supporting this and the survival of local Command and Control (C2) infrastructure and strike capabilities, IAMD sensors and interceptors are another key aspect of A2/AD. This includes Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), which both NATO and the JEF lack when facing missile threats from the High North. Current BMD sees uneven coverage and significant capability gaps. Britain, for instance, will continue to lag behind until at least 2032, when the Sea Viper Evolution programme becomes operational. With no short term solution available, the JEF will have to depend on US-enabled NATO BMD capabilities, such as the Patriot PAC-2/3 and AEGIS Ashore.
At Keflavík in Iceland, for instance, the JEF should seek to station British and Danish P-8A multirole patrol aircraft permanently to supplement US EUCOM deployment of two P-8As, and act as a replacement should America withdraw.
To supplement ground-based IAMD focused on other aerial threats, the JEF should expand the Nordic Airpower Concept (NAPC) to drive further coordination and cohesion. Composed of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, the NAPC rests upon the ‘four pillars’ of ‘joint planning and command of air operations; coordinated development and use of Nordic air bases; enhanced joint situational awareness; and joint education, training, and exercises’. A JEF Airpower Concept (JAPC) would retain these pillars and Norway-based C2, while expanding the dispersed basing footprint to Iceland and Greenland for supporting air defence and policing further afield.
In expanding this pool of dispersed infrastructure, a JAPC could forward deploy a greater variety of aircraft to support an A2/AD network. At Keflavík in Iceland, for instance, the JEF should seek to station British and Danish P-8A multirole patrol aircraft permanently to supplement US European Command’s (EUCOM) deployment of two P-8As, and act as a replacement should America withdraw.
Building on the RAF’s experience of such a deployment, a move like this could encourage rotational deployments by Canada and Germany as NATO P-8A operators. This option could be supported further if the UK chooses to integrate P-8A-compatible boom probes on its Voyager aerial refuelling fleet for shared benefit.
Anti-Submarine Warfare
Comprehensive ASW is necessitated by increased Russian submarine activity in the High North, which has renewed focus on the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap and the North Sea. As ASW is predicated on detection, tracking, and potentially prosecution, an A2/AD network is bolstered by the deployment of a defending force’s own submarine capabilities.
Ranging from deep open ocean to shallower littorals, the GIUK gap and North Sea demand joint planning to accommodate the differences in endurance, range, and payloads of British nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) and Norwegian, Dutch, and Swedish diesel-electric submarines (SSKs). For JEF planners, this could mean utilising SSNs in a hunter-killer capacity at range, while keeping SSKs closer to allied coastlines for patrol, alongside unique missions including minelaying or special forces insertion.
As a key enabler for ASW, the JEF should develop its own sensor network, which can both draw upon and feed into NATO Maritime Command (MARCOM) ISR capabilities, centred around Uncrewed Undersea and Surface Vessels (UUVs/USVs) as eyes and ears within the A2/AD network. The UK can achieve this through utilising AUKUS Pillar 2’s alignment with NATO Standardisation Agreement (STANAG) 4817, which mandates UUV C2 interoperability between crewed platforms – such as Britain and Norway’s upcoming Type 26 frigates – and uncrewed systems.
With this, activity by JEF Maritime (JEF[M]) – the Royal Navy’s contribution to the JEF – could expand to form scalable task groups to supplement the High North-facing Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1). By continuing to act in a first responder capacity, JEF(M) could seek to capitalise on sea denial created by the A2/AD network to assert localised sea control, thereby facilitating wider SNMG1 operations, and mirroring 2023’s Operation FIREDRAKE. In addition to supporting NATO escalation management, this approach would deepen integration and interchangeability between subsurface and surface combatants, auxiliary vessels, and air wings.
Conclusion
The JEF’s growing strategic imperative in the High North necessitates the creation of a dense and scalable A2/AD network to deter diverse multi-domain threats from Russia. Although a considerable political undertaking, the UK should utilise its leadership position to give the minilateral grouping a strategic rationale to establish long-term interoperability and interchangeability through the JIO operational model.
By leveraging existing frameworks, such as AUKUS Pillar 2 and the NAPC, and pursuing novel arrangements like the suggested ‘JEF Eyes’, Britain should continue to capitalise on a shared threat perception to support collective deterrence at the NATO level.
Benedict Baxendale-Smith is an Adjunct Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and PhD Student in Defence Studies at King’s College London. His research focuses on British and Australian maritime strategies in the Indo-Pacific amid American-Chinese strategic competition.
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These academic papers are all well and good to read, however when reality breaks there are too few resources, finance and genuine broad political interest. The UK government for too long has consistently failed to show any understanding for strong resilient capabilities in defence and completely fails to comprehend the need fuse it to foreign policy; neither the Foreign Office nor MoD are properly funded. In respect to the MoD, an annualised budget is an imprudent way of financing defence and often needs to rush to spend before the likelihood of the following year's budget being reduced.
The JEF, Standing Naval groups and comparable air groups inevitably involves multi-hatting the same assets - something that has been a fact of life for too many years. Now, the inability to have the limited naval vessels in commission and available, the same for air-frames, adds to the need for base repairs and limitations on the assumed operational life of ordered systems.
Surely, academics should endeavour to state vigorously our Armed Forces are over-tasked, under-resourced and cannot retain experienced personnel. The threats are growing and the real weakness of our much diminished military capabilities are all too evident to foes and 'friends' alike.
Finally, now that POTUS is indicating the increased likelihood of teh US withdrawal from NATO the alliance structure will be close to failure as too much has been US focused rather than the Europeans standing up to secure their own territorial region. We are close to a grand strategic failure.