NATO’s Arctic artillery forces are learning to dig, hide, and move to dodge drones

• The proliferation of drones in Ukraine means soldiers are always being watched by the enemy.
• In the Arctic, NATO artillery units said they are using lessons from the war in their own planning.
• Western troops are learning when to dig, hide, and move.

SETERMOEN, Norway — More than 150 miles above the Arctic Circle, NATO artillery crews are training for modern battlefields where drones mean moving isn’t always the right call.

For years, mobility was artillery’s best defense. Now, against persistent aerial surveillance and cheap loitering munitions, crews are relearning when to shoot and scoot and when to dig in and disappear.

Drones — and their overwhelming presence above the battlefield in Ukraine — are forcing NATO artillery soldiers to reckon with their own vulnerabilities. Being spotted from above could be catastrophic, so knowing when and how to hide rather than run is crucial.

With surveillance and strike drones “being more of a thing now than ever before, we have started to put even more emphasis on camouflage,” Maj. Kay-Arne Schjetne, a Norwegian artillery battalion operations officer, told Business Insider at a firing range in Setermoen in late February.

Schjetne’s soldiers fired their artillery alongside British commandos and US Marines in Setermoen as part of Cold Response 26, a routine Norwegian-led military exercise that prepares NATO forces for Arctic combat.

Arctic security has become a focal point for NATO in recent years as officials from the Western military alliance grow increasingly concerned about Russian and Chinese activity in the strategic region.

NATO leadership has pushed for more investment in Arctic defense. Allies have expanded their exercises; this year, Cold Response falls under a newly announced deterrence operation called Arctic Sentry.

From a snow-covered road, the Norwegians fired into a valley, employing their K9 VIDAR, a modified version of the South Korean K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer that shoots 155mm rounds. The tracked artillery is designed for mobility, once a defining characteristic of artillery warfare.

“The current situation in Ukraine shows that if you move, you will be taken out because you will be spotted by UAVs or other sensors,” Schjetne shared. “Even self-propelled artillery — with mobility really being its main thing — are staying put in static positions, preferably dug down.”

“That is something we wouldn’t put much emphasis on just a couple of years back,” he said. “But now we’re taking that tool out of the toolbox again.”

The high drone saturation above the battlefield in Ukraine is giving both sides the ability to constantly surveil and strike the other. Ukrainian officials say that roughly 80% of strikes on Russian targets are carried out with drones.

Moving around is now particularly dangerous; open roads or fields leave tracked vehicles vulnerable to strikes. Fiber-optic cables and expanded ranges have only made drones more threatening to anything caught in the open, including tracked artillery. Hundreds of self-propelled howitzers are reported to have been destroyed during the war.

Schjetne said Norwegian artillery used to heavily emphasize movement, but now soldiers are also training to stay in their firing positions, even though that risks counter-battery fire from the opposing side. Ultimately, in real-world scenarios, they will make a judgment call based on which option is safer.

“Is the risk of being taken out greater if you move or if you stay put? The situation can develop very quickly,” Schjetne said.

Maj. Robin McArthur, a battery commander for a unit with the British Army’s 29th Commando Regiment Royal Artillery, said that survivability is one of his biggest defensive takeaways from the war in Ukraine.

“So camouflage, concealment, deception, and dispersal,” McArthur told Business Insider at the firing range in Setermoen. “We’ve been working with the Norwegians to try and hone our skills at being harder to kill, as well as being able to be more lethal at the front end.”

McArthur said troops are working with combat engineers to figure out how to dig better positions so his unit’s firing point is “completely invisible from the air.”

Hiding in battle also involves maintaining a significantly lower electronic and thermal profile to avoid drone detection — a practice that soldiers in Ukraine have been forced to master. Even radio transmissions can be problematic, revealing one’s location.

“It’s all the layers of what we call the survivability onion,” McArthur shared. “So first of all, we don’t want to be seen. Then we don’t want to be identified. Then we don’t want to be engaged or shot — or if we are shot, then killed.”

His unit of British commandos fired their 105mm howitzers, a lighter gun, from under white camouflage nets that matched the snow. Only the cannon tube poked out from under.

The British and Norwegian units fired their cannons alongside M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers operated by US Marines from different positions in the snow-blanketed wilderness.

While some troops are digging in, others are still thinking carefully about mobility. In a future conflict, ideally, the Marines won’t always be on the move and risking giving away their position, First Lt. Landon Foster, the HIMARS platoon commander, told Business Insider, but the threat of drones that can spot heat signatures may require the platoon to be more mobile.

For the Marines, it’s a shift in mindset that mirrors how the other artillery units are thinking about warfare, informed by lessons from Ukraine.

Drones are “on our mind, and it certainly impacts how we operate in terms of concealing our positions,” Foster said.

Col. William Soucie, the 10th Marine Regiment commanding officer, said that the proliferation of drones above the battlefield in Ukraine is one of the threats that has become rather commonplace there, but much of the world is yet to experience it firsthand.

“These are all things that we are considering — or must consider — in order to provide force protection to our people,” Soucie told Business Insider. “Those are the large lessons that we are learning.”