Norway runs its Ukrainian training camp as a sensor, not a syllabus

Norway is leading a multinational effort on NATO soil to prepare Ukrainian troops for war with Russia, and it has inverted the usual relationship between a training institution and its students [s1c1]. Rather than run the curriculum designed by the 11 Western forces taking part, the task force lets Ukraine say what it needs and what it wants to focus on, with Ukrainian instructors helping lead the course [s1c6].

Brig. Gen. Atle Molde, the commander overseeing Task Force Legio, told Business Insider that Camp Jomsborg, the purpose-built camp in Poland, "is one of several, but maybe the most important sensor for information" [s1c2][s1c3]. That is not how organisations usually describe their own classrooms. The operating logic follows: Maj. John, the S3 operations officer synchronising the training and identified by his first name for security reasons, said electronic warfare and drone piloting are not taught to the Ukrainians at all, because Ukraine is already highly experienced in both [s1c7]. "We have defined this as a Ukrainian training center," he said [s1c8]. Two of the most consequential subjects in the war have been removed from the Western teaching load on the grounds that the students are better at them [s1c9].

The output of a sensor is only useful if someone acts on the reading. Molde said one lesson Norway is taking from the collaboration is the renewed importance of electronic warfare, a capability in which NATO "had quite some capacity back in the Cold War era" before the move into counterinsurgency, when "all that went away" [s1c4]. His conclusion is that the West needs "to rebuild that" [s1c5]. He called the arrangement a "two-way street," with allies teaching Ukrainians while drawing lessons for their own militaries [s1c10], and Maj. John said trainers are always trying to learn from the Ukrainians they are teaching, both to improve the training and to take those experiences back to their own armed forces [s1c11].

The reading is corroborated from above. Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, former chairman of NATO's Military Committee, said in 2024 that while NATO had not substantially invested in electronic warfare for decades, "Russia never stopped doing EW," and called Ukraine "the most dense and dangerous electromagnetic operating environment we've ever seen" [s1c12]. NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Air Chief Marshal Sir John Stringer, has said commands need to learn to hide "in plain sight" by controlling their electronic signatures, since radios, radars and data links emit signals an enemy can use to locate a headquarters [s1c13][s1c14]. The UK, which also trains Ukrainian troops, has said the experience helped it rethink major parts of how it trains its own soldiers [s1c15].

What to watch is whether the sensor reading converts into anything expensive. Molde has named the gap; rebuilding electronic warfare capacity means budget lines and force structure, not a lesson plan. Watch also whether contributor nations keep ceding course design once their own doctrine is the thing being contradicted, and whether the deference holds if Ukraine's operating experience shifts faster than the camp can absorb it.