Leadership1 publisher2 min readPublished
Norway built its largest overseas camp in months by going around the permit procedures
The officers running Norway's Ukrainian training pipeline say Western peacetime procurement cannot hold a wartime tempo. Their evidence is a camp cleared out of Polish forest in months and a drone update that takes six.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- Norway runs Operation Legio, training Ukrainian troops at Camp Jomsborg in eastern Poland and feeding battlefield lessons from the war back into NATO militaries.
- Task Force Legio's commander, Brigadier Atle Molde, told Business Insider that "it's not difficult to see that the way we operate in peacetime West wouldn't work."
- Molde said a drone update sent to a Western country or company takes six months, while Ukrainian engineers sitting close to the front update every two days or every two weeks.
- Molde said the head of Norway's parliamentary defence and foreign affairs committee questioned whether national building licence procedures had been followed, and that he answered: "No, ma'am, none of them."
- The camp went up in a few months last year, felling 75,000 trees, on ground Norway calls larger than 100 football fields and the largest camp its armed forces have ever built abroad.
Compiled by The Board RoomSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint The speed on the record came from bypassing regulations for one project, so the next camp or contract needs its own permission before it can move at the same rate.
- exposure The regulatory risk sat with the commander, and it held because a parliamentary committee head accepted the answer after the buildings were up.
- decision Cycle length sets how much of a war's learning a Western force can absorb, so the choice in front of buyers is where the engineers sit relative to the equipment.
- contradiction John's standard is procurement that is both fast and responsible, and training pipelines that stay quick while preserving quality; the method the camp actually demonstrated was exemption.
Six months is roughly 180 days, so one Western update lands while a front-line team ships about 13 changes at the slow end of Molde's range and about 90 at the fast end [13]. He said those engineers are "developing software, adapting it to genuine situations" [12].
Drone and electronic warfare training is harder to run at scale across much of Europe, Molde said, because "the airspace we need to operate drones is more restricted" [18]. Eastern Poland offers fewer constraints, and the camp sits roughly two hours from the Ukrainian border [18][27]. Maj. John, the operations officer in charge of synchronising the training, described the site as "the mental and geographical middle point between war in the east and peacetime mechanism in the West" [5][7].
One part of this already runs. Ukraine decides what its troops need to learn, and NATO instructors adapt the training alongside Ukrainian counterparts [24]. The camp's drone lab lets soldiers test, repair, modify and 3D print parts, and gives Norwegian instructors a place to study Ukrainian innovations for their own military [25]. The trench networks have been overhauled several times [23]. John said one aim of the operation is taking Ukraine's "experience back to our own armed forces" [28].
Molde said that getting more innovation into Western militaries needs "some major changes that have to be done on all levels when it comes to legislation" [15], and that peacetime rules for procuring and updating weapons systems are "frustrating every day" for Norway's own military [14]. Business Insider reported that partner nations say faster weapons development requires less bureaucracy, more risk tolerance and closer cooperation with industry [26].
John said the open questions for Europe are about fast, responsible procurement and quick training pipelines that preserve quality [20], and he said "we are improving" [10], while also telling Business Insider there is "a lot of learning to be done for European nations" [6]. Molde said that if you give army engineers money, resources, "and no restrictions, they can do magic" [19].
What to watch
- Whether Norway or any NATO member moves a bill that turns Legio's one-off exemptions into a standing procurement or permitting rule.
- Whether drone and electronic warfare training at Jomsborg's scale gets replicated inside western European airspace.
- Whether the drone lab's Ukrainian lessons show up in Norway's own equipment update cycles, which John named as an aim of the operation.