Behind the scenes of Nato's air policing mission in Iceland

23 August 2024, 12:00

By Connor Hand

@Connor_HandLBC

During his inaugural foreign trip, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer joined world leaders in Washington DC to commemorate the 75th anniversary of NATO, expounding his government’s “cast-iron” commitment to the alliance and redoubling the United Kingdom’s support for Ukraine.

In between bilaterals with his counterparts, including Presidents Biden and Zelenskyy, the prime minister issued a stark warning about the scale of the challenges facing the organisation’s thirty-two countries.

“The generational threat from Russia… demands a generational response,” Sir Keir argued, pledging that Britain would play “its full role” in delivering that response.

One month on, LBC was invited to join the RAF on a three-week NATO air policing mission in Iceland, to demonstrate how the diplomacy in the White House was translating into action in Europe’s skies.

Located an hour’s drive from the island’s capital, Keflavik airport bustled with holidaymakers attracted to the Blue Lagoon, glistening glaciers and even the brutalist architecture of Hallgrímskirkja - an immense, dystopian-looking Lutheran Church in Reykjavik.

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Tourism is Iceland’s most important sector economically, fuelling its revival following the crushing effects of the 2008 financial crisis. With no standing army, however, only a negligible proportion of its GDP (approximately 0.1%) is spent on defence.

Although militarily Iceland has little to offer the alliance, its strategic importance is unquestionable, providing a base from which NATO’s aircraft can carry out important reconnaissance missions across its Arctic airspace.

“Iceland is an important and highly regarded partner of the UK,” Britain’s ambassador to the country, Dr Bryony Mathew, explained. “There is much we can learn… from Icelandic expertise in operating in the challenging cold weather environment.”

Dr Mathew’s emphasis on the weather conditions cannot be understated. Even at the height of summer, temperatures rarely make a foray into double-digits, and the bruising Arctic winds give the illusion of it being much colder. At the airport, the flags of the UK, Iceland and Nato fluttered in the country’s bruising Arctic winds.

The RAF last carried out an air policing mission in Iceland in autumn 2019, and this mission marks the first time the force’s most advanced aircraft, the F35-B has been deployed on such a task.

The operation is being led by the legendary 617 Squadron, which carried out the Dambusters Raid in World War II.

“We’re here to deter potential adversaries and reassure our NATO partners that if we’re called to carry out these activities - and we’ve done it here today with the F35,” the squadron’s leader, Wing Commander Stuart Campbell, told LBC.

“We’re holding a quick reaction alert here for 21 days, and we’re ready 24/7 to be launched on an alert scramble to intercept any potential unidentified aircraft coming into Icelandic airspace."

As the unrelenting wind whipped his dark green overalls, Wing Commander Campbell highlighted the significant advantages provided by the F35-B, including its low observable stealth technology, preventing hostile radar systems from detecting it.

“It’s a huge advantage over what we’ve seen in NATO before,” he adds, describing the jet’s engine as a supercomputer capable of “speak[ing]” to other F-35s in its vicinity.

Although NATO’s reach spans beyond Europe’s shores and skyline, with Flight Lieutenant David Hodgson telling LBC the UK “is prepared for any contingencies in the Middle East”, the focus of this exercise is focused on deterring Russian activity in the Arctic, with the presence of the Red Arrows, complementing the F35 with a soft-power demonstration of the RAF’s capabilities.

Discussing this focus on Russia, Icelandic Foreign Minister, Thórdís Kolbrún Reykfjörd Gylfadóttir, said the bloc has been facing “a new reality” since invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Whilst the majority of its forces are preoccupied with fighting in Ukraine, Russia still retains a significant military presence in the Arctic, with its bases in the region outnumbering NATO’s positions by around a third, according to data from 2022.

The new reality Ms Gylfadóttir describes “is not only about tanks and weapons”, however, with the foreign minister pointing to the spread of Russian disinformation, which is believed to have fuelled some of disturbances we saw in the UK in August 2024.

“The first line of defence is being able to trust the information we get… we have to find ways to know what is misinformation and what is right - this is a fundamental issue for our society.”