Excercise Heimdall

From 9–26 February 2026, the NATO Centre of Excellence Cold Weather Operations (COE-CWO) initiated and facilitated Exercise Heimdall in the Northern part of Norway

Updated: 27. Mar 2026 11:33

Heimdall 26 brought together military units, researchers, and industry partners to test and develop technology in real Arctic conditions, in total 13 military departments and 26 industry partners.

Unlike a traditional field exercise, Heimdall is a dedicated innovation arena—designed for experimentation, learning, and rapid development across multiple domains.

Technology needs to be cold weather capable in order to operate in cold weather, it demands high level of preparations. This is no different from soldier-level to the Joint Force commander.

Operating in the High North means facing:

Extreme weather
Challenging terrain
Long distances
Limited infrastructure

Heimdall enables us to explore how systems on land, at sea, in the air, and underwater can integrate, share data, and support operations in one of the world’s most demanding environments.

Heimdall supports SACT`s (NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT)) priorities for innovation and development of the Alliance.

Heimdall is supporting the identified GAP in connection to Multi Domain Operations (MDO) in the Arctic by:

Digital transformation
Digital interoperability
MDO data consolidation, ORBAT fusion & data enhancement

“Important arena! We do not know what a potential future conflict will look like, but we believe that technology will play an important role. It must therefore be able to function in an extremely demanding environment”
Colonel Vegard Flom – Director COE-CWO.

COE-CWO is proud to contribute to advancing cold-weather capability and strengthening interoperability across the Alliance.