The 18-ton vehicle, dubbed the MK1, was developed in less than a year and is envisioned as a multi-role platform incorporating lessons the companies have drawn from the war in Ukraine.

Company officials told Defense News the project took shape after they identified a market gap in the European market: an intermediate segment between light vehicles and heavy-duty vehicles.

“In Finland, we already have two combat vehicle suppliers, Sisu and Patria, whose offers range between 10-15 and 24 tons – we wanted to create something in the middle, to widen the portfolio of vehicles coming from Finland,” Viktor Ekman, the CEO of Scata, told Defense News in March 19 interview.

Ekman said he considers his company to be an “add-on” to those two firms, rather than a competitor.

The new vehicle is designed to perform a variety of missions, including reconnaissance, troop transport for up to 10 soldiers, anti-drone operations and short-range air defense.

In the counter-drone category, the manufacturer is still assessing weaponry options, including interceptor drones that would be launched from the roof or from the inside of the vehicle to intercept incoming unmanned craft, Ekman said.

Enginneers have placed special emphasis on hardening the top side of the Mk1, given how combat vehicles have been significantly damaged in Ukraine by first-person-view drones.

For Ukrainian forces, cheap and short-term solutions to this issue have included metal cages or mesh, which cause an early detonation of explosive charges.

The Finnish-made combat vehicle is slated to be on display at the Eurosatory arms fair in Paris, which runs June 15-19.

Ekman said the company is in discussions with Finland and Sweden as potential launch customers.

Deep in Norwegian woods, some 400 kilometers away from the Russian border, an officer of the Norwegian Long Range Reconnaissance Squadron is hidden in a snow-made shelter, with only his light-grey firearm peeking out.

The officer, nicknamed Poster Boy, is part of the country’s elite Arctic task force, designed to operate far behind enemy lines to conduct surveillance missions. The snow cave serving as his concealment is known as a quinzhee, 1.5m high and 2m wide, built by piling snow together and allowing it to sinter, or harden, a task force specialty.

“It’s a constant evolution of what works and what doesn’t for us – what worked four years ago might not work today due to all the technology developments of equipment designed to catch us, some years ago a tent and camouflage could’ve been sufficient but not anymore,” the officer, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity around the unit, told Defense News.

Training here alongside the Norwegian soldiers were several other nations’ elite unit, including U.K. Royal Marines and soldiers of the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command. Royal Marines told Defense News that, given the speed of modern combat, units that want to stay invisible often have to move every 15 minutes to avoid detection.

Besides hiding from enemy drones, the Norwegian reconnaissance soldiers carry their own unmanned craft to spy on adversaries.

The unit is experimenting with different types of winterized surveillance drones, including the American-made Skydio and first-person-view models, to provide eyes in the sky and enable operations from greater distances on the battlefield.

Poster Boy said those systems will be increasingly relevant, especially in the event of a potential conflict with Russia, where the battle space would consist of vast stretches of icy land.

The Norwegian Army chief, Maj. Gen. Lars Lervik, told Defense News that drones were playing an important role in NATO’s largest Arctic exercise, Cold Response 2026, organized across Norway from March 9-19. He noted that aside from surveillance-type ones, forces are also testing attack drones and several unmanned ground robots in ground-to-ground and air-to-ground roles.

The name of the game for the quinzhee connaisseurs is silence and invisibility, two objectives that are increasingly hard to achieve, as seen in the war in Ukraine, where troops and equipment remain perpetually vulnerable to being located.

One way to mitigate these risks is to focus on tracking avoidance in snow, which relies on minimizing a soldier’s visual, thermal or electronic signatures. The Norwegian Defense Materiel Agency announced last month that recent trials in Denmark confirmed the effectiveness of the Swedish-made Mobile Camouflage System. Developed by Saab, the cloak is intended to greatly reduce detectability by limiting visual, thermal and radar signatures, including in Arctic conditions.

However, amid new technologies, the Norwegian top-tier Arctic unit continues to return to proven basics: using natural camouflage, such as snow, as its best bet for staying hidden.

“Using snow is our absolute best concealment – we move in darkness, foggy conditions, snow falls, where our tracks can be rapidly filled and hard to follow, and in good weather we stay static and concealed,” the officer explained.

Roughly 240 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, two soldiers — part of the Norwegian Armed Forces’ long-range reconnaissance unit — were imperceptible from their position deep in the woods during NATO’s Cold Response 2026 exercise.

One of the only clues of their presence was a small, grey, first-person-view drone lying on the snow — a stark contrast to their all-white uniforms. The drone in question is an American system, the Skydio X10D, which is also used by Ukrainian forces.

The U.S. manufacturer was awarded a $9.4 million contract by the Norwegian Ministry of Defense in July.

“We are trying our best in Norway to implement lessons from Ukraine — for us, it’s all about increasingly using FPV and intelligence-gathering ones but adapting them to our environment,” said a Norwegian officer who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity around the unit.

The Norwegian officer told Defense News during the NATO exercise, which lasts from March 9 to 19, that there is also an interest in incorporating FPVs into high-value target operations. While some operators have begun simulator training to fly them, this is a fairly recent development and has not yet been formally incorporated into their training.

Another drone model was displayed by the Norwegian Army Land Warfare Centre, which is responsible for training and developing weapon systems, including testing drones and sensors.

An officer with the Land Warfare Centre who flies the Skydio explained that, as part of Cold Response, almost every unit of the Norwegian Army was equipped with this capability to rehearse intelligence-gathering maneuvers. So far, it has performed relatively well, but it has experienced some difficulties, like most drones, in harsh conditions found in the Norwegian Arctic, he said.

One of the key challenges is battery life, which degrades significantly in cold environments.

An additional FPV used by the Norwegians during the exercise was a self-built one, with cheaply procured parts. It served as a one-way attack drone whose purpose was to carry explosives and see how far it could fly.

Another Arctic nation to have brought along an experimental drone was the United States.

The U.S. Marines tested a unique-looking FPV provided by Johns Hopkins University. The variant was equipped with a cage, the purpose of which is to prevent an excessive loss of the systems during training. The cage prevents it from crashing, and if repairs are needed, they can be carried out easily.

The U.S. troops used it in force-on-force scenarios, in which a friendly force engages a live adversary. This type of training allows their operators to enhance their piloting skills in a strike manner while also improving their counter-drone tactics, increasing pilots’ survivability.

Similar to the Norwegians, Master Sgt. Patrick Harrington, director of the unmanned systems center of excellence at the 2nd Marine Division, highlighted power as one of the biggest challenges to operating FPVs in Arctic conditions.

“We’ve been able to exchange with our allies here also, there’s interest in how each country [ourselves included] uses them, what they fly, how they fly it,” he said.

A number of American, Italian, and French military capabilities were expected to be part of NATO’s Cold Response 2026 exercise, taking place from March 9-19 across Norway.

Among them was the Italian Navy destroyer Andrea Doria, which was nowhere to be seen on March 11 during a NATO press tour organized here.

During a visit to the amphibious ship San Giusto, which made the five-week journey to northern Norway, Italian personnel on board told Defense News that the Andrea Doria had departed a few days earlier. It is currently making its way back to Southern Italy in case it is needed there amid the Iran war fallout.

Fears about the conflict widening emerged after a British military base in Cyprus was targeted in an Iranian drone attack in the first days of the war, started by the United States and Israel on Feb. 28.

Also absent here was a squadron of U.S. F-35B Joint Strike Fighters from the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, which was scheduled to participate in Cold Response.

Citing operational security concerns, a spokesman for U.S. Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa said he could not confirm whether the squadron had been redirected for potential deployment to the Middle East.

The Norwegian Military stated that they were informed of the decision weeks ago, adding that the scheduled training objectives would not be affected.

U.S. Air Force F-35s and around 4,000 Marines are still partaking in the exercise.

In January the French Charles de Gaulle carrier strike group began its deployment to the North Atlantic, expected to participate in the France-led activity Orion 26 and Cold Response.

However, on March 3, French President Emmanuel Macron changed course and announced that the carrier would be sent instead to the Eastern Mediterranean. The group of warships has since arrived near Cyprus.

On March 11 at 9:30 am, the deep and distinctive rumble of two Norwegian fighter jets echoed across the silent, mountainous terrain here in northern Norway, where NATO forces are currently conducting part of the biennial Cold Response 2026 exercise.

Seconds later, two F-35s from the Norwegian Air Force darted off from Evenes Air Station to monitor a Russian Ilyushin Il-20M aircraft detected along the Norwegian coast. The military plane, which Moscow primarily uses for surveillance and reconnaissance missions, flew with its transponder switched off, according to the Norwegian Armed Forces.

A statement from the Forsvaret, Norways armed forces, described the event as “routine and expected” during large-scale military exercises.

“They identified and shadowed the aircraft along the Norwegian coast before it turned northwards off Vesteralen – the [Russian] plane then flew south twice more, reaching as far as Lofoten, before returning to the Kola Peninsula around 1:30 pm,” the statement said.

It was the second instance in as many days in which Russian aircraft were detected and identified as operating in international airspace off Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost region that straddles the Barents and Norwegian seas.

On March 10, two F-35s were deployed for the same mission. That time, the Russian Ilyushin Il-20M was reported to have headed north of Sørøya and then returned to the Kola Peninsula.

During a media briefing, Col. Hans Martin Steiro, the Norwegian air wing and base commander at Evenes, explained that in quick-reaction alert (QRA) missions, an alarm sounds when a non-allied aircraft is detected, and fighter crews have 15 minutes to be airborne.

Norwegian pilots have flown an average of 38 QRA missions aimed at unidentified Russian planes per year since 2022, according to a military briefing to reporters.

As part of the planning effort, a U.S. and Norwegian-led research task force will compile a report by 2029 under the name “High North Scenarios for Wargaming and Analysis — Winter Storm 2030.”

Beyond the lead nations, NATO countries to have thus far committed to participating in the Arctic security simulation include Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Sweden and Turkey.

“The region faces rapid militarization of allied and threatening interests – NATO and nations are making procurement decisions that will field the force of 2030 and set the conditions for success and adaptation out to 2040,” a NATO technical activity proposal viewed by Defense News said.

Defense officials on both sides of the Atlantic have warned that the prospect of a war in the region is rising, with the expectation of Russia turning its attention to the region if and when the Ukraine conflict ends.

The High North has increasingly become a geopolitical hotspot, mainly due to the effects of climate change on melting sea ice, which has made the area more attractive and accessible for shipping and resource extraction.

NATO’s biennial Cold Response drill will take place from March 9-19 across Norway. It will include some 25,000 troops from 14 countries, including the U.S. and Denmark, and will feature naval, land, and air operations focused on Arctic defense.

The Pentagon is expected to have around 4,000 Marines participating in the drill, and thousands of Finnish and Swedish troops will also be partaking, operating out of Finland.

The exercise is part of Arctic Sentry, NATO’s ongoing mission to bolster its presence in the region, launched in February to ease tensions over Greenland.

In a report published last month, the D.C.-based Atlantic Council identified five Russian attack scenarios Europe must prepare for. Two of the five targets listed are located in the Arctic: the Svalbard archipelago and the Åland Islands.

In the first instance, the report states that Moscow may view greater value in exploiting the “territorial ambiguity” of the undefended archipelago, located 750 kilometers north of the Norwegian mainland.

It predicts that a variety of hybrid activities would precede any Russian attempt at capturing Svalbard, including the destruction of undersea critical infrastructure or placing intelligence officers in civilian clothes.

“Naval infantry from the Northern Fleet or airborne troops flown in from mainland Russia could rapidly seize and occupy the archipelago with little warning, presenting NATO with a fait accompli – it must prepare detailed plans to retake Svalbard in the event of aggression,” the document said.

One of the recommendations provided would entail the deployment of Norwegian special forces alongside U.S., UK, and Dutch marines who routinely train together in northern Norway and know the area well.

Figures published by Gulf defense ministries indicate that as of March 3, Iran has launched more than 540 missiles and carried out over 1,450 drone strikes against regional countries, with drones constituting roughly three-quarters of the attacks, Reuters reported.

While the patterns seen since the start of the Iranian attack window resemble the saturation logic observed in Ukraine, where large waves of cheap one-way attack drones combined with ballistic missiles are deployed to overwhelm defensive systems, analysts note some differences in their roles.

“In Ukraine, Shahed-type drones often serve as nightly, persistent harassment and infrastructure attrition tools, whereas in the Gulf they’re being used inside a broader missile campaign intended to stretch the Gulf and U.S.-aligned air defenses across multiple states, bases and urban areas simultaneously,” Kristian Patrick Alexander, senior fellow and lead researcher at the UAE-based Rabdan Academy, said.

Thus far, Gulf countries have reported high interception rates of missile attacks, and to a lesser extent, against low-flying drones. For example, data published March 4 by the United Arab Emirates, which has absorbed a large number of the offensives, claimed military forces detected 941 drones and intercepted 876 of them.

Some of the weaponry used by countries and their allies to shoot down low-cost drones includes the U.S.-made Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) systems as well as Rafale fighters, F-15s and Eurofighters.

Francesco Schiavi, research fellow at the Middle East Institute Switzerland, concurs that one of the main challenges for the region will be endurance, especially as the fighting continues.

“Each interception carries a financial and logistical cost – estimates suggest that for every dollar Iran spends producing drones, Gulf states may spend $20-$28 on defensive fire, with individual interceptors often costing more than $1 million,” Schiavi added.

Both experts advised that countries under attack must urgently look to cheaper and scalable counter-drone layers: electronic warfare, jammers, guns or close-in weapons, directed energy, and enhanced shared air picture coordination.

“The ‘winning’ defense will be the one that can kill lots of targets cheaply without burning premium interceptors – without cheaper layers and better integration, the cost curve favors the attacker,” Alexander said.

Meanwhile, Tehran’s offensive arsenal, already degraded by U.S. and Israeli air strikes, is also running lower, said Federico Borsari, non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis

What to watch

As hostilities drag on, subject experts highlight three important factors to monitor: the type of attacks, the nature of targets, and the performance of strike weapons.

According to Alexander, one tactic to watch is whether Tehran will continue to send attack drones in big waves or if they will be used in sequenced packages to probe radars before firing missiles.

Schiavi adds that it will be important to pay attention to the strike pattern Tehran adopts: Until now, the regime has followed a dispersed approach, targeting several Gulf countries at once with a mix of weapons, but it could shift toward true saturation attacks as observed in Ukraine.

The primary targets of Iranian attacks have so far been military bases and embassies. It remains to be seen if Tehran is able to expand the target set to include more critical infrastructure, such as ports, logistic hubs, or energy facilities, which experts say would signal an escalation.

Sam Bendett, advisor at the Center for Naval Analyses, said he’s keeping close tabs on the flight ranges of Iran’s Shahed drones, and the variety of similar weapons the country has in its arsenal.

It will also be important to see if Washington’s role changes as the conflict continues, considering that Gulf countries’ interception capabilities are closely tied to U.S. technology.

“Gulf air defense systems and their performance remain closely linked to U.S.-enabled radar coverage, early warning, and operational coordination – interceptions over Qatar, for example, rely heavily on radar networks connected to Al Udeid Air base, while missile engagements in Kuwait occur in airspace shared with American aircraft,” Schiavi added.

Social media sites have been flooded in recent days with frantic footage from content creators, travelers and locals in the region showing, in part, incoming missiles and drones being destroyed over different cities.

On March 3, the Dubai Police issued a public advisory as an image reading “Think before you share – spreading rumors is a crime,” cautioning that sharing false information or content that could compromise public safety could result in penalties of at least 200,000 AED ($54,458) and two years of prison time.

Last week, Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior announced that at least two individuals, aged 27 and 37, were arrested for “misusing social media platforms” over the recording of Iranian strikes.

“The suspects filmed and broadcast live content and video clips, which they later shared through their social media accounts in a manner that constituted a legal violation and could harm security as well as provoke public opinion. … The necessary legal procedures are now underway,” the ministry said in a statement.

In a similar move, Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior urged residents to refrain from recording the neutralization of aerial threats as well as authorities in the line of duty, as this might “incite anxiety” among the population and spread misinformation. Non-compliance with this directive may entail “legal measures,” the ministry said in a statement published on X.

The Qatari Ministry of Interior has come out with a similar warning.

These regulations are not uncommon, especially in active combat zones and nearby areas, to maintain operational security and avoid endangering defensive positions.

In the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian security forces warned citizens not to film or distribute videos of enemy strikes that could be used by Moscow to improve its attacks.

To demonstrate how dangerous such footage could be, in 2022, the Ukrainian government shared the story of an individual who shared a video of a kamikaze drone attack, where clear damage to a critical infrastructure facility was visible.

“My friends spread this on the Internet, then it was used by propaganda [Russian] media to conduct special information and psychological operations against Ukraine. … I realize that my video materials could have been used to adjust the accuracy of the strikes,” the government statement quoting the individual said.

Iran has continued to carry out drone and ballistic missiles targeting American forces and infrastructure in Gulf countries, with one Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle striking the U.S. Consulate in Dubai on March 3.

While out on a patrol in Oresund, a narrow strait that separates Denmark and Sweden, a Swedish Navy ship detected a suspicious unmanned aerial system approaching the French vessel.

“Following the observation, the armed forces took countermeasures to disrupt the suspected drone – contact with it was subsequently lost, but no other ones have been observed,” the Swedish Armed Forces said in a statement.

Speaking to local media outlet SVT Nyheter, Minister of Defense Pål Jonson said that it is likely the drone was Russian, as a Russian military ship was detected operating in the immediate vicinity of the Feb. 26 incident.

Jonson called the episode a probable “violation of Swedish airspace,” and an investigation was launched to determine whether a breach was committed.

The Swedish Armed Forces declined to provide further details.

Sweden announced last month that it is undertaking a major revamp of its unmanned capabilities, including the procurement of remote-controlled electronic warfare systems that consist of drone detection sensors, which could be based on ships or ground units.

While authorities have not yet confirmed the identity of Russian the ship, several open-source maritime observers compiled a list of Russian-flagged vessels spotted in the area roughly around the same time. These included the U.S.-sanctioned Sparta IV, a cargo ship flying the Russian flag, known for transporting military equipment between Syria and Russia.

According to Guillaume Vernet, spokesman for the French General Staff, the Swedish countermeasures used to repel the drone away from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle “worked perfectly” and did not disrupt the flagship’s activities.

The presence of the aircraft carrier is linked to ongoing and upcoming NATO exercise activities and deployments, including the Orion 2026 exercises in the North Atlantic and Baltic regions, which began earlier this month and will run until March.

The Danish Air Force officially established Squadron 729 on Feb. 16, which will operate the four MQ-9B long-range unmanned aircraft out of Aalborg Air Base, located in northern Denmark, starting from 2028.

Earlier this month, Canada, which has acquired 11 of the same General Atomics-made drones that it will receive around the same time, signed a defense cooperation agreement with Denmark at the Munich Security Conference. The systems are planned to be based in different locations, including Nova Scotia on the east coast and British Columbia on the Canadian west coast.

The team-up brings together two Arctic nations that have repeatedly drawn the ire of Donald Trump since he assumed his second term as U.S. president in early 2025. Trump harbors a grudge against Canada for not wanting to be part of the United States, and against Denmark for having no interest in giving him the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland.

The defense-technical nexus around the MQ-9B drone holds promise in forging a closer connection between Ottawa and Copenhagen, as there is currently no formal maintenance-sharing or data-sharing arrangement between the two nations, according to issue experts.

“A joint logistics or maintenance hub would absolutely be strategically beneficial for them – maintaining equipment and operating bases in the region is very expensive – sharing facilities and having an integrated logistics system can make operations easier and more efficient for all parties involved,” Jens Marquard Sørensen, director of a Danish consulting company, said.

Still, both countries must first evaluate whether their operational plans match up.

For example, basing the Danish fleet at Aalborg Air Base would colocate the equipment with air force maintenance expertise there, but it’s a long way from strategic patrol points in Greenland, said Sørensen.

“The long distances [from Aalborg] to Greenland may pose operational challenges – flight times are long, increasing wear on drones before they arrive for a mission, and they would lose fuel going there. … It also means that any kind of rapid reaction using the MQ-9Bs is not possible, so having a forward operating station in the Arctic itself would be a notable advantage,” he said.

To put this into perspective, the straight-line distance between the Danish air base and Nuuk is approximately 3,324 kilometres (2,065 miles), and commercial jets covering the same route average flight times of about four to five hours.

Rune Raunow, a defense consultant at the Copenhagen-based Rethink Advisory, which advises the Danish Armed Forces, said a Denmark-Canada pact around the U.S.-made surveillance drones would be especially relevant for contingency plans, refueling or emergency landings.

Cooperation on sensors, too, could factor into the equation, Raunow said. While the Canadian government has opted for L3 Harris Wescam MX-20D sensor systems for intelligence and surveillance missions, Denmark has not publicly disclosed its preference.

“The drones are essentially just a platform; what will be more relevant is whether they will buy the same set of communication networks, sensors, optic detection systems, etc. … Being able to track threats in these very remote places would be extremely easier if they were using the same equipment,” Raunow said.

Canada’s MQ-9B purchase was driven by its need to bolster Arctic operations and provide continuous intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, according to government statements.

While stationing its fleet in southern bases is consistent with existing airfields and maintenance infrastructure, these areas are still far from the high Arctic and other regional chokepoints, where the country has increased monitoring needs.

Sørensen suggests that if NATO was to re-open the Keflavík Air Base in Iceland, as a common allied base, even just for emergencies, it could also serve as a possible site for the countries’ MQ-9B fleets. He noted that this location is the easiest point for patrolling north, east, and south of Greenland.

Keflavík Air Base was closed in 2006 and was primarily operated by the U.S. Navy on behalf of NATO. Today, allies conduct routine and rotational fighter and bomber deployments from there, focused on air policing missions.

As a member of NATO, Iceland has no armed forces of its own.

Sørensen added that its position south of the Arctic Circle makes operations easier and less prone to weather-related disruptions, offering a closer alternative than flying from Nuuk or Canada.

“Shipping routes are also always open year-round, making it cheaper to maintain a station or base than anywhere else in the region – technicians, spare parts or even larger equipment can be transported relatively cheaply via regular civilian shipping routes versus shipping to Greenland, which can cost up to 20$ per kilogram in some areas,” Sørensen said.

Other locations to consider may include Northern Canada, which Hans Peter Michaelsen, a defense analyst and former member of the Royal Danish Air Force, highlights as geographically close to the Danish Arctic territory. However, he notes that many of these areas face significant infrastructure limitations that would obstruct the construction of year-round drone facilities.