Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite, former US ambassador to Norway, aboard the USS Iwo Jima in Oslo in 2018.

WASHINGTON: Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite made his first overseas trip this week since being sworn in May 29, heading back to Norway where he has served as ambassador since February 2018. 

His travel to Oslo will see him formally relinquish his ambassadorship — which he still holds — a unique situation that has seen him hold two Senate-confirmed positions simultaneously.  

For the past three weeks, Braithwaite has been focused on getting his arms around the Navy’s 2021 budget request currently winding its way through the House and Senate, while working with Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s office on the service’s much-delayed shipbuilding plan, which Esper took control over in February.

Plans call for Braithwaite to spend a few days in Oslo before heading further north to visit the Marine’s rotational force based in Setermoen. He’ll then travel to the UK to meet there with officials.

“The trip marks Braithwaite’s first international engagement as Secretary of the Navy, highlighting the importance of the Transatlantic partnership,” his spokesperson, Cmdr. Sarah Higgins told me via email. “While in Norway, the Secretary will also relinquish his U.S. Ambassadorship.”

The meeting in Norway comes as the Pentagon continues to forge closer ties with the Nordic nation that is undergoing a military transformation by buying new F-35s and P-8 surveillance planes as it increases the size of its military.

While Norwegian officials don’t expect to see any overt aggression from Russia, the two countries share a small border region well above the Arctic Circle that has seen increased Russian submarine and surface ship activity in recent years.

In November, 10 Russian submarines based on the Kola Peninsula cruised into the Barents Sea along the Norwegian coast on their way to the North Atlantic in one of the biggest undersea exercises since the Cold War. That prompted a flyover by three US B-52s, and the very public docking of the USS Minnesota, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, at Haakonsvern Naval Base on Norway’s west coast. The show of force was accompanied by the US Sixth Fleet tweeting photos of an MK-48 Advanced Capability torpedo being loaded aboard the boat along with a port visit by the guided-missile destroyer USS Gridley in Tromso.

Just last week, American B-2 bombers made a roundtrip flight from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to train and fly with Norwegian F-35s north of the Arctic Circle. In May, four US destroyers and a Royal Navy frigate entered the Barents Sea together for the first time since the 1980s, running a series of anti-submarine drills.

Russia’s Kola Peninsula, just west of Norway’s northernmost point, is home to the prized Northern Fleet and some of Moscow’s most advanced long-range weaponry, assets that can move quickly and without much warning from the high north down the Norwegian coast and into the North Atlantic.

Norwegian officials said Russia’s submarine exercise was part of a broader effort to push its modernized subs out to sea more often. They also see the moves as validation of the decision to buy P-8 surveillance aircraft and investments in anti-submarine technologies to be placed on surface ships and helicopters. If the Russian Navy were ever able to close the critical stretch of water between Greenland, Iceland and the UK — known as the “GIUK Gap” — up to 80 percent of Norway would be cut off from resupply and reinforcement by sea, making control of the waterway critical to Oslo’s security plans.

Speaking on a call organized by IISS this morning, Adm. James Foggo, commander of US Naval Forces Europe-Africa, repeated the US government’s concern that the Arctic is becoming a contested space, making it a growing focus for the Navy.

“The environment up there is changing, and not for the better,” he said. “The diminishing ice coverage is causing competition to emerge in this new area.” 

For example, the Chinese government is building new icebreakers at a pace far surpassing the United States, and “Russia has taken an aggressive approach to the Arctic,” including a new icebreaker, the Ivan Papanin, that is equipped to carry the Kalibr cruise missile. “I’ve asked this question a few times and I’ll ask it again. Who puts missiles on icebreakers?” Foggo said, adding, “some countries are putting defensive weapons on their icebreakers, but the Kaliber is hardly a defensive weapon.” There have been reports that Russia is deploying its S-400 air defense system to its Arctic bases.

In response to these moves, the Trump administration earlier this month issued a surprise order to the Coast Guard to undertake a major rethink of current plans for a new heavy icebreaker fleet, calling for the ships to have the ability to launch drones, feature intelligence-collection systems, and hold new “defensive armament” systems. Most significantly, the presidential order demands that the new proposals consider using nuclear-powered propulsion systems, all sharp departures from past practices.

The call potentially complicates existing plans for at least three new icebreakers slated to be built by 2026, and gives the Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the State and Defense departments, just 60 days to hatch a plan for a new icebreaker fleet deployable by the end of the decade.