STAVANGER, Norway – Under the oversight of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, the Joint Warfare Centre successfully directed and executed Exercise STEADFAST DETERRENCE 2025 (STDC25), which concluded last week with participation from all 32 allied nations. Conducted across multiple NATO and U.S. command locations, the exercise marked a major step forward in enhancing strategic readiness, operational convergence, and multi-domain integration within the Alliance.
Spanning seven key locations, the exercise demonstrated the Alliance’s ability to operate cohesively across a distributed battlespace:
- Joint Warfare Centre, Norway
- Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), Belgium
- United States European Command (USEUCOM), Germany
- Allied Air Command, Germany
- Joint Support and Enabling Command, Germany
- Allied Land Command, Türkiye
- United States Naval Forces Europe and Africa, Italy
Most notably, this nine-day event formally certified Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) as a NATO strategic-level warfighting headquarters and marked the first-ever integration of SHAPE and United States European Command (USEUCOM) as joint training audiences at the strategic and operational levels. Their combined participation exemplifies a growing operational convergence between the Alliance and its transatlantic partners.
As NATO’s warfare development command, Allied Command Transformation ensures the Alliance remains prepared to deter and, if necessary, defend in a complex and evolving threat environment. Through its subordinate commands such as the Joint Warfare Centre, Allied Command Transformation delivers advanced, scenario-driven training events that operationalize NATO’s strategic concepts and reinforce collective readiness.
STEADFAST DETERRENCE 2025 was an unprecedented exercise in NATO’s history. Never before has the Alliance executed a strategic-level exercise such as this. It focused on operationalizing NATO’s Concept for Deterrence and Defence together with our American partners, reinforcing our transatlantic collaboration on collective defence. It validated elements of NATO’s defence plans and the force model, increasing exercise realism to an unprecedented level. It also supported NATO’s efforts to become a multi-domain operation-enabled Alliance by providing the opportunity to test the operationalization of cyberspace and space, as well as the cognitive dimension and strategic communication.
Major General Ruprecht von Butler,
Commander of the Joint Warfare Centre
Approximately 4,800 military and civilian personnel participated across the seven exercise sites. Alongside SHAPE and USEUCOM, contributions came from across the NATO Command and Force Structure, including Allied Land Command, Allied Maritime Command, Allied Air Command, Special Operations Forces Headquarters, Joint Support and Enabling Command, as well as component commands and non-military entities.
Lieutenant Colonel (GS) Robin, Chief Content for STEADFAST DETERRENCE 2025, emphasized the strategic importance: “Effective deterrence is far from easy to achieve. The exercise allowed us to explore the military-strategic depth of decisions in a crisis. Especially when the actions of our adversaries are strategically ambiguous, we must understand their signals, anticipate their next moves and successfully deter them through our reactions. In this exercise, we have strengthened our Alliance’s ability to maintain peace in the future.”
As a key element of Allied Command Transformation, the Joint Warfare Centre remains NATO’s premier platform for joint operational and strategic-level training. In addition to delivering complex multi-domain exercises, the Centre contributes to NATO’s warfare development through doctrinal refinement, capability integration, experimentation, and lessons learned.
Exercises like STEADFAST DETERRENCE reflect Allied Command Transformation’s continued commitment to adapting the Alliance’s warfighting capabilities and ensuring NATO’s readiness in today’s dynamic security environment.