U.S. European Command Deputy Commander Lt. Gen. Steven Basham hosted Swedish Chief of Joint Operations Lt. Gen. Carl-Johan Edström and Finnish Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy Maj. Gen. Janne Jaakkola in Stuttgart, Germany, Mar. 1 to endorse the final results of a trilateral enhanced cooperation study.
In 2021, military planners from Finland, Sweden and the U.S. established a trilateral working group to initiate a collective study to identify additional areas of cooperation, drive coordinated capability development and procurement, and inform respective defense cooperation agreements in order to enhance regional security in the High North and the Baltic Sea regions.
Over a series of nine working group sessions, Finnish, Swedish and U.S. military subject matter experts worked to identify ways to improve trilateral interoperability, target opportunities to operate interchangeably across domains and maneuver together with seamless command.
“The security challenges in the Arctic and Baltic Sea are greater and more complex than ever before,” Basham said. “The finalization of this collaborative study reaffirms the importance of continuously working together to identify opportunities for strengthening our collective deterrence capabilities to counter the current and emerging threats that could impact our shared security interests in the region."
Conducting a diverse portfolio of year-round exercises, such as Arctic Forge and Cold Response, Finnish, Swedish and U.S. forces continually hone their skills to maintain operational readiness across all domains and improve interoperability between and among NATO Allies and partners.
The finalized study confirmed the importance of transatlantic cooperation for European and U.S. security, and reinforced the vitality of working together to address global and regional challenges.
-30-
About USEUCOM
U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) is responsible for U.S. military operations across Europe, portions of Asia and the Middle East, the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean. USEUCOM is comprised of more than 64,000 military and civilian personnel and works closely with NATO Allies and partners. The command is one of two U.S. forward-deployed geographic combatant commands headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. For more information about USEUCOM, visit https://www.eucom.mil.