To Secure Arctic, NORTHCOM Builds Closer Ties to Pacific, European Commands

U.S. Northern Command plans to sign an agreement with its European and Pacific counterparts to enhance coordination and close security seams in the Arctic, a strategically vital region where all three commands converge, U.S. officials told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

NORTHCOM’s Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, U.S. European Command’s Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, and U.S. Pacific Command’s Adm. Samuel Paparo will finalize the agreement, which aims to strengthen information sharing and ensure that adversaries cannot exploit the geographic boundaries among the commands.

U.S. Northern Command’s long-standing motto, “We have the watch,” has taken on greater urgency in recent years as the potential means to attack the U.S. Arctic region have grown. Today, the command’s geographic focus stretches across Canada, Greenland, and south to Mexico and parts of the Caribbean, and the potential dangers have expanded to include a range of emerging threats, from intelligence-gathering balloons to ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones.  

Guillot, in a September interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine, said the command has managed the growth well. “Over the last couple of years, we’ve received a few new missions with Greenland, the Southern Border, Golden Dome, and the counter-UAS mission, and we’ve been able to evolve and incorporate those into our daily homeland defense operations, I think, seamlessly,” said Guillot, whose responsibilities also include heading the binational U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command, known as NORAD.

“The command is growing as the number of threats and the number of avenues of approach that they can use to threaten us increase,” he added of NORTHCOM.

The Arctic’s strategic importance has grown as melting polar ice has opened up the region for greater commercial traffic and resource exploitation.

Russia, which owns more than half the Arctic coastline, has long projected its military might in the region.

More recently, China has sought to assert itself as an Arctic nation, not because it controls territory there but because of its value as a transit venue, shortening the trade routes between China and Europe. China operates research vessels there, including submersibles.

“They’re seeking to move themselves forward militarily and become global power projectors, not regional power projectors, and part of that will involve holding us at risk through the Arctic and ensuring that policy in the Arctic reflects their interests,” retired Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, Guillot’s predecessor at NORTHCOM and NORAD, said in an interview.

A joint China-Russia bomber patrol in the region, which took off in 2024 from a Russian base, demonstrated closer ties between the two and raised concerns across North America and Europe about their growing cooperation.

“When you see Russia and China cooperating militarily in the Arctic, with a greater capacity arguably than anywhere else on Earth, I think that should give some signals that we should be paying attention to what’s going on in the region,” said Iris Ferguson, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience from 2022-2025.

Ferguson sees closing the gaps between U.S. military commands that converge in the Arctic region as essential to enhanced security.

“There are multiple seams in the Arctic for the United States,” she said. “The one between NORTHCOM and EUCOM is a significant one and is one area that deserves more attention.”

NORTHCOM led the drive to formalize an agreement with its fellow combatant commands, working closely with EUCOM and its boss, Grynkewich, who is also NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, with critical ties to NATO’s Nordic allies. Through NATO, Grynkewich is responsible for defending what NATO dubs the High North, comprising Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and the U.S. The alliance held multiple large-scale Arctic exercises this past summer, some of which Air & Space Forces Magazine experienced firsthand. NATO’s Arctic Sentry “enhanced vigilance activity” operates in cooperation with NORAD and NORTHCOM, and alliance officials describe that cooperation as at a level not seen in decades.

Guillot said the potential threats aren’t limited to America’s largest potential adversaries.

“I see the threat to our continent changing not just from Russia and China, but from multiple adversaries,” Guillot said. “The biggest change is that it’s from all avenues of approach instead of just from the north, and it’s with systems that could affect us from further away. So therefore our defense capabilities need to be expanded further from our borders to make sure that we’re defending at the appropriate range.”

“What that necessitates is cooperation with EUCOM, PACOM, and SOUTHCOM, where we can exchange information, pictures, intelligence, and even resources to defend further away,” Guillot said.

VanHerck applauded efforts to strengthen Arctic security and stop threats before they reach North America.

“Homeland defense doesn’t start in the homeland,” VanHerck said. “It starts forward with allies and partners and fellow combat commanders forward. Ideally, you have a posture and a presence and enough domain awareness that you deter those activities before they ever start. And if they’re going to attack, you can defeat those adversaries or capabilities further forward.”

The Trump administration has made Arctic security a centerpiece of its foreign policy, pressing to win new concessions for American basing in Greenland, expanding beyond a single Space Force installation to establish two new bases. Demonstrating the critical nature of Greenland to North American security, the administration transferred responsibility for Greenland, a territory of Denmark, to U.S. Northern Command, removing it from U.S. European Command’s area of responsibility.

That transfer is far from symbolic. “A lot of exercises and operations that we would normally conduct either unilaterally, or perhaps with Canada through NORAD, we’re now doing with other countries to include Denmark,” Guillot said.

A recent exercise with the U.S. and allied nations marked the first time Danish F-35s landed in Greenland.

U.S., Canadian, and Danish forces conducted joint Operation Arctic Vanguard and NATO exercises in Greenland this month that drew F-35As from continental U.S. bases, U.S. F-16s from Alaska, Canadian CF-18s, and Danish F-35As. French air-to-air refueling aircraft and NATO-operated E-3 AWACS command-and-control jets also joined the operations as part of NATO’s Arctic Sentry.

Referencing the recent exercises, Guillot said allies were “fully integrated” and “operating in multiple lanes at the same time,” a shift from a few years ago when the U.S. may have conducted unilateral training instead. Operating as an integrated whole creates dilemmas for adversaries and acts as a force multiplier for the allies.

“That is possible due to the great relationship and partnering by the Danish forces,” Guillot said.

On the other side of North America, near Alaska, the U.S. and Canada recently conducted a joint exercise practicing striking maritime targets in the Bering Sea, using aircraft, surface vessels, and a submarine. The U.S. has also conducted joint naval operations with Canada that involve the U.S. Coast Guard alongside the U.S. military. Those exercises fall under Operation Tundra Merlin, which focuses on deterrence near Alaska, including the western Arctic and Northern Pacific. Pacific Air Forces aircraft stationed in Alaska also supported Arctic Vanguard on the other side of NORTHCOM’s region.

Alaska’s geographic size and placement at the nexus of the NORTHCOM and PACOM areas of responsibility places it in proximity to potential threats from China, Russia, and North Korea.

“I don’t think people appreciate the role that Alaska plays for our homeland defense mission, but also for our Indo-Pacific mission,” said Ferguson, who also served as a senior advisor to the Air Force on the Arctic. “Alaska is critical as a place of power projection to be able to project power not only into the Indo-Pacific in the event of a contingency, but also into the European theater.”

The exercises underscore Guillot’s broader Nordic Bridge initiative, launched earlier this year to better integrate allied operations across the Arctic. It includes coordination among the various U.S. combatant commands that touch on the region, as well as Canada, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland, all NATO allies. Working together, they aim to enhance domain awareness and interoperability.

“We’re working with other friendly Arctic nations to increase our presence,” Guillot said, “to increase and expand the deterrence, and make sure that every exercise we do up there is multinational and along multiple avenues of approach.”