HMS Prince of Wales leads NATO strike group in High North

HMS Prince of Wales left Portsmouth in mid-October and headed into the Norwegian Sea as part of Operation Firecrest Phase 2. Alongside her sailed HMS Dauntless, the French frigate FS Bretagne, and Norway's HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen, forming a NATO carrier strike group that operated above the Arctic Circle for several weeks.

The group carried out live strike drills at Setermoen, in Norway's Troms region, working with Norwegian Army units in an exercise called Neptune Strike 26-4. F-35Bs flew air patrols throughout. Jets scrambled from the carrier's deck to intercept a Russian Tu-142 maritime patrol aircraft tracked entering the Norwegian Sea.

Russian patrols are up. British naval authorities recorded a 25% rise in military maritime activity monitored in northern waters this year. The Norwegian Sea sortie gives the Royal Navy and its NATO partners a standing presence in a corridor that sees regular Russian submarine and patrol aircraft transits.

HMS Prince of Wales is due in Oslo on November 10 for the International Sea Power Conference, drawing defense ministers from several NATO nations.

The Norwegian deployment follows a busy autumn for the Royal Navy's carrier fleet. In early October, HMS Queen Elizabeth made a stop at Belfast, the first aircraft carrier to enter the harbor in decades. The same stretches of northern Atlantic the strike group crosses have seen unusual activity: in late October, Myra, a name on UK, EU, and US sanctions lists, sent a distress alert roughly 270 miles west of the Bay of Biscay.