STAVANGER, Norway – On January 26, NATO’s Joint Warfare Centre (JWC) launched “The JWC Campaign Plan 2026–2030” – the roadmap that will guide the organization through an era of increased complexity, providing it with a coherent framework to synchronize its activities, manage transformation, and institutionalize innovation.
“The JWC Campaign Plan sets a unified direction for transforming the JWC into the Alliance’s central enabler for warfare development and training of operational and strategic headquarters,” Major General Ruprecht von Butler, Commander JWC said.
Acting as the “north star” for the JWC, the Campaign Plan outlines a five-year path focusing on the following five strategic objectives:
- Delivering high-quality multi-domain exercises;
- Driving warfare development from Allied Command Transformation (ACT) concepts into Allied Command Operations (ACO) execution;
- Informing future Alliance direction through the testing of NATO’s highly complex defence plans;
- Developing a modern and digitally enabled workforce;
- Strengthening the JWC’s reputation through institutional excellence.
The JWC Campaign Plan is also designed to ensure stronger strategic alignment with the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept, NATO’s Warfare Development Agenda, the new Campaign Approach to Exercises and the Audacious Training Initiative.
As one of NATO’s key transformation instruments, the JWC supports ACT and ACO by acting as a link between warfare development and warfighting readiness.
The JWC Campaign Plan sets a unified direction for transforming the JWC into the Alliance’s central enabler for warfare development and training of operational and strategic headquarters.
– Major General Ruprecht von Butler
Commander JWC
The JWC Campaign Plan 2026–2030 is built on the recognition that NATO’s collective training and exercises have shifted from headquarters-process drills to a theatre-wide, strategically integrated model that tests ACO real-world plans and ACT concepts employing greater realism, agility, and innovative technologies.
The JWC Campaign Plan’s priorities include creating a combined opposing forces (OPFOR) and warfare development capability, deeper use of modelling and simulation, and integration of high-quality digital infrastructures, including advanced AI-enabled tools.
The Campaign Plan is the driving force behind the JWC’s transition from being primarily an exercise delivery organization to becoming an exercise-based warfare development centre of gravity for the Alliance. This will position the JWC to provide the best value for NATO’s warfighters, delivering more agile, realistic, and technologically integrated multi-domain exercises.
Major General von Butler explained: “We have developed the Campaign Plan to ensure our command is fully prepared for the accelerating complexity of modern warfare. It will position the JWC for future opportunities as we continue to provide the link between emerging concepts, real-word observations and operational readiness.”
“To meet this demand, the JWC must expand its exercise spectrum, shorten planning timelines, integrate military and multi-domain effects, evolve its organizational structure and fully adopt digital ways of working,” the JWC Commander added.
The JWC started amending its exercise planning processes in March 2025 under the umbrella term “new ways of working,” which focus on better management of the Centre’s resources, ownership in exercises, and digital transformation.
The second step centres on people and organization, as the JWC prepares to implement its new trial structure in February.
Overall, the JWC Campaign Plan 2026–2030 is designed to ensure the JWC’s continued growth as an adaptable deliverer of cutting-edge training and enabler of warfare development.
It ensures the JWC’s preparedness against current and future threats, where every staff member plays a role in enhancing NATO’s deterrence and readiness posture, ensuring that NATO’s operational headquarters are capable, adaptable and ready to win in any environment.
Established on October 23, 2003, in Stavanger, Norway, the Joint Warfare Centre is NATO’s training focal point for joint operational- and strategic-level warfare, responsible for delivering NATO’s largest multi-domain exercises at these levels.
