STAVANGER, Norway – STEADFAST WOLF 2025 (STWO25), NATO’s largest Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) wargame exercise concluded on February 7, 2025, at the Joint Warfare Centre (JWC) in Stavanger, Norway.
Scheduled by Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), the operational and tactical-level wargame was designed and executed in collaboration with U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) to test NATO’s CBRN defence capabilities and readiness in a CBRN-contested joint and multi-domain, operational environment, based on an Article 5 collective defence scenario.
More than 100 CBRN professionals from NATO Command and Force Structure Headquarters, Allied nations, Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defence Centre of Excellence, Joint Program Executive Office for CBRN Defence (JPEO-CBRND) and the United States (U.S.) Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) participated in the weeklong wargame exercise.
STWO25’s primary and secondary training audiences included Allied Joint Force Command Naples (JFCNP) and USEUCOM, respectively.
Previous iterations were planned and executed by USEUCOM, however, STWO25 is the first iteration of the wargame under the lead of SHAPE.
“SHAPE’s strategic partnership with USEUCOM plays a key role in shaping policy, doctrine, and operational responses to emerging CBRN threats as well as enhancing NATO’s risk management framework for anticipating and responding to CBRN threats,” explained Mr Frantisek Pavlasek, the lead planner for the wargame.
He added that the wargame also helped establish a shared understanding across NATO and national staff regarding the impact of peer adversary chemical weapons and non-strategic nuclear weapons use in a joint and multi-domain operational environment.
“The STWO series has now been setup as NATO’s specialized exercise focused on enhancing CBRN defence and preparedness,” Mr Pavlasek said.
We believe exercises like STEADFAST WOLF are essential to help us improve our CBRN capabilities across the Alliance. Demonstrating that we are developing and improving the tools and capabilities that allow us to not only survive in a CBRN contested environment but also to prevail.
Brigadier General Chris A. McKinney, USEUCOM J5 Deputy Director for Global Partnering, Security Cooperation and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction
A wargaming exercise like STEADFAST WOLF, which comes underneath SHAPE’s purview, is really a great opportunity for us to look at how we can use a exercises, wargames, and scenario-based discussions to explore these issues and make sure that we have thought through current and future challenges and how best to address them within the Alliance.
Mr Jim Stokes, NATO’s Director of Nuclear Policy
STEADFAST WOLF 2025 welcomed senior leaders from across NATO, Allied nations, and participating organizations on February 5, during a distinguished visitors (DV) day to demonstrate a variety of wargame capabilities, including an experiment on artificial intelligence (AI) presented by the Headquarters Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (HQ SACT) staff.
Brigadier General Raymond L. Adams, the JWC’s Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff, welcomed the DVs saying that the JWC was honoured to host such a prominent group of CBRN experts, praising their efforts for charting the course for NATO’s future CBRN training and capabilities.
Following the JWC DCOM’s opening remarks, the AI experiment focused on exploring how AI could support commanders’ decision-making in CBRN risk assessment and response.
“Incorporating AI to the operational and tactical level wargame is a new frontier for NATO. We are learning how to accelerate the adoption and integration of AI to accelerate defence security across the Alliance,” said HQ SACT data science and AI expert, Talia Beech.
Brigadier General Chris A. McKinney, the J5 Deputy Director for Global Partnering, Security Cooperation and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction at USEUCOM said: “AI has a lot of tools that we are continuously studying to better understand, develop and incorporate into our processes. But just like we do in anything else, we like to remain at the tip-of-the-spear at EUCOM in support of NATO in order to make sure that not only are we able to better converge and effectively provide deterrence and collective defence for the Euro Atlantic area, but that we are able to be at the-tip-of-the spear when it comes to technological advancements and all ways to best protect the entirety of the Euro Atlantic population.”
Brigadier General McKinney underscored the growing partnership between SHAPE and USEUCOM, saying: “we believe exercises like STWO are essential to help us improve our CBRN capabilities across the Alliance. Demonstrating that we are developing and improving the tools and capabilities that allow us to not only survive in a CBRN contested environment but also to prevail. This is a vital part of our deterrence strategy and strongly demonstrates to any adversary that we can overcome any challenge. The world should never have to worry that our adversaries will repeat the mistakes of the past by using CBRN weapons again in any conflict. However, to deter any adversary from using weapons of mass destruction again, we are achieving objectives to make certain we have improved CBRN readiness throughout the Alliance at every echelon. Not simply focusing on our CBRN Specialized units, but also ensuring it is incorporated into every formation and across every warfighting function. USEUCOM provides unique support roles to the Alliance. We are collectively working to better refine CBRN readiness and identify capability needs throughout NATO. Ultimately our purpose is always to deter any enemy. We do that best by demonstrating, at every level, that we are prepared to prevail in this type of environment.”
Asked about the impact of evolving multi-domain capabilities on CBRN defence, Brigadier General McKinney highlighted the importance of “interoperability between joint and multi-domain warfighting capabilities.”
He added: “We have to redouble our efforts on our joint and multi-domain platforms, everything from ISR platforms to other detection capabilities, and then especially making sure that our manoeuvre elements as well as our technical support forces are able, if necessary, to defeat and prevail over any adversary in a CBRN contaminated environment.”
Mr Jim Stokes, NATO’s Director of Nuclear Policy, explained that STWO25 exercises a key part of NATO’s broader Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA) Family of Plans, which ensures that the Alliance is prepared to face any threat or crisis emanating from any direction.
Mr Stokes said: “STEADFAST WOLF 2025 is an excellent opportunity for us to take the specialized knowledge that we have within the CBRN defence community and be able to integrate that with the wider joint forces across the Alliance. Both sides I think have a good understanding of these issues and hence we are more integrated together at the operational and strategic levels.”
“So a wargaming exercise like STEADFAST WOLF, which comes underneath SHAPE’s purview, is really a great opportunity for us to look at how we can use a exercises, wargames, and scenario-based discussions to explore these issues and make sure that we have thought through current and future challenges and how best to address them within the Alliance,” he added.
Mr Stokes noted the importance of NATO’s STEADFAST Series of Exercises, including NATO’s largest command post exercises STEADFAST DETERRENCE and STEADFAST DUEL, also planned and executed by the Joint Warfare Centre.
“What I would like to see from the evolution of our exercises across the Alliance, and specifically within the STEADFAST series, is that we evolve from looking at CBRN defence as a niche issue, for which obviously we need specialized expertise and capabilities, and integrate CBRN defence with our other exercises like STEADFAST DETERRENCE and STEADFAST DUEL.”
“The threats we face from different adversaries who have CBRN capabilities are very real,” Mr Stokes continued. “We need to have a good understanding of how best to address them. Exercises are a really good way for us to do that, and again, we need to have a balance between specialized exercises, like STEADFAST WOLF 2025, but also larger exercises for general purpose forces, that they have a good understanding of how we can defend against those threats and how best to address them within a conflict situation.”
