Speeches by Sandher-Jones.

“It brings together a coalition of countries that have shared interests in deepening our co-operation, capability development, training and interoperability. As you know, it was formed in response to the events of 2014, so it has a clear European focus. As I set out at the beginning, we recognise that the High North is …”

“We have supported operations on other ships. It would be very helpful if I could explain to you the operational conditions and decision-making processes as to why we target one ship as opposed to another.”

“We are in a period of transition for the Royal Navy. We are looking at getting new capabilities in—obviously, we have announced some of the ones we will get—and it is quite clear that we have significant capability focused on that already. As I am sure you are aware, there are challenges with the availability of some e…”

“But for the avoidance of doubt, we have significant layers of support to our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent; I think it is very important to state that. When I look at what we currently have in support of the security of the High North and the Arctic, we have the carrier strike group conducting exercises there at …”

“We are very happy to offer a private briefing.”

“As a former intelligencer, I know how closely we worked with Canada in the Five Eyes; I know how fundamental that relationship is to our intelligence and our security architecture. We have to be very careful in looking at whether we would expand that. Outside of that, when we look at intelligence sharing—I am conscious…”

“To meet the threat of today, we have significant, multi-layered and different types of capability there.”

“With anti-submarine warfare in general?”

“And I am not trying to be difficult in not giving a simple answer.”

“There will always be differences in non-NATO deployments. We have interests all around the globe, in the Indo-Pacific, the south Atlantic and the Caribbean—although we are not ASW-focused there—so there will always be other activity that we need to focus on. We are getting these eight new ships, and Norway is getting a…”

“Thank you very much for inviting me to come here today. I think that this is a really important topic, and there is lots we need to get into. To help set the scene—this will not be news to people here—the role that the High North plays is fundamental to our homeland security and European security and, indeed, across th…”

“Thematically, geographically or both?”

“We talk about some where we would like to have some platforms, perhaps—I hope you will appreciate why I will not comment individually on which ones should be where. This is a really important aspect of homeland defence and deterrence, and we are sending a strong message about the importance of the High North.”

“No, not in terms of the High North versus Baltic.”

“I think it is clear that the US is prioritising activity in a way that we have not seen previously, and it is rightly making demands on Europe to step up. The UK has always been a leader within Europe, the north Atlantic and the High North in playing our role, but it is clear that we need to increase that. We can all s…”

“As you will be aware, we have a really close partnership with Norway in a number of different areas, and that has only deepened following Lunna House. We are having ongoing discussions with Norway about how we can improve our training and support to deliver the capabilities we are trying to, and I know the Norwegians w…”

“You will forgive me for not wanting to comment too specifically on operational decisions, and I hope you appreciate why.”

“I think it is really well known that the US is publicly calling on European allies to do more, whether we are talking about targets or capabilities. Chris, do you want to come in with a specific comment on capabilities?”

“I don’t think so. The JEF can cover a range of different types of operations, and it enhance some of the ASW activities that we do—we work closely with a lot of JEF nations on such activities, so it supports that. The JEF is about bringing these nations together, but we are obviously able to pursue different lines at t…”

“Well, I think we can point to some of the advantages, but equally I can recognise that some of the great effect of the JEF is down to the fact that it has been a tighter group of nations with a tighter focus, and that its exercises and some of the principles behind them have had a specific focus. I do not see it as a b…”