Contemporary Operational Environment and Its Effect on the Norwegian Army's Training

The Norwegian Army is partly a conscript army and partly a volunteer force. The Army has one year to conduct basic training and combat preparations of the conscript force, which forms the basis for international operations and recruitment to the volunteer force. The Norwegian Army has gone through significant transformation the last five years, which has been, and still is, all-embracing and affects the entire Army. In addition to the challenges presented by the transformation itself, the Norwegian Army faces challenges concerning which missions it should prepare for, ranging from the current missions in Afghanistan, to the bordering areas with Russia. However, the Norwegian Army has not adjusted its training to reflect fully the increasing number of tasks and training requirements. There is a gap between how the force trains and how the training and combat preparation should look like to reflect the Army's future missions and tasks. One way to conduct training that is more efficient and thus contribute to mitigate some of the challenges concerning training is to increase the availability of simulator-supported training. Hence, the Army should establish a branch of the Norwegian Army Combat Maneuver Training Centre, located to North Norway.