New masters in warfare and military operations gets go-ahead

The Norwegian Defence University College (FHS) has received accreditation for a new masters degree in warfare and military operations from NOKUT, the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education.

Chief of Defence Eirik Kristoffersen said that competent personnel are absolutely crucial for the strongest possible defence.

“That is why the Norwegian Defence University is launching a future-orientated masters programme for younger leaders in the Armed Forces. I am very pleased with the focus of the programme and look forward to this masters education starting as soon as possible,” the general said.

In its application for accreditation last year, the FHS head, Major General Dag R Aamoth, said: “We see that employees want to take more education, and that the Armed Forces need new expertise.

“The new masters degree provides an opportunity to take an education while working, and earlier in a career, than the current masters degree. This contributes to lifelong learning and highly relevant expertise for the Armed Forces.”

The new fully-fledged Masters Degree in War and Military Operations (120 ECTs), approved on 20 March, lays a foundation for investigating the possibility of establishing a doctoral programme at the FHS.

The programme is scheduled to start in 2027 and will offer 60 study places. It will be a part-time workplace-based education. This means that employees with a bachelor degree in military studies or equivalent early in their careers can start a professionally orientated masters programme.

Senior advisor at FHS, Helene Lund, said the new programme would support the Defence Pledge, the country’s commitment to boost North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) capabilities.

“It will help the Norwegian Armed Forces strengthen its competence to follow up on initiatives and billion-dollar investments in sea, air, land, space and cyber,” she added.

She said the programme gives students the opportunity to study warfare and military operations from the inside and will strengthen the military professional’s ability to use new technology in warfare, to learn from the experience of ongoing wars, and to practise professional maturity and ethical judgement.

Targeting of younger group

The programme is primarily aimed at a younger target group who seek positions that require professional expertise and specialisation. It will also qualify the graduate for further research education at the doctoral level in military science and scientific positions at FHS.

“This is an ordinary professional education and will be a nice complement to today's experience-based master's education, which is primarily aimed at senior officers,” Lund said, adding that the programme would maintain high international quality and would be among leading programmes in the High North and the Arctic.

“The education programme makes provision for military personnel from NATO and allies to take individual courses in English and thus adds important international qualities to the study environment. Similarly, Norwegian students can take part of their education in the United States, England and Europe,” Lund noted.

FHS Dean Saira Basit told Khrono students of the programme would learn “a lot about military operations” and “multi-domain operations”.

“Of course, there is some scientific theory and method within the military context. We will make active use of AI tools, of course, within a framework that is safe ... [Students] can learn a lot about the importance of logistics in warfare ... [in] intelligence, there are naval operations, land power, cyber power, amphibious warfare and the leadership dimension. The list is quite long,” she said.

While the FHS already has an experience-based masters degree of 90 credits in military studies, Basit said the new one focuses on warfare and military operations, “and is more about the complex warfare issues we face”.

“There is no doubt that what is happening in Ukraine, and also in Iran, makes it even more important to understand how we in Norway must conduct knowledge development about and in warfare, in order to be as well-equipped as possible for the future,” she told Khrono.

“At the same time, we have people in the Armed Forces who have full-time jobs but need this expertise. So it is a move to give them the opportunity to engage in this type of knowledge development while they are at work, to strengthen the Armed Forces from the inside,” she added.

Emphasis on technology

Basit said the programme was initially rejected by NOKUT’s expert committee, which said, among other things, that it showed too little emphasis on understanding technology and “hybrid warfare and complex threats”.

In their initial evaluation, the expert committee said: “The committee considers that the study programme should make the importance of technology more visible for modern warfare and military operations.

Technology is no longer a support tool but a structuring premise for operational capability, decision-making processes and strategic space for action.”

It pointed to developments in cyber capabilities, autonomous systems, space-based services, sensor technology, digital influence and artificial intelligence, which today affects “all domains and all phases of operations, from situational awareness to combat power, logistics and civil-military cooperation”.

“This requires that the study programme not only discusses technology but also integrates an understanding of technology as a comprehensive academic dimension so that candidates are trained to analyse how technological opportunities and vulnerabilities change both the operational environment and the exercise of the military profession,” the committee noted.

It argued that while complex threats were part of the mandatory courses (professional and research ethics), it believed that a masters in warfare and military operations should include a course or have complex threats and hybrid war as central themes.

“Today’s conflicts increasingly unfold in a complex, borderless and technology-driven threat landscape. Developments in technology – particularly in cyber capabilities, space domains, drones, autonomous systems, surveillance, digital influence tools and artificial intelligence – have also expanded the scope for hybrid operations,” it stated.

“In order to plan, lead and execute operations in this environment, officers must understand both the technological means and the strategic logic behind hybrid threats,” it noted.

Basit told Khrono that after “clarification” of some issues in the application, the university received the thumbs up.

Professor Bjørn Stensaker, based at the Department of Education at the University of Oslo, told University World News that it was “hardly surprising” that the military needed to expand their educational offerings given the need for more qualified personnel in the army, navy and air force in the coming years.

“The programme is hardly enough to cover the demand, and it will be interesting to observe how the military positions itself in relation to other educational providers in Norway,” he said.

“The fact that it is positioned at masters level is perhaps an indication that the military leaves basic training in various disciplines to regular universities and colleges, while they want to have more control of the military specialisation themselves.

“This is also a smart strategy for speeding up the tempo in their recruitment of personnel. Recruiting candidates directly to masters level studies basically saves them three years,” he noted.

Legal knowledge

Professor of Law at the University of Bergen Terje Einarsen said he was concerned at the “apparent lack of required knowledge and understanding of international law” in the new masters programme.

“What we see internationally today is to a large extent abuse of military power against other countries and an enormous amount of war crimes being committed in the course of war.

“These serious violations of international law are not only committed by Russia, our current enemy, but to an even larger degree by Israel, which Norway has traditionally cooperated with in different ways, and by the US,” he said.

“The US is, for example, constantly now violating the NATO treaty, article 1, [and] committing a crime of aggression against Iran, without any critique from military academics today.

“This proves the need for more knowledgeable and independent military academic thinkers in the future, but I am afraid this will not be the case with the new masters, according to its proposed curriculum,” Einarsen said.