Norway to buy two more submarines, long-range missiles

By Gwladys Fouche

OSLO, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Norway plans to buy two more submarines from Germany and separately some long-range artillery, the defence ministry said on Friday, at a much higher cost than before, partly due to high demand for military equipment.

The submarine order comes on top of four submarines the Nordic country ordered from Germany's Thyssenkrupp in 2021 for 45 billion crowns ($4.5 billion) at the time. The new submarines will also be ordered from Thyssenkrupp's marine division, which was recently spun off as TKMS.

Shares in TKMS, which confirmed the deal, were 1% higher at 1240 GMT.

The new order will cost 46 billion crowns, bringing the total cost of the submarines close to 100 billion crowns, partly due to inflation in the costs of raw materials and of defence equipment.

NATO countries are in the midst of hiking defence spending, under pressure to do so by U.S. President Donald Trump and unnerved by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Norway is NATO's monitor for the vast 2 million square kilometres (772,000 square miles) area of the North Atlantic used by the Russian northern fleet's nuclear submarines. 

A key mission for the submarines will be to monitor Russian ones, whose base is on the Kola Peninsula, an area in the Arctic bordering Norway.

"We see that Russian forces in the North Atlantic and the Barents Sea are increasing their activities," Defence Minister Tore Sandvik said in a statement.

The first of the six submarines is expected to be delivered in 2029, the ministry said.

Separately, Norway plans to buy for its army long-range missiles, which can reach targets 500 km (310 miles) away, for 19 billion crowns.

The war in Ukraine, and the predominance of missile attacks, has shown Western countries the need to boost their capabilities.

"It is important we have a defence capability that can deter a possible enemy from doing us harm," Sandvik said in a statement.

($1 = 10.1044 Norwegian crowns)

(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche. Additional reporting by Christoph Steitz and Tom Kaeckenhoff. Editing by Terje Solsvik and Mark Potter)