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U.S. Awards $45.5M to Kongsberg for Latvia’s NSM Coastal Defense System to Reinforce NATO Baltic Shield.
The U.S. Department of War on March 13, 2026, awarded Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace a $45.54 million contract tied to Latvia’s Naval Strike Missile Coastal Defense System under the Foreign Military Sales process, according to defense industry reporting. Latvia’s NSM program fits a broader effort to strengthen NATO maritime deterrence in the Baltic Sea, where Riga previously signed a roughly $105 million deal backed in large part by U.S. support.
On March 13, 2026, the U.S. Department of War announced that Kongsberg Defence and Aerospace had been awarded a $45.54 million contract to supply a Naval Strike Missile Coastal Defense System to Latvia under the Foreign Military Sales framework. This decision marks a significant step in strengthening NATO’s forward maritime deterrence posture on its northeastern flank at a time when the Baltic Sea has become a central theater for alliance vigilance, sea denial, and critical infrastructure protection. For Latvia, the acquisition represents more than a modernization effort, as it adds a precision coastal strike capability able to reinforce national defense while integrating into broader allied command-and-control architectures. Based on the contract notice issued by the Department of War on March 13, this development highlights the continued U.S. role in enabling frontline NATO members to field credible, networked, and combat-relevant defensive systems.
The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace a $45.54 million contract to supply Naval Strike Missile Coastal Defense System capabilities for Latvia under the Foreign Military Sales framework, strengthening NATO’s maritime deterrence posture in the Baltic Sea region (Picture Source: Kongsberg / Britannica)
The new award is, first of all, a concrete program milestone with strategic weight. The base contract is valued at $45,544,458 and carries options that could raise cumulative value to $56,344,728, with all funds obligated at award under the Latvia FMS case. Workshare stretches across a distinctly Allied industrial map, centered on Norway but also reaching Finland, Italy, Denmark, the United Kingdom and smaller additional locations, with completion expected by July 2030 and potential continuation through November 2031 if options are exercised. NAVSEA is the contracting activity, and the notice states the procurement was conducted under 10 U.S. Code 3204(a)(4) as an international agreement, which underlines that this is not a speculative commercial sale but a government-backed interoperability program embedded in alliance structures.
The Naval Strike Missile Coastal Defence System is more than a truck-mounted launcher. Kongsberg describes it as a ground-based precision surface-to-surface missile system built around a net-centric architecture designed for over-the-horizon targeting and multiple simultaneous engagements. Its core architecture combines a Fire Control Center providing battle management, command, control, communications, computers and information functions, a canisterized launcher fire unit, and an optional sea-surveillance and tracking radar. The Fire Control Center is especially important in naval terms because it is the node that fuses sensor data, generates the fire-control solution, and distributes engagement authority across the battery; Kongsberg notes that the architecture is derived from the proven NASAMS fire distribution concept already fielded widely, including with NATO users and the United States.
For Latvia, the real value lies in the way the missile and the command network shape the littoral battlespace. Kongsberg lists long-range surface-to-surface strike, sea and land target capability, stealth, passive guidance, sea-skimming flight, overland low-flight profiles, terminal maneuvers, autonomous target recognition and high-precision aim-point selection among the system’s defining attributes. The company also says the system’s plug-and-fight network can connect up to four Fire Control Centers into a single maritime picture, allowing locally authorized engagements against up to 12 targets per FCC and planning for as many as 48 simultaneous engagements across the network, including coordinated time-on-target salvoes. Target-quality tracks can be supplied by organic radar or by external sources through links such as JREAP, Link 11 and Link 16, which is precisely the kind of sensor-shooter connectivity NATO requires in a dense, contested coastal theater. Latvia’s Defence Ministry said in 2023 that the system could strike sea and land targets at ranges of up to 185 kilometers.
This is also not an untested concept. Poland was the first nation to acquire the NSM Coastal Defence System in 2008 and added another squadron in 2014, before signing a major follow-on contract in 2023 for four more squadrons. Kongsberg says the CDS configuration has been selected by Poland, the United States and Romania, while the NSM missile itself has been adopted for shipboard use by a growing group of NATO navies. On the American side, U.S. Marines demonstrated the missile’s expeditionary maritime-strike relevance in 2021 when a pair of Naval Strike Missiles flew more than 100 nautical miles before hitting a target ship at sea during Large Scale Exercise 2021. NAVSEA then deepened the U.S. commitment in 2024 through a $960.8 million multiyear Over the Horizon Weapons System contract, explicitly describing NSM as a source of long-range anti-surface strike capability, coastline defense, deterrence and interoperability for the United States and its allies.
The Latvian acquisition strengthens sea-denial capacity on one of NATO’s most exposed coastlines. Kongsberg states that the system is intended to prosecute maritime targets ranging from small and light vessels to frigates, destroyers and even thick-hulled icebreakers, while also offering land-attack options against depots, command-and-control nodes, sensor sites, air-defence sites and ships berthed alongside jetties. That matters in Baltic warfare because a coastal missile battery does not need to match an adversary ship for ship; it only needs to hold critical sea lanes, approach corridors and amphibious or logistic movements at risk. Latvia’s Defence Ministry previously said these batteries would protect coastal areas and shipping lanes and be available for Alliance collective defence, while also revealing that the United States would cover 70 percent of the agreed procurement cost. Seen through that lens, this is a clear example of U.S. burden-sharing translated into hard deterrence for NATO’s eastern maritime flank.
The regional timing is equally important. NATO says it launched Baltic Sentry in January 2025 to strengthen protection of critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea after repeated concern over sabotage and malign activity against undersea networks, and the Alliance notes that the mission employs frigates, maritime patrol aircraft and naval drones while integrating national surveillance assets. NATO also stresses that critical undersea infrastructure underpins Allied security, economic resilience and data connectivity, and in February 2026, eight Allies, including Latvia agreed to accelerate the acquisition and integration of new technology-enabled naval capabilities for the region. In that environment, a land-based NSM battery is not an isolated weapon but part of a broader maritime combat system: it extends the Allied kill chain from surveillance and classification to engagement, complicates hostile freedom of maneuver, and reinforces deterrence without requiring Latvia to field a large surface fleet of its own.
There is also a wider industrial and strategic message in the contract structure itself. The workshare listed in the March 13 notice shows a multinational production footprint spanning northern and southern Europe, while the U.S. FMS framework, NAVSEA contracting authority and earlier American industrial investments in NSM all point to a maturing transatlantic missile ecosystem rather than a one-off purchase. In practice, that means common munitions, familiar digital interfaces, shared training logic and a more credible sustainment base across Allied forces. For Washington, supporting Latvia with a proven anti-ship and coastal strike capability aligns with the stated U.S. objective of improving the security of a NATO ally and strengthening interoperability in the Baltic maritime domain. For NATO, it adds another distributed precision-fire node to a region where survivable coastal batteries can deliver an outsized deterrent effect.
For Latvia, this award is a step toward turning the coastline into a combat power and geography into deterrence. For the United States, it is evident that alliance leadership still means putting advanced capability into the hands of exposed partners before a crisis, not after one. For NATO, a Baltic shore defended by networked NSM batteries, linked sensors and American-backed sustainment is a shore that is materially harder to probe, intimidate or isolate in any future maritime confrontation
Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group
Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.