Sea Power

"We almost always perform our exercises in the Baltic region," Gryglewski said, "protecting the Baltic Sea region from the enemy" as part of Poland's coastal defense system. There, Russia is "facing a real imbalance" with its NATO rivals, Sidharth Kaushal of the U.K.'s Royal United Services Institute think tank told ABC News. NATO's inclusion of Finland and Sweden -- a direct consequence of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 -- has prompted some officials to jokingly refer to the Baltic Sea as the "NATO Lake."

Trevor Taylor, director of the defence, industries and society programme at the think-tank Royal United Services Institute, said the choice of H&W for the Royal Navy contract "was always a giant risk given the minimal labour force and limited manufacturing infrastructure that they had in place".