Short answer up front: there was no publicly reported Thor’s Hammer exercise conducted in 2025. The most recent event in the Thor’s Hammer series was Thor’s Hammer 2024, held in the United States at NSWC Crane locations (Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck), and Thor’s Hammer is run as a biennial NATO electromagnetic warfare test/verification series.

What Thor’s Hammer is and why it matters

Thor’s Hammer is a NATO Team of Experts event focused on interoperability, verification, and real-world testing of ground electronic-warfare tools and countermeasures. The event grew from a small multinational trial in 2015 into a larger biennial collaboration that tests C-RCIED and C-sUAS systems, ECM employment in coalition formations, and, crucially, deconfliction when multiple allied ECM systems operate in the same battlespace. The 2024 iteration brought 14 nations together and emphasized urban testing to force realistic spectrum complexity.

So what does “no Thor’s Hammer in 2025” mean operationally?

1) Rhythm and cadence: Thor’s Hammer has been run on a multi-year cadence; NATO and host agencies use the event to validate new software, radios, and employment procedures before wider fielding. Because it is characterized in official reporting as a biennial test event, the lack of a 2025 iteration is not a surprise in planning terms. The practical effect is that capability maturation and multinational interoperability testing continue via other venues and ongoing working groups rather than through a single 2025 capstone event.

2) The lessons from TH24 carry forward: the 2024 event pushed two specific operational themes that shape how ministries and industry will iterate their systems: (a) urban spectrum complexity changes emitter propagation and multipath signatures, so algorithms and employment tactics must be validated in built-up environments, and (b) interoperability and ECM deconfliction are no longer optional in coalition deployments where multiple vendors and national systems operate simultaneously. Expect subsequent interoperability work to focus on automated deconfliction methods, standardized metadata exchange between radios, and plug-and-play validation procedures.

3) Who is watching and why it matters to the civilian and commercial community: NATO events like Thor’s Hammer accelerate the adoption of software defined radios, common waveforms, and modular signal processing approaches. That technology trickle-down affects the commercial C-UAS/geo-fencing market and hobbyist SDR projects alike. Engineers and responsible hobbyists should be mindful that techniques proven in NATO trials can show up in the commercial product space but remain regulated; legal constraints on jamming and spectrum manipulation still apply.

Practical technical pointers for engineers and operators

  • Interoperability first: design test plans that assume at least one foreign SDR or ECM node will be active in your test area. That forces you to validate timing, spectral masks, and coordination procedures rather than assuming a sterile RF environment.

  • Treat urban environments as a different test discipline: ground reflections, clutter, and localized interference from infrastructure require more conservative link budgets and adaptive sensing. Validate your classifier thresholds across building densities and at varied heights.

  • Automate deconfliction metadata: manual frequency coordination does not scale when dozens of C-UAS/ECM nodes are present. Build or adopt simple metadata packets (who, where, active band, priorities) that can be exchanged out-of-band to reduce safety risk during coalition trials.

  • Log liberally and normalize formats: the value of Thor’s Hammer style events is data. If you are an equipment vendor, instrument your radios so their logs can be correlated with partner traces (timestamping, GNSS-synced logs, standard file formats). That makes post-trial forensics and lessons-learned actionable.

Where to watch for the next Thor’s Hammer and related work

Official channels from host organizations and NATO Subgroup One coordinate scheduling and publish outcomes. NSWC Crane published post-event material on TH24 and emphasized the urban testing and multinational participation that defined the 2024 event. If you track Thor’s Hammer, monitor NSWC Crane releases and NATO Subgroup One announcements for formal scheduling; absence of a 2025 event is consistent with the event’s multi-year cadence and with the stated goals of using other shorter, specialized trials to iterate capability between major Thor’s Hammer events.

Final tactical read

Thor’s Hammer remains NATO’s practical laboratory for coalition ground EW and counter-UAS/C-RCIED interoperability. Not seeing a Thor’s Hammer branded event in 2025 does not mean capability work slowed. It means the program is shifting to a mix of large verification events and smaller, rapid trials. For practitioners the takeaway is unchanged: prioritize interoperability, test in realistic urban scenarios, automate safe deconfliction, and instrument systems for data-driven iteration.

If you want, I can pull the key public after-action pieces and vendor lessons from TH24 and turn them into a checklist or lab guide for your team or small test range.