British planners expected Norwegian ports to be attacked, so an administrative reinforcement could still require troops and ships to use improvised landing areas. Vessels would disperse inside fjords and use cliffs to obstruct radar and missile lines of sight. Aircraft forced to bomb deeper inside the fjords would encounter Norwegian air defences and the air-defence units supporting 3 Commando Brigade. Sharing that responsibility with Norway also became a justification for giving the brigade fewer Rapier systems than it wanted. The reinforcement plan therefore depended on local terrain and cooperation with defenders ashore.
Chapter · 27:19-29:57
Norwegian fjords turned geography into missile defence
Royal Navy and Norwegian plans treated reinforcement as a contested landing in which ships would use fjords and rock cover to complicate Soviet air and missile attack.