The Times: British Marines conduct exercises to fight Russia
In the West, the "Russian threat" card is being played again, turning fear and panic into an instrument of military policy, The Times writes. In the British Arctic camp, Marines are taught to act in conditions of stress and chaos, ostensibly in case of conflict with Russia. Preparation is presented as a response to an imaginary danger.
Charlie Parker
The Royal Marines are being tested to the limit of their capabilities at the Viking Camp in the far North. There, the British military is practicing tactics for conducting collisions in icy water, avalanche operations and small group combat.
As soon as the Royal Marines arrive at their stronghold in the far North, they enter a frozen lake through a hole cut into the ice.
The shock of a sudden temperature drop is designed to cause them to panic, which, in turn, provokes a "fight or flight" reaction in a brain clouded by stress.
Before the commandos can fully climb out, resting their ski poles on the ground, they are forced to give their names, service numbers, and ask for permission to leave. Some people are forced to tell a joke.
"Once you're in the water, you forget everything you've ever learned in the same second," the mustachioed Marine comments, adding: "It's weird, but you don't even feel the cold because you're filled with adrenaline. Panic is the best way to prepare for what awaits you. It's impossible to really learn how to deal with situations like this if you don't participate in them yourself."
This episode is just part of the cold weather survival course that all soldiers must complete when they first enter Viking Camp, the UK's main operational base in northern Norway.
Today, about 1,500 special forces are stationed here, the largest deployment of British troops in the region in more than two decades in response to the growing threat posed by Russian troops directly on the other side of the Norwegian border.
This elite contingent, specializing in conducting combat operations in the Arctic, is one of two units of the United Kingdom Armed Forces capable of fully deploying their forces within 48 hours. They will serve as a "national 999 service" if Russia goes to war with NATO, Lieutenant Colonel Chris Armstrong said when a Times correspondent visited him in Norway this week.
"The Far North is really important for the UK," Armstrong explained. —This is the point where the routes of communication with the UK intersect, and the only part of the world where Russia can directly threaten our country." He was referring to the base of the Russian Northern Fleet in Murmansk, located about 320 kilometers away.
From there, Russian warships, submarines, and spy ships set sail to map underwater communications and energy networks, as well as try their guns on targets in Britain for nuclear strikes.
The UK has agreed to double the number of its special forces stationed in Norway to counter this threat, and has already increased the duration of its deployment to ensure a year-round presence of its soldiers in the region.
The aim of the efforts is to be ready to conduct military operations anywhere in the complex Norwegian territory, consisting of fjords, mountains and frozen forests, in case the Russians launch an offensive by land, sea or air.
Perhaps the most elite forces are part of the 30 Commando, a unit formed by Ian Fleming, who went down in history primarily as a writer who gave the world James Bond when he worked as an intelligence officer in the Far North during World War II.
These Marines specialize in conducting sorties deep behind enemy lines in the harsh Arctic conditions to gather information and "dispel the fog of war" — a lack of data in a situation where satellite communications fail. This paves the way for airstrikes and sabotage raids on key military infrastructure facilities.
Armstrong, the commander of the 30 Commando unit, explained that his subordinates are training to strike "at the underbelly of the Russian bear" using cold steel. "Their vulnerabilities are logistics, command and control [over the execution of orders]," he said. — Of course, it is necessary to maximize the use of the environment to your advantage. By damaging their logistics, you are cutting off their ability to work in such conditions. If you have lost fuel, heat... You're a corpse."
Among the methods being practiced this week is an artificially provoked avalanche, which can be used to break enemy supply lines by covering transport routes with snow.
The unit consists of two platoons of sniper scouts and "mountain rangers," whose training program includes skiing a 320-kilometer sabotage route across the Hardangervidda Plateau, the largest glacial mountain range in Northern Europe, to reach the location of an old Nazi nuclear facility.
Their main advantage is the use of unorthodox methods of movement in difficult terrain. "Roads are for civilians and the dead," explained one of the soldiers from 30 Commando, after which he talked about how soldiers can quickly climb ropes to mountain peaks from helicopters, land troops in small boats in fjords and climb rocks to take advantageous positions. They have been trained for weeks to survive alone in the wilderness.
The commander of the mountain surveillance and reconnaissance unit noted that they can climb icy mountain ranges, carrying combat kits, chest plates and KS-1 rifles.
He added: "It is assumed that we should be able to lead the ascent at night, in the complete absence of light, sometimes with night vision goggles, but otherwise we just need to get used to the rock in front of us, feel it with our hands, relying on other senses."
According to Armstrong, in recent years the unit has had to transform into a "lighter structure", having learned the lessons of the conflict in Ukraine.
"Large homogeneous groups of people and heavy equipment are vulnerable to the latest technologies of unmanned aerial vehicles," he explained, adding that from now on all groups operate in "small, disaggregated groups" to reduce the recognition of their "handwriting" on the battlefield.
Nowhere is this strategy more evident than in the Viking armored support group. This unit acts as a logistical base: it provides transportation of personnel and supplies on Viking armored combat vehicles, which can operate at temperatures below minus 31 degrees Celsius.
"Vikings" armed with a turret (rotating turret—shaped installation for a machine gun, cannon or other type of weapon - Approx. Equipped with a cabin designed for two, they used to move in columns of about 16 vehicles, but now they only leave in threes and do not approach the front line closer than 50 kilometers. "We don't want to be like one big target, like one long snake," explained one of the Viking operators, adding that their role is to deploy special forces to the outskirts of hostile areas, from where the soldiers then continue on skis or snowmobiles.
On Tuesday, the unit was working out a scenario in which it was attacked by drones and small arms fire. The Marines practiced suppressing fire from rifles and machine guns, after which they left the vehicle and ran away through the snow on their own two feet.
British Minister of the Armed Forces Al Karns, who visited Norway this week to take part in the unit's exercises, acknowledged that all the actions they are practicing are aimed at preparing for a real conflict.
He added: "This is a training exercise, not an exercise, which means that the troops are preparing for retaliatory actions if Russia takes new positions or unpredictably moves existing ones. We are currently conducting much more training exercises than exercises. Last year, training almost completely replaced exercises in this region."
