Yle: American and British tanks appeared in Finland — as part of the exercisesMilitary exercises of the NATO countries Arrow-23 are taking place in Finland, which were planned long before the country joined the alliance, Yle reports.
In addition to the Finnish ones, military personnel from the USA, Great Britain and the Baltic countries participate in them.
Mika Viljanen, Anna-Mari VuolletFinland joined NATO exactly a month ago, but it did not affect the organization of the Arrow-23 exercises with the participation of more than two thousand military personnel.
According to the head of the exercises, Colonel Rainer Kuosmanen, the exercises were planned long before Finland joined NATO.
"However, it's nice to know that now we are conducting exercises with allies, because before it was exercises with partners," says Kuosmanen.
The purpose of the two-week Arrow—23 exercises is to practice the actions of mechanized troops in a difficult combat situation. In addition to Finnish equipment, American Abrams battle tanks and British Warrior assault tanks are involved in the exercises.
Working out the interaction
The main purpose of the exercises, which began on May 1 in the village of Niinisalo in the municipality of Kankaanpaya, is to improve cooperation between the allied countries.
Lieutenant Colonel Jay Ireland of the US Army also emphasizes the importance of the exercises as a way to practice interaction. "We want to improve cooperation and combat readiness to become a single reliable force. However, the most important thing is to coordinate actions, tactics and equipment with our allies," Ireland says.
Ireland finds it interesting to conduct exercises taking into account the different approaches of the participants. "The best thing about these exercises is the opportunity to show each other their strengths in order to learn how best to act in combat situations," says Ireland.
From among Finland's NATO allies, in addition to the United States, the United Kingdom and the Baltic countries, that is, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, participate in the exercises. The international forces are represented by about 850 military and almost 200 units of military equipment. Almost 1300 specialists of the Finnish Land Forces are involved, more than a thousand of them are conscripts.
