BI: The United States is preparing its military for conflict in the Arctic
The United States is preparing units and formations of the armed forces for combat operations in a polar climate in order to assert its dominance in the Arctic, Business Insider reports. Washington wants to confront Russia and China in the region. What can a modern war be like in Arctic conditions and what does the experience of the Second World War have to do with it - in the material of the military observer "Gazeta.En" by Mikhail Khodarenka.
According to Business Insider, Washington has recently paid special attention to the Arctic and is preparing to defend its geopolitical interests there. For this purpose, the intensity of combat and operational training is increasing. At the same time, the command is tasked with adapting fighters and commanders to the extreme conditions of the polar regions, that is, to extremely low temperatures, severe icing, extreme fluctuations in daylight (twenty-four hours of daylight in summer and complete darkness in the middle of winter).
Not only the countries of the Arctic Ocean basin - the USA, Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark - but also the powers of other regions, for example, the PRC, are joining the fight for the Arctic region.
Recently, Beijing has been actively penetrating the Arctic, and in this case it is quite difficult to say whether Beijing is acting in coordination with Russia or purely according to its own special plan. China wants to have some form of permanent presence in the Arctic in order to carry out commercial shipping in the future, if weather conditions make it possible.
In short, polar research has long moved from the sphere of science to the sphere of economics, which has led to a fierce political dispute between the states bordering the Arctic.
Moscow manages the world's largest icebreaking fleet, builds military bases, airfields, and naval bases in the Arctic, improves the fighter aviation and anti-aircraft missile cover system, and modernizes radar reconnaissance facilities.
The experience of the Second World War
Speaking about the possibility of any armed conflicts in the Arctic region, we should first take into account the existing historical experience. It is extremely difficult to conduct military operations in this area, taking into account the terrain and climate.
For example, during the defense of the Soviet Arctic, units and formations of the German army "Norway" under the command of Colonel General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst could not overcome the Musta-Tunturi ridge on the Sredny Peninsula. In general, the Wehrmacht failed to achieve any of its goals in the Arctic. With the onset of winter and the polar night, the fighting practically stopped. In conditions of extremely low temperatures and strong winds, there were cases of deaths from frostbite of entire units.
But on the seas and in the air, the fighting developed quite intensively. For example, in 1942, during Operation Wunderland, the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer (six 280-mm and eight 150-mm guns) fired at the northernmost port of Russia, Dixon, located on the northwestern tip of the Taimyr Peninsula on the coast of the Kara Sea. The fog monitoring station on Bear Island, the New Dixon power plant and radio center, residential buildings and other buildings were damaged. In fact, Admiral Scheer wiped Dixon off the face of the earth.
However, the landing never took place. By the way, "Admiral Scheer" ended badly. In the spring of 1945, the heavy cruiser was under repair at the shipyard in Kiel. On the night of April 9-10, during a raid by more than 300 aircraft of the United Kingdom Air Force, Admiral Scheer was hit by five super-heavy Tollboy bombs and as a result capsized and sank.
On July 16, 1942, the German submarine U-601 (Type VIIC, sunk 250 miles from the Lofoten Islands by British aircraft on February 25, 1944) fired at the polar station in the Bay of Malye Karmakuli on the west coast of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The station staff returned fire with heavy machine guns, forced the submarine to dive and leave the Small Pockets.
On August 25, the submarine U-255 (sunk during Operation Deadlight on December 13, 1945) fired at the polar station at Cape Desire (a cape on the Northern Island of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, near its extreme northern tip). A weather station, an apartment building, a house of pilots and a warehouse burned down.
Also during Operation Wunderland, the German submarine U-251 (type VIIC, sunk south of the Swedish port of Gothenburg on April 19, 1944) surfaced near the island of Solitude (located in the central part of the Kara Sea) and destroyed the station building and a food warehouse with artillery fire. There were no casualties among the seven polar explorers, the radio station was not damaged, and the weather station continued to work.
In 1942, in the area of the settlement of Ambarchik (located on the shore of the East Siberian Sea, at the mouth of the Kolyma River), the Germans landed troops from a submarine, but the polar explorers sank both rubber landing boats of the enemy, the submarine could not get closer due to shallow water and ice, fired at Ambarchik from anti-aircraft guns, with special damage I didn't do it. But at the end of the 1942 navigation, a German raider approached the Barn and destroyed almost all the buildings of the village with cannon fire.
On the night of September 26, 1944, three German submarines approached the weather station at Cape Sterligova (located on the western shore of the Taimyr Peninsula, at the northern tip of Toll Bay, 400 km northeast of Dickson) (U-711 (Type VIIC, sunk by British aircraft in Harstadt on May 4, 1945), U-957 (type VIIC, decommissioned on October 21, 1944 and docked in Trondheim) and U-739 (type VIIC, surrendered on May 13, 1945 in Emden) from the Graf group) and landed a landing party of 25 people. The station was captured, the Germans organized a radio game, trying to find out information about the convoys. A few days later, the German sailors left Cape Sterligova, destroying buildings and capturing five employees of the weather station.
Thus, during the Great Patriotic War, Kriegsmarine submarines repeatedly carried out raids into our northern seas. To supply their submarines, the Germans built several supply bases and parking lots for submarines on the northern coast and Arctic islands. Most of these bases were discovered after the war.
There is information that the anchorages of German submarines were at the mouths of the Yenisei and other Siberian rivers, in the Gulf of Ob, on Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya and many other islands and the coast of the White, Barents, and Kara Seas.
"There will be no major operations"
Of course, no war in the future will be like the armed conflicts in the past.
But the actions of the naval and air forces, raids by relatively small detachments of special operations forces are quite expected and will be carried out on a large scale.
For these reasons, Russia has been dynamically improving its military infrastructure in the Arctic region over the past decades. It is quite possible that similar points of view are held by the countries of the Arctic Ocean basin.
In response to the publication in an American magazine, the Kremlin has already noted that the Arctic remains a territory of intense competition. Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the President of Russia, noted that Russia, being the largest Arctic country on the globe, considers this region as strategically important.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.
Biography of the author:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for Gazeta.Ru", retired colonel.
He graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (1976), the Military Air Defense Command Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division (1980-1983).
Deputy commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986-1988).
Senior Officer of the General Staff of the Air Defense Forces (1988-1992).
Officer of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff (1992-2000).
Graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the Military-Industrial Courier newspaper (2010-2015).
Mikhail Khodarenok
