Rocky C
03-03-16, 08:41 AM
Winter is coming, Marines.
Members of 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade and Marine Corps Forces Europe joined Norwegian troops and 10 other militaries Tuesday to kick off the largest iteration of Exercise Cold Response ever.
The 10-day exercise thrusts about 16,000 troops into grueling, subzero conditions to test their ability to move and fight together against a common enemy.
For the first time, the troops participating in Cold Response will form a combined joint task force that will be led by Norway’s Brigade North.
That combined with the scale of the exercise will help Marines better prepare to operate alongside NATO troops, said Col. William Bentley, 2nd MEB’s operations officer. During past iterations Cold Response, a battalion of Marines or fewer participated, he added.
“I don’t think we’ve had this scale in Norway,” Bentley said. “Zero [degrees] and below is for most of us extreme temperatures, and being able to put all this together and operate over the better part of 60 days start to finish, it’s just an outstanding opportunity for both coalition and NATO interoperability.”
Marines converged on Norway in January to learn to adapt to the frigid climate and conduct live-fire maneuver training in preparation for the main exercise. They also began unloading gear stashed in Norwegian caves as part of Marine Corps Prepositioning Program — Norway.
“This is about being expeditionary ... and operating in a really hostile cold weather environment,” Bentley said.
First opened at the height of the Cold War in 1982 to defend against the Soviet Union, the system of climate-controlled caves stores upward of 6,500 pieces of equipment, including M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, light armored and amphibious assault vehicles and artillery.
In all, it’s enough to sustain a 15,000-person Marine expeditionary brigade for up to a month’s combat operations.
With Russia aggressively knocking on NATO’s door — from Norway to the Baltic states to Ukraine and Turkey — Cold Response affords an excellent opportunity for allied troops to operate together and for Marines to keep gear stored in Norway fine-tuned.
Marine armor moving out for Exercise Cold Response comes only days after the Pentagon rolled out a substantial increase for the European Reassurance Initiative, its program to shore up European defenses to counter Russia’s provocations.
Requested funding for that program jumped to $3.4 billion in 2017 from $2.6 billion the year prior.
“There are a lot of extremely hard things we’ve done and lessons we’ve learned already,” Bentley said. “Cold Response is an outstanding opportunity to bring this together and yeah, this is not summer weather.”
Troops from Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Canada, Belgium and Latvia are also participating in the cold-weather exercise.
“It will be more or less a traditional scenario with an aggressor part and a defending part,” Brig. Gen. Eldar Berli, commander of the Norwegian army’s brigade north, said in a NATO video. “It is an exercise that we have conducted here in Norway for many, many years.”
Members of 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade and Marine Corps Forces Europe joined Norwegian troops and 10 other militaries Tuesday to kick off the largest iteration of Exercise Cold Response ever.
The 10-day exercise thrusts about 16,000 troops into grueling, subzero conditions to test their ability to move and fight together against a common enemy.
For the first time, the troops participating in Cold Response will form a combined joint task force that will be led by Norway’s Brigade North.
That combined with the scale of the exercise will help Marines better prepare to operate alongside NATO troops, said Col. William Bentley, 2nd MEB’s operations officer. During past iterations Cold Response, a battalion of Marines or fewer participated, he added.
“I don’t think we’ve had this scale in Norway,” Bentley said. “Zero [degrees] and below is for most of us extreme temperatures, and being able to put all this together and operate over the better part of 60 days start to finish, it’s just an outstanding opportunity for both coalition and NATO interoperability.”
Marines converged on Norway in January to learn to adapt to the frigid climate and conduct live-fire maneuver training in preparation for the main exercise. They also began unloading gear stashed in Norwegian caves as part of Marine Corps Prepositioning Program — Norway.
“This is about being expeditionary ... and operating in a really hostile cold weather environment,” Bentley said.
First opened at the height of the Cold War in 1982 to defend against the Soviet Union, the system of climate-controlled caves stores upward of 6,500 pieces of equipment, including M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, light armored and amphibious assault vehicles and artillery.
In all, it’s enough to sustain a 15,000-person Marine expeditionary brigade for up to a month’s combat operations.
With Russia aggressively knocking on NATO’s door — from Norway to the Baltic states to Ukraine and Turkey — Cold Response affords an excellent opportunity for allied troops to operate together and for Marines to keep gear stored in Norway fine-tuned.
Marine armor moving out for Exercise Cold Response comes only days after the Pentagon rolled out a substantial increase for the European Reassurance Initiative, its program to shore up European defenses to counter Russia’s provocations.
Requested funding for that program jumped to $3.4 billion in 2017 from $2.6 billion the year prior.
“There are a lot of extremely hard things we’ve done and lessons we’ve learned already,” Bentley said. “Cold Response is an outstanding opportunity to bring this together and yeah, this is not summer weather.”
Troops from Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Canada, Belgium and Latvia are also participating in the cold-weather exercise.
“It will be more or less a traditional scenario with an aggressor part and a defending part,” Brig. Gen. Eldar Berli, commander of the Norwegian army’s brigade north, said in a NATO video. “It is an exercise that we have conducted here in Norway for many, many years.”