Multi-year US deployments into Norway have seen Marines sent for year-long alpine training. This has often angered Russia, which says the presence is “clearly unfriendly.” The number of US Marines sent has been increasing as time goes on.
On Friday, officials announced changes to the deployment beginning in October, saying they will no longer do year-long deployments or limit rotations to every six months, saying they will switch to “episodic deployment” around Norway’s own exercises.
Marine officials are vague on why they made this change, saying they believe it will increase readiness, but also saying it was totally unrelated to the announced troop cuts in Germany. They added these deployments would enable large-scale unit training.
This program started both with an eye toward getting more troops near Russia’s frontier, and preparing for more cold weather combat, as the US envisions conflicts over resources in the Arctic.
Doesn’t Alaska have an extra snowy mountain somewhere to train on ?
Why would you expect common sense to apply to politicized military thinking?
Translation: Wowsers! Norway really gets COLD in the winter!!!
Lets train in the summer….
Alt translation: Wowsers! these Norwegian ski nazis are in really good shape!!!
Lets, er, switch to interval training, Yeah, that’s the ticket….