Despite tensions, U.S. and other NATO nations conduct exercises in the far North off Norway to prepare for Russian attack.
ADRIAN MA, HOST:
While it might seem like all eyes are on the conflict in the Middle East, in the Arctic region, they’re looking towards Russia. Recently, U.S. and NATO allies conducted military exercises there, and reporter Teri Schultz went to see.
TERI SCHULTZ, BYLINE: F-35 fighter jets land on a runway at Evenes Air Station in Northern Norway.
(SOUNDBITE OF JETS FLYING OVERHEAD)
SCHULTZ: They’d just come back from a second day of shadowing Russian war planes cruising above the Norwegian coast. The Russian pilots stayed just on the international side of the airspace but flew with their transponders off. The Norwegian Air Force said the intelligence and reconnaissance planes had taken off from the nearby Kola Peninsula, one of Moscow’s most important military hubs, likely to have a look at NATO’s Cold Response exercise. Sergeant Aleksander Hage said they’d been expecting this.
ALEKSANDER HAGE: Together with our allies, we are keeping an eye out in all domains on land, sea, air, under the water.
SCHULTZ: Evenes Air Station, perched in the Arctic Circle, is where some of NATO’s sharpest eyes are based to patrol the airspace and the waters shared with Russia. Hans Martin Steiro is the air station’s commander.
(SOUNDBITE OF JET ENGINES RUNNING)
HANS MARTIN STEIRO: Well, every time I wake up, I have to think what can I do to make this base ready for a potential war?
SCHULTZ: Moscow’s maneuvers ensure such thoughts are constant for Colonel Steiro. A few days into Cold Response, the Kremlin announced it would suddenly be conducting live missile firing drills in the Barents Sea at the same time. That just helped keep things real. The practice scenario was an attack on Norway, resulting in the invocation of NATO’s all for one, one for all clause, Article 5, bringing more than 32,000 troops from across NATO to the High North.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNFIRE)
SCHULTZ: Marine Corps Major General Daniel Shipley says this is experience his forces couldn’t get by just, for example, training in Alaska.
DANIEL SHIPLEY: They’re teaching us a tremendous amount of how our systems change in this kind of environment, how we can handle those systems in the environment, how we can communicate and, at a larger level, the ability to command and control.
SCHULTZ: Sara Madrid (ph) is a Marine based in South Carolina. She says she’s learned how to keep weapons working in extreme cold and also about her own power – doing a plunge in ice water.
SARA MADRID: Yeah. Now, if you would have asked me if I would do that just for fun before I did it, I would tell you, no, not even if you pay me.
SCHULTZ: Norwegians have the cold part under control.
SCHULTZ: Out in the woods, I find Sigurd, who’ll only share his first name in keeping with Norwegian military rules, next to a snow cave dug for hiding and sleeping.
Are we behind enemy lines, or are we in allied territory?
SIGURD: We are deep behind enemy lines right now. What we’re waiting for is intel if there’s movement of enemy.
SCHULTZ: The troops in this part of the scenario are training for possible stints of a hundred days outside. Though Cold Response exercises have been held for 20 years, it’s now part of Arctic Sentry, the umbrella operation that’s just been created by NATO on the heels of President Trump’s claims that Russian and Chinese threats to Greenland required him to take over the Danish island. Former Danish intelligence officer Jacob Kaarsbo throws cold water on those ideas.
JACOB KAARSBO: Ridiculous statements by the Trump administration. There’s no other way to put it. There hasn’t been a Chinese warship around Greenland for plus-10 years, and the joint Arctic command in Nuuk rarely see Russian warships around Greenland, either.
SCHULTZ: But Kaarsbo agrees practicing for all the what ifs of the broader Russian threat to Europe is useful. This year’s simulation included a test of how Norway’s emergency response system could handle mass casualties. The scene was a train arriving from Finland filled with people injured on the frontline.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Ah. Ah. Ah.
SCHULTZ: One of the injured soldiers didn’t make it, and a small mock memorial ceremony was held next to the deceased – a candle lit by real-life chaplain, Peter Shaw Wilhelmsson, himself a war veteran, every bit as somber as a real occasion would merit.
PETER SHAW WILHELMSSON: This is what we do in NATO. We take care of each other.
SCHULTZ: The chaplain said the scenario was so realistically planned and executed that there would be a discussion session afterwards to help those who may have had difficulty with their emotions after seeing war perhaps too close for comfort. For NPR News, I’m Teri Schultz in Norway.
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