THE Sun joined crack Royal Marines training for war with Russia at their new arctic base Camp Viking in Norway.
We swooped into the frozen outpost on board a Commando Force Merlin helicopter before roaring over icy wastes on camouflaged snowmobiles.
Ian WhittakerThe Sun joined crack Royal Marines training for war with Russia at their new arctic base Camp Viking in Norway[/caption]
Ian WhittakerLance Corporal Liam Ducker, 24, said drones have made missions more difficult[/caption]
Ian WhittakerArmed Forces Minster James Heappey visits Royal Marines Artic warfare training in Norway[/caption]
Marines on cross-country skis used plastic high explosives to blow a bridge to bits in drills designed to halt a Russian armoured column.
Nearby, comrades armed with some of the best and newest kit in the Armed Forces, including enhanced night-vision goggles and overalls to hide from thermal drones, spent weeks living out in brutal conditions where temperatures regularly plunge below –20°C.
Troops from the elite SRS — Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron — had dug covert lookouts under the snow where they ate, slept and pooped in bags, for days or weeks at a time.
Lance Corporal Liam Ducker, 24, said the hardest thing was the weather but joked that one advantage of the cold was it froze Marines’ poos and stopped them stinking out their hidden dugouts.
He also said drones had made it much harder to hide as enemy forces could see tracks in the snow and track heat signatures from snowmobiles and the Viking tracked vehicles the Royal Marines use to move cross-country.
He was part of a 900-strong Royal Marine force defending Nato’s northern flank alongside US, French and Norwegian forces more than 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle.
The elite commando force will spearhead Britain’s part in the largest Nato war games since the end of the Cold War. Some 90,000 troops are due take part in exercise Steadfast Defender to rehearse Nato’s response to a Russian invasion.
In a bracing message to the Royal Marines at Camp Viking in Øverbygd, Armed Forces Minister James Heappey warned war was a real possibility.
He said: “These training scenarios are not just scenarios. They are something you may be asked to do over your careers.”
Heappey said that his own Army career, where he served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was not the same as knowing that state-on-state “war fighting might be required in the next ten to 20 years”.
Addressing hundreds of Green Berets he added: “The world is increasingly volatile and we need you to do what you do to remind our adversaries that we have this incredibly high-end and lethal force. There is a lot of talk about whether it is going to kick off with Russia, or Iran.
“If that is the reality we need to resource you to be the very best fighting force that you can be, and we are making those arguments in government as forcefully as we can.”
Speaking to The Sun, Heappey explained that if Nato went to war with Russia, Britain’s main role would be fighting in Arctic conditions, which are the toughest in the world.
Corporal Brenna says the Royal Marines are prepared for whatever is comingIan Whittaker
Ian WhittakerMinster James Heappey tests the Royal Marines’ enhanced night-vision goggles[/caption]
Ian WhittakerThe Surveillance Reconnaissance Squadron uses a drone to gather information[/caption]
He said: “All roads lead to the UK having a focus on our ability to operate in this part of Europe.”
He added: “These guys are in an environment that can kill them.
“But not only do they survive in such an extreme environment, every day and every night they are able to get out of their sleeping bags and be ready to kill the King’s enemies.”
Heappey also stressed the need for the Government to make “difficult choices” in order to ramp up defence spending “as fast as possible”.
‘Ready for anything’’
PM Rishi Sunak has pledged to spend 2.5 per cent on defence when the economy allows but Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps both said Britain should spend three per cent on defence when they ran for the Tory leadership.
Heappey said: “In the current geopolitical situation 2.5 per cent is welcome, it needs to come as quick as possible, and then there is a discussion about what more the nation can spend on defence thereafter. We have to be clear-eyed. More money for defence, bigger Army, bigger Navy, bigger Air Force — but at the expense of what?
“The public need to be ready to have that debate.”
The commandos seemed unfazed by the challenge.
Corporal Ryan Brennan, from the elite 45 Commando, said: “We are tough people doing tough things in a tough place.
“It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world. We’re ready for anything.”
Cpl Brennan, 40, said he had soldiered in temperatures of -34°C.
He added: “When the air is freezing the hairs in your nostrils, then you know its really cold.
“But once you are able to deal with the weather, then you can deal with the enemy.” As part of the Navy’s investment in the Future Commando Force, the Royal Marines were the first in the Armed Forces to get a new generation of “commando night-vision goggles”.
They plug into a system known as the “enhanced digital environment” that will allow pop-up displays in their eye pieces.
Their radios are designed so that soldiers speaking different languages could have commands translated in real time.
And they are weeks away from receiving new rifles fitted with silencers which the Navy said will make them “harder to trace and more formidable in combat”.
Warrant Officer Ian Freeman, 51, said good kit helped but nothing made up for good soldiering.
He said: “You have got to do the basics to survive, and that’s what comes from commando training.”
All Royal Marines must pass a gruelling 32-week training course at the Commando Training Centre in Lympstone, Devon, that culminates with a 30-mile speed march across Dartmoor.
Lt Col Alex Nixon, the commanding officer of 45 Commando, said the threat of war with Russia had made their training even sharper.
He said: “It is easier to have a clear threat to train against. It focuses the mind.
“This environment forces people to do extraordinary things just to survive, let alone fight, and that breeds a culture and a mindset within the commando force that allows them to operate everywhere.”
He added: “It’s hard people doing hard things and there’s nowhere harder than the Arctic.”
Ian WhittakerThe fighters spent weeks living out in brutal conditions where temperatures regularly plunged below –20C[/caption]
Ian WhittakerArmed Forces Minister James Heappey told the Royal Marines, training in Norway, that war was a real possibility[/caption]
Ian WhittakerMarines navigate the challenging conditions on a snowmobile[/caption]
Ian WhittakerThe Sun’s Defence Editor joined Forces Minister James Heappey in Norway[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
