The Arctic is becoming a training ground for the US military. You want to prepare for future dangers. The cold presents special challenges.
Kodiak – To the uninitiated, this felt like madness. From an altitude of 8,000 feet (about 2.44 km), six Navy SEALs wanted to parachute into Marmot Bay, where the water temperature was just above freezing.
Their inflatable boat first rumbled down the ramp of this MC-130 transport plane before snapping out the back. These rugged, stealthy aircraft are specifically designed for the low-visibility operations that are a hallmark of the U.S. military's secretive forces. As one of the SEALs awoke from his nap, the plane took off. Time to go. One by one they approached the exit, turning their backs on the blue-green gaze downwards and rushing toward an icy water landing.
US Military Special Operations Forces in Transition: Preparing for Arctic Conflict
American special forces are in the midst of a major transformation. As the powerful armies of Russia and China compete with the United States for dominance in the resource-rich Arctic, the Pentagon has broadened its focus on what a war in one of the most dangerous areas on earth might look like - and how its most sophisticated units can counter a direct threat of the US homeland or NATO allies could be used in the coldest areas of Europe.
Special operations forces are different from conventional armed forces and are tasked with secret, sensitive and dangerous tasks such as killing operations, hostage rescues and acts of sabotage. This winter, The
Washington Post
was given rare access to teams of SEALs, Green Berets, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and other elite soldiers. During this time, they put the countless restrictions that come with the vast, unforgiving Alaskan wilderness through their paces, including in Kodiak. It's a windswept outpost on the state's southern coast, and in the barren training grounds outside the city of Fairbanks.
The sobering realization was that any conflict in the far north would be an absolute nightmare for those tasked with fighting it. Capt. Bill Gallagher, who commands the SEAL unit involved in the exercise, called the Arctic perhaps the harshest and most extreme place in which a military can operate and said even the most routine tasks can pose an existential threat.
The troops who landed in Marmot Bay wore dry suits under their uniforms to insulate them from the inevitable effects of immersion in 37 degree water. Without this equipment, a person exposed to similar conditions would be in a race with death. Here, says Gallagher, “the environment can kill you faster than any enemy.”
Russia and China are eyeing the Arctic – the USA wants to be able to defend itself
The Arctic, which is warming four times faster than the rest of the world and opening up to commercial and military activity like never before, is evolving rapidly, forcing the Pentagon to keep pace, officials say, raising the potential for competition and conflict between Washington , Moscow and Beijing creates.
The United States would likely be challenged by either state. Bloodied but resurgent in Ukraine, Russia has gained useful combat experience against a skilled adversary and continues to expand its expertise in areas such as electronic warfare, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Pentagon, which emerged from a more limited form of combat in the Middle East, can only study and theorize what Moscow has learned from its large-scale war, Cancian said.
The Pentagon has acknowledged that China has overtaken the United States in technologies such as hypersonic missiles. And the sheer size of China's military poses a huge problem, Cancian said. “The big Chinese advantage is in numbers,” he said. “Their fleet is big and getting bigger.” The dual challenge has forced the Defense Department to confront its own shortcomings, some of which are evident in the Arctic.
"For example, many of the satellites that monitor activity north of the Arctic Circle have blind spots" that make it difficult for the U.S. government to detect incoming threats, said Iris Ferguson, the undersecretary of defense for Arctic policy at the Department of Defense, an office that just started was set up two years ago. Coastal erosion and thawing permafrost, among the most visible signs of climate change, have affected U.S. radar systems and airfields.
Russia is learning from the Ukraine war – what is Putin planning next?
Russia has in recent years turned the lights back on at Soviet-era military installations across the region and modernized a number of bases that surpass NATO's collective presence in the region. Given Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea a decade ago and its current push to completely subjugate Ukraine, Moscow's moves in the north have raised questions about its larger ambitions, Ferguson said.
“We are occasionally concerned about the potentially offensive nature of some of their investments,” she added. “And the invasion of Ukraine was a wake-up call for the international community in general and for our Arctic partners in particular.
In March, two Russian bombers flew through a strategic chokepoint between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom. This was the first flight since the Ukraine war began two years ago and refuted assumptions by some Pentagon officials that Moscow's wartime commitments would weaken its presence in other parts of the world.
A significant portion of the oil and gas reserves that make Russia an energy power are located in the Arctic, flanked by nuclear-capable submarines lying in the White Sea. China has also claimed that its status as an "Arctic nation" gives Beijing a say in shaping the region, as Asian nations also have an interest in the raw materials transported via the northern sea route.
West in preparation – More military activities in the Arctic
The deepening ties between the two powers, evident since the invasion of Ukraine, have also manifested themselves in the far north. So last summer they sent a joint naval patrol past the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, which surprised some observers.
The West has also expanded its activities in the region. The roughly 400 U.S. and NATO commandos sent to Alaska as part of a larger annual exercise were, according to officials, the largest contingent of special forces ever to train in the Alaskan Arctic. Other US troops trained simultaneously in the Norwegian Arctic as part of the military alliance's largest exercise since the Cold War.
As U.S. military planners consider the possible consequences of a feared Chinese attack on Taiwan, a key Pacific partner that President Biden has pledged to defend, concerns are growing about the risk of a "spillover," officials said.
Col. Matthew Tucker, who oversees the special operations forces in charge of North America, said such an eventuality could trigger the activation of homeland security plans - including those running over Alaska. “The likelihood of [a China-Taiwan war] remaining isolated in the South China Sea,” he added, “is probably not something we would rely on.”
The challenge of ice and cold: The US military wants to prepare for this
Temperatures are around 20 degrees on a practice field outside Fairbanks. For the Green Berets, who endured a low of minus 40 degrees at another point in the exercise, it felt almost lukewarm.
At such extremes, everything is pushed to the limit. The batteries lose their charge. Moisture that builds up inside a gun can jam the gun's bolt, rendering it unusable. Plastic shatters easily. And everything freezes. This also applies to blood reserves and infusion solutions, so paramedics have to rely on their body heat to protect the valuable fluids.
If an accident occurs in this environment, hypothermia can occur within minutes. Significant blood loss further complicates the situation. If a paramedic needs to perform a blood transfusion, they should expect this to further lower the patient's temperature.
Threats lurk everywhere, even underfoot. Some soldiers have practiced navigating glaciers, where one wrong step can mean falling into a deep crack in the ice, requiring a dangerous rescue.
“Everything is harder when you're in the mountains,” said one commander, “because the mountains are always trying to kill you.” Like others interviewed for this report, he spoke on condition of anonymity due to strict military guidelines.
In Afghanistan and Iraq, where the Pentagon maintained a network of bases and relied largely on the safe flight of evacuation helicopters, it was assumed that wounded people had a good chance of survival if they received medical attention within 60 minutes. The soldiers called this “the golden hour.”
But the sheer extent of the Arctic and the advanced targeting capabilities of Russian and Chinese forces have raised doubts about the viability of this approach. “It was the golden hour back then,” said a Special Forces medical sergeant. “Now it’s more like having a golden day.”
“Everything has to go faster”: Difficulties in military exercises
A company commander with the Army's 10th Special Forces Group explained that time, the most important factor in any mission, is even more important under these difficult conditions. “You have to get to the injured more quickly, treat them more quickly and reach a warming tent more quickly,” said the commander. “Everything has to go faster.”
To that end, a team of Green Berets spent an afternoon learning to drive their snowmobiles into a stationary helicopter to simulate how to quickly load and exit a helicopter. This skill is crucial, and it quickly became clear how difficult it can be.
The helicopter, a special operations variant of the Army's twin-rotor Chinook, was equipped with a device that holds the snowmobile's tracks and helps pull it aboard, but the vehicle's front skis twisted vertically, causing them to become lodged in the steel edges of the the plane caught and the momentum came to a halt.
When one soldier needed an extra push from the helicopter crew, another wryly remarked, "It's not that easy, is it?" At one point, a snowmobile trail tore through the snow, sending rocks flying, causing damage to those waiting for their mission waiting, sparking laughter. Over time the process became more fluid.
No longer just a focus on the Middle East: the Arctic is increasingly becoming a training ground for the military – including NATO
As the full moon appeared on the horizon, members of a Danish commando force, among the NATO members most specialized in the tundra, readied their night vision goggles. A soldier drove his snowmobile into the belly of the Chinook, followed by another. The helicopter took off and circled the training area one last time.
The company commander explained that the 10th Special Forces Group, based in Colorado and focused on operations in Europe, is now the Army's clearinghouse for secret cold-weather operations. But over the past two decades, much of their attention has focused on other areas. He said it was encouraging to see his soldiers learning from the Danes.
“We focused on Centcom,” the commander said, referring to the U.S. military command that oversees operations in the Middle East. “We also focused on Europe. But we have ignored much of the Arctic.”
In the years following September 11, 2001, the Pentagon transformed its special operations forces into agile units capable of achieving America's counterterrorism goals largely without the political risks associated with large-scale military operations. This approach greatly increased the number of personnel - from 38,000 in 2001 to 73,000 in 2020 - and strengthened the US Special Operations Command in a way that decoupled it from the conventional military.
Special operations commandos are not left to their own devices – they will supplement the US army in the future
As national security officials grow concerned about the prospect of conflict with Russia or China, they have argued that special operations command must complement the larger force rather than rely on its own to conduct counterinsurgency and rely on other parts of the military to be relied upon to support its missions.
"We've become accustomed to being the supported unit," said Gallagher, the commander of SEAL Group 2. "Now that we're looking at the strategic competition, our focus is on how we can provide support."
But some observers are skeptical that Special Operations is generally refreshing its philosophy. Richard Hooker, a former national security official in several presidential administrations and now at the Atlantic Council, said such changes would be reflected in new budget requirements and organizational restructuring, but "we haven't seen much of that yet."
Cancian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies sees it this way: “In the past, they tended to be a kind of prima donna. So the fact that Special Operations Command is up there is a sign of the effort to make the organization more focused on great power conflicts.”
Special forces and missiles: Tactical exercise in the mountains shows military potential and challenges
Outside Fairbanks, the potential was at least apparent when Marine Corps reservists operating HIMARS rocket artillery vehicles simulated a target operation in the Hayes Mountain Range. Miles away, two Chinooks landed and a team of Green Berets and Danish commandos with rifles and skis got out.
The plan called for the commandos to sneak into the foothills of the mountains, discreetly determine the attack coordinates and radio them to the Marines, who then fired a barrage of missiles, jumped back into their vehicles and immediately made their getaway - so that they did not become a target themselves.
The Marines fired a total of 16 rockets, each thundering across the training area before hitting the ground and kicking up clouds of snow. The munitions lacked explosive charge, making them look, as one Marine put it, like concrete telephone poles filled with rocket fuel. The standard missiles they wanted to use were not available, he said, citing demand in Ukraine.
The Green Berets company commander was very excited about this part of the exercise. His team not only had to brave the elements, but also fulfill an important support function. “That’s where our roots have always been,” he said. “And we’re trying to get back there.”
About this story: Data on sea ice extent from the Institute for Environmental Physics at the University of Bremen.
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on April 11, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.