U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Johnson. Louisiana, watch a demonstration of Finnish artillery near Rovaniemi, Finland, on May 17, 2024. STAFF SGT. IAN VALLEY/U.S. ARMY
THE WATCH STAFF
Nearly 7,000 Finnish, Norwegian and U.S. Soldiers assembled in the remote forested regions of Finland in late May 2024 to conduct Northern Forest 24, the latest in a series of NATO exercises demonstrating the increasing interoperability of the alliance’s forces. The weeklong war games at the Rovajärvi training area were part of the largest exercise above the Arctic Circle in Finland this year, according to the Barents Observer, a Norwegian newspaper.
The latest iteration of a series of large-scale military operations involving thousands of troops, Northern Forest was the culmination of a massive unloading of equipment and subsequent road march that covered 885 kilometers across the Arctic region. Beginning in northern Norway in April, the operation demonstrated NATO’s capability to secure the giant forest area, said Col. Ari Mure, the Finnish deputy commander of the Jaeger Brigade in Sodankylä.
In April 2024, during Immediate Response, Soldiers from the U.S Army’s 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division unloaded more than 200 armored vehicles and 300 containers in the northern Norwegian port of Narvik. Those supplies were transported across Norway and Sweden and into Finland for the Northern Forest exercise, which also saw a significant airlift of Soldiers into the Rovajärvi training area along with tanks, long-range artillery and anti-aircraft batteries, the newspaper reported. Rovajärvi is Finland’s main artillery and infantry training area, encompassing 1,110 kilometers in the Lapland region of the country.
“Cross-border movement of thousands of soldiers inside the Arctic Circle has become a new normal as NATO shows deterrence … (to) prevent war by telling the Kremlin that any attacks will be met with credible retaliation,” the Barents Observer reported.
Finnmark Land Defense spokesperson Arnfinn Sjøenden told the newspaper that Norwegian troops eagerly anticipated further training with their U.S. and Nordic allies, which has also included the Nordic Response exercise earlier in the spring. “This is a good arena to train together with allied forces and develop our interoperability. Together we create a safer and stronger NATO,” Sjøenden said. The 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based in Fort Johnson, Louisiana, has deployed repeatedly in recent decades to Afghanistan, Iraq and other combat zones around the world.
The 885-kilometer road march across the Arctic Circle demonstrates the U.S. and its NATO allies can quickly respond to a threat to the alliance’s northeastern flanks. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Nordic nations discarded decades of political nonalignment and petitioned to join NATO. Sweden joined NATO this year; Finland in 2023. Norway has been a charter member of the military defense organization since its 1949 inception. The simulated forest battles of Forest Defender allowed troops from four NATO member nations to practice cooperatively countering any invasion of NATO territory, a potential made very real by recent Russian behavior in the region.
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