Northern Viking 22, Defined: With the struggle in Ukraine raging scorching and tensions with Russia sky excessive, NATO accomplished a large-scale train on its northern border near a key geostrategic space.
Train Northern Viking 22 introduced collectively typical and particular operations forces from a number of NATO international locations to Iceland.
Northern Viking 22
From April 2 to April 14, the U.S. Sixth Fleet and several other NATO allies and companions joined forces in Iceland to reinforce their expertise and work on their interoperability. Northern Viking 22 included a plethora of coaching occasions, together with air protection eventualities, coordinated ship-handling operations, hydrographic surveys, base safety, Go to, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) operations, and personnel restoration operations.
“Northern Viking 22 has been extremely profitable for us and for the collaborating Allies. We’ve got realized from one another these final two weeks and we have now shared techniques and procedures, bettering our potential to function collectively within the protection of Iceland and of the strains of communication that run by means of this space,” Commander Marvin Ingólfsson, the deputy commanding officer of Keflavik Air Base, said in a press launch.
Northern Viking 22 additionally included explosive ordnance disposal coaching and anti-submarine warfare workout routines.
Iceland is in a strategically necessary location in the course of the Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom (GIUK) hole.
“There are a number of elements of the train which can be of particular relevance to us; anti-submarine warfare and cooperation with accomplice Navies are particularly necessary. The train occurred in an space that’s of nice curiosity to the German Navy: The North Atlantic across the GIUK hole,” Commander Arne Pfingst with the German Navy.
Many of the coaching occurred within the Keflavik Air Base.
Northern Viking 22: The Arctic & Iceland
Iceland has at all times been a strategically necessary nation.
Throughout World Battle, the Allies established a key joint airbase in Keflavik, Iceland. Plane launching from the airbase offered necessary anti-submarine warfare and reconnaissance help to Allied provide convoys crusing from North America to the UK with important provides to the struggle effort.
The German U-boats had been wreaking havoc on the Allied provide convoys, and the plane flying from Iceland gave the availability convoys a preventing probability.
Through the Chilly Battle, Iceland remained an necessary location. The airbase at Keflavik was a key hub for looking Soviet nuclear submarines that had been roaming within the Atlantic Ocean.
Following the tip of the Chilly Battle, the U.S. army base there fell in disuse till the Pentagon determined to renovate it in 2017 with $22 million.
These days, the Naval Air Station Keflavik performs an necessary function in monitoring the Russian Northern Fleet, the most important Russian Navy formation that accounts for about 75 % of the Russian naval energy.
The naval air base can also be near the Arctic, which hides huge pure assets, resembling pure gasoline, oil, and minerals, beneath the ice—which has began to soften.
1945’s New Protection and Nationwide Safety Columnist, Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned protection journalist specializing in particular operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (nationwide service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins College graduate. His work has been featured in Enterprise Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.
