How NATO make-believe artillerists get comfy with a real-world foe

ROVANIEMI, Finland — As artillery units from several NATO countries confronted a fictitious enemy here last week, one adversary was very real: cold weather.

It’s an age-old reality for countries featuring extreme locales, including the European alliance nations of Norway, Finland, and Sweden plus member countries Canada and the United States across the Atlantic. For the Finns, the challenge of operating in Arctic conditions is woven into military doctrine, which teaches that inexperience with weather can be a greater threat to soldiers’ lives than lackluster fighting skills.

Nested in Finland’s dense coniferous forests of pine trees, north of the Arctic Circle, NATO artillery units convened here in mid-November to learn not only how to survive but how to thrive in this type of environment.

“At times, the cold and Arctic-like conditions found here can be more threatening to soldiers than combat situations,” Lieutenant Olli Taskinen, member of the Jaeger Brigade, a unit of the Finnish Army in charge of developing Arctic warfare tactics, told Defense News on Nov. 19.

During their stay here, in the context of Exercise Lightning Strike 24 focused on joint long-range fire capabilities, British, French, Swedish, and American artillerymen tested themselves in a setting a majority of them have not typically been exposed to.

The knowledge passed down by the Finns ranged from basic skills, such as putting newspaper under soldiers’ socks and boots to take off the moisture, to more complex elements, such as driving multi-ton armored vehicles on slippery roads and keeping howitzers running in temperatures capable of reaching -30 degrees Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit).

For example, Taskinen noted that some weapons have a tendency to jam more in the cold, which can be fatal in the face of an enemy attack.

“In the weather we see here, often we opt to keep our guns frozen by leaving them outside tents – if you take it inside, all the snow and ice gets inside of them and then if you go outside it freezes [again] completely… Keep it completely outside or inside the tent, no in-between,” Taskinen said.

For bigger pieces of equipment such as the K9 155mm self-propelled howitzers, a Finnish engineer said that there is a question of timing – knowing when to pre-start the engine to have it ready for action when needed.

Beyond forests, Finland is also famous for being a land of lakes, with a total of 188,000 spread out throughout its territory, a challenge alongside the cold that required participants to adapt their tactic sets to survive, British Lt. Col. Pete Winton, of the multinational field artillery brigade assembled for the exercise, said.

Out here, communication between the different artillery units at all times is fundamental, Brigadier Rob Alston, chief of joint fires and influence at NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, said, explaining why the drill involved utilizing multiple means of transmitting data.

“[We do this] so that if our preferred option is not working, we are able to utilize a second or third option so that communications can always get through,” he said during an interview.

While the Finnish Army may have mastered the woods, this does not make it immune to problems in freezing conditions.

Four of the eight K9s deployed for the exercise had broken heaters, a K9 operator, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, told Defense News. That meant it was as cold inside the vehicle as outside, with temperatures falling well under the freezing point on that day.

Another challenge faced by participants included the long distances to cross here in Lapland. Taskinen explained that whereas many countries are accustomed to having military infrastructure located close to each other, in this region, often your destination is hundreds of kilometers away.