Vantage Point North

The Beijing’s paramilitary arm Chinese People's Armed Police Force is concentrating its light mechanized infantry formations into the areas surrounding Hong Kong. The force is equipped with wheeled APCs and it’s supported by at least PLA combat engineers.


The ongoing wave of protests in Hong Kong doesn’t seem to run out of steam and the city’s own police force seems to be unable to contain the protesters. The Hong Kong administration seems to be equally inept at resolving the underlying conflicts between Beijing and Hong Kong.


The Chinese communist regime will certainly not accept any solutions that would increase the freedoms or rights of the Hong Kong's citizens. The already huge disparity between the western styled society of Hong Kong and the developing dystopian police state in the mainland China is becoming a tough sale to the Chinese citizenson the mainland trying to cope with the mass surveillance and the social credit systems.
With the prolonged protests affecting…

Two rather ominous news broke form Russia on7.8.2019. Russian Northern Fleet has deployed Bal anti-ship missiles to Keskisaarento (полуостров Средний).These missiles are within striking range from the most important Norwegian radar station at Vardo. They also have the capability to interdict all shipping to the Kirkenes habour.



Russia has also established a new helicopter / forward base to Gogland island (Suursaari) on the Gulf of Finland. This base allows the Russian armed forces to rapidly airlift their SOF units to either the Finnish or Estonian territory. The base also allows Russia to exert increasing control over the waters of the gulf.Its noteworthy that both of these territories belonged to Finland before the start of the World War Two. From the Finnish point of view the message is clear, Russia is staging forces to the old Finnish soil.


On the western side of the border, the usual calm of the Finnish defense discussion is experiencing a rare storm. While there have always be…

The ongoing escalation of hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz may have effects far beyond the middle east. The capture of the British flagged oil tanker Stena Impero by the Iranians forced the UK to step up their presence in the region.

The reinforcements the Royal Navy was able to send to the Persian Gulf were hardly enough to escort the number of tankers in need of protection. The present day 80-ship Royal Navy no longer rules the waves and is actually struggling to deploy enough combat ships to cover the existing commitments, let alone to take on a possible fight against the Iranian navy or even provide the dozen or so escorts needed.
The British government then sent a proposal to create a European naval mission to escort the vital tanker traffic through the Hormuz. The response frhciting the wish to avoid further escalations as the main reason, both also have limited amount of shirps and other operations to cover.
USA, under the Trump administration, has declined to escort non-…

It has been 75 years since 1944 and memorial events for the various decisive battles are held across the world. One of the largest and most grueling battles was the Soviet summer offensive against Finland. Here is a short article about this less known campaign with lots of pictures to and a tiny bit of analysis. 

Karelian Isthmus in 8th of June 1944
The World War two had raged on for four years and the most pivotal moments of it had gone. German army was falling back on all fronts, Allied forces had landed to the shores of Normandy and the Soviet forces had dealt decisive blows to the German war machine.
While all this information was available at the headquarters of the Finnish army in Mikkeli, the Finnish army had grown complacent after spending the past two years in a stagnated trench warfare in the southern part of the frontline. The northern part of the front-lines had remained active, but the guerrilla warfare fought in the endless forests of the far north was worlds apart from the…

There have been very few times in history, when a peacetime military training exercise of a non-aligned country has carried as much weight as the recent Swedish Northern Wind 2019. The 10 000-soldier exercise was the biggest showcase of interoperability and co-operation the region has seen.
The unscripted force on force exercise provided a perfect platform for two separate integration experiments. A Swedish/Finnish brigade was formed around a Swedish mechanized battalion. The joint brigade contained a 1500-man Finnish contingent. This was the largest military force Finland has sent beyond its borders since 1944, and it was gathered from several Finnish brigades and consisted mostly of conscripts. The combined Finnish and Swedish force with their heavy armor and artillery assets were assigned to delay and defend the northern Sweden from the other joint force coming from the north west.
Norwegian army gathered up a combined arms brigade, which was then reinforced by United States Marine C…

For the last three centuries the Naval Infantry was the sole force in Russia trained to conduct forced landings to seashores. In 2017 the Russian military reforms reached a point that more amphibious landing capable forces were needed. In a surprising moment of military insight, they begun training the VDV airborne forces to conduct amphibious landings on their own.
The 2017 test runs were followed up with joint exercises between the Naval Infantry and the VDV. The VDV brings some unique capabilities to the table, as it’s a service that is specialized in expeditionary operations. The combined air and naval landings also allow the Russian armed forces to move in significantly more men and machines that either of the branches could ferry on their own.
In the beginning of the February 2019 the Russian marines based in the occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea conducted a routine landing drill to an unprepared beachhead. The Russian armed forces TV-channel provided an interesting insight …