Skip to main content

Russia practices for an Iceland invasion

a MTLB landing from the landing ship Severomorsk to Kotelny

The Russian Northern Fleet has been very active lately, in addition to the usual landing drills close to the fleets home ports in the Kola peninsula, the fleet has been roaming the Russian northern coast with a landing squadron that carries a mix of marines and Arctic brigade specialists from the Alakurtti military base.

This unit has now made a landing drill at the remote island of Kotelny that sits between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea. The squadrons last supply point, where the crews and troops were allowed to rest and refit was in Dudinka. The distance from Dudinka to Kotelny is roughly 2000 km. This distance corresponds closely to the distance between the fleets home base in Kola and Iceland. The geography and the size of the islands are also very similar.

From Dudinka to the Kotelny

It is very important to test these kind of long distance naval operations in advance as the troops and the vehicles on board, must remain combat worthy all the way to the target. And the seas up north can be extremely demanding.

Iceland is one of the few nations in the world without an army. Iceland only has an approximately 200 men strong coast guard and a 230 men strong force for peacekeeping purposes. Due to the extremely strategic location of the island nation, USA has been guaranteeing its freedom and Iceland is a NATO member. Other NATO members and even some neutral countries like Finland have lent aircraft's and personnel to help police the Icelandic airspace.

OPV Thor, the biggest vessel of the Iceland Coast Guard

Without an effective navy Iceland isn’t equipped to stop a Russian landing force and without an army it has no change to repel an amphibious landing by the Russian marines. A dug in Marine brigade with support from the Arctic brigade and it’s modern anti-aircraft missile units a Russian foothold in the island would be a real challenge to the NATO forces available.


As we can see the Cold War hot-spots haven’t all vanished. The GIUK gap from Greenland via Iceland to United Kingdom is still included in the Russian military training curriculum. NATO has also been sending more and more vessels and aircraft to patrol the northern waters.

Labels:

Comments

  1. quyen2May 30, 2019 at 11:22 AM

    Nice post! This is a very nice that I will definitively come back to more times this year! Thanks for informative post.jogos friv gratis 2019
    Jogos 2019
    jogos friv

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Quick guide to identifying the Russian tanks Part 1: Updated Dec. 2021

  As most of the western nations have reduced their inventories to a few or mostly one type of main battle tank model in their active inventories, the myriad of tank platforms and distinct versions employed by the Russian armed forces may feel overwhelming. Here is a quick guide to identifying Russian MBTs. When you come across an image (or the actual thing), follow the steps to identify it properly. Updated 15.12.2021: T-90 modifications Family of the tank Russian Armed Forces currently operates, or at least storage, the following tank platforms/families: -            T-55 (<2000 in storage) -            T-62 (2000 in storage) -            T-64 (2000 in storage) -            T-72 (2000 active duty, 8000 in storage) -            T-80 (2000 active duty, 5000 in storage) -            T-90 (350 active duty, 600  in storage) -            T-14 (20 in field testing) So how can you identify what type of a tank are you looking at? There are two features that can be used to distinguishing th
102 comments
Read more

The Russian ”Tank Circus”

The Russian media has published several articles about the latest round of live fire drills by the Russian tank forces. The first brief mentions caught my attention as they described a new tank tactic based on the experiences of the Russian expeditionary force in Syria.  T-72B1 at Pogonovo (Photo: © RIA Novosti / Andrey Stanavov) The details about the new tactic were scarce but there were mentions of continuous movement and a steady barrage of main gun fire. On 4th of July, the RIA published an in depth article about the 20th combined Arms Army’s field training of the new tactics (Translated to English by Sputnik ) The “Tank Carousel” is simply a drill in which a tanks of a formation, be it a platoon or a company, move around a set perimeter firing the from vantage points or openings in a berm and then move off to safety while another one moves in to the same spot to fire.  This does allow the unit to maintain sustained 125 mm tank gun fire at a target area. Another
147 comments
Read more

Russian Airborne Forces To Go Wheeled

The light weight tracked IFV:s of the BMD-series have been the mainstay of the Russian airborne forces, the VDV, for decades. Several new BMD-variants are currently under development. But the vehicle that is going to be  introduced  to service first is breaking the pattern.  K-4386 Typhoon-VDV (Photo: Vitaly V, Kuzmin) The K-4386 Typhoon-VDV is a wheeled 4x4 armored car, that can be armed with a variety of weapon systems. The base model is a formidable IFV that will have a remote-controlled turret with a 30 mm 2A42 automatic cannon and a coaxial 7.62mm PKT machine gun. But what really sets the VDV variant apart from most of the other MRAP:s is its ability to be parachuted from Russian transport aircraft. Drivers station of the  K-4386 Typhoon-VDV (photo: Nikita Grigoriev, Mil.Today)  The Typhoon “ family ” of Russian mine resistant vehicles has been adopted by the various military branches and security services in Russia. The vehicles are manufactured by both KamAZ and
4 comments
Read more