Vantage Point North

  Jehu-class boat and NH-90 helicopters. Photo: FDF The Finnish Defense Forces have been working hard with improving their readiness since 2014. The army has developed readiness units that are manned with conscripts serving 6 months of their 12-month conscription in a readiness role. The units are rather hard hitting, with usually a company of infantry augmented by organic artillery, anti-aircraft, and main battle tank detachments. While the Army readiness units have been operational for five years now, the first two Navy units reached operational status in December 2021. The unit is formed much in the same way as the army units, with a core of professional soldiers supported by the 12 month serving conscripts that make up the bulk of the unit. Navy readiness unit conducting CQB training. Note the blue version of the readiness unit patch.    Photo FDF What differentiates the Navy unit from their dry land counterparts, is their ability to be used also in internationa...

 OSINT, and especially social media based OSINT, on military installations can be tricky. But some bases are a lot more accessible than others. The Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet is one of the easier ones. Both of the fleets major bases, Baltiysk and Kronstadt, are popular tourist and outdoor locations with people boating, walking, fishing, ice fishing and filming almost all year around.  An unmodified Nanuchka-class corvette Geyzer and the Swans that hang out along the canal So what kind of information can be derived from the typical weeks worth of digging through the various social networks? The most obvious fact is that a Russian city can have more nail saloons than residents. When it comes to the military side of things, the first one is the locations of the vessels within the port area. This also allows one to observe the ships that are missing from images. But be warned, some ports have more static berthing than others. The Zubr-class LAC:s in their special concrete landing...

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. Bal Anti-ship missile launherKeskustelu 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. Russian SOF fast roping from a Mi-8 helicopter On the western side of the bor...

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. HMS Monmouth a Type 23 Frigate 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 Tr...

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. BTR-82A making a landfall 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...

Until this weeks kaleidoscopic scramble across Russia’s the western frontier, the Russian armed forces have been following a largely routine schedule since the rolling readiness checks of the October 2017 and the massive Zapad17 exercise. The recent flurry of activity started with the snap drills of the reconnaissance, artillery and combat engineering units, that are commonly associated with the spearhead formations of the Russian army. Alone these drills are not very remarkable and even when grouped like this, they shouldn’t cause a major alarm with the Western defense planners. When the entire Strategic Rocket Force (RVSN ), ie. the Russia’s ground based ICBM force was alerted and the mobile TEL:s rolled into the vast forests things started to look slightly suspicious. Especially when the readiness check of the nuclear forces coincided with the expulsion of the Russian diplomats by UK, EU and USA. Simultaneously with the RVSN, the majority of the Russian a...

Chinese Aircraft Carrier Liaoning (Photo: Russian propagandists) Written by quest author  Henri Hautamäki For the past few days, there has been a lot of media attention in Finland towards two giant pandas, which were airlifted from China and brought to the Ähtäri zoo in the central part of the country, following a deal in which they were loaned there for fifteen years. During the discussion rising from this “news spectacle”, a friend of mine decided to write in her blog about these animals, both from the perspective of animal rights, and the panda-deal’s political ramifications. You see, pandas have been rather important for the People’s Republic of China, namely as tools of their foreign policy and public image. Considering that many of the recent Chinese activities globally are rather less cute than their precious pandas, I decided to write a little bit about what they have been up to, for those who are not aware of it. PLZ-10 Self Propelled Howitzers (Photo: PLA) ...

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 ...