Marines and Allies Prove Rapid Arctic Deployment Capability

U.S. Marines, alongside Norwegian and Royal Air Force partners, executed a rapid deployment in the Arctic to validate expeditionary strike capabilities in extreme conditions. Loading JLTVs onto RAF A400 aircraft, the team demonstrated the ability to deliver and employ combat power anywhere, fast. Operating as surrogates for the Navy-Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, the vehicles proved Marines can hold key maritime terrain at risk—denying adversaries sanctuary from the Arctic to the Pacific.

Transcript

00:00:00 Heat. Heat. These types of things have been talked about in the Pacific for years. And again, this is not a Pacific thing. It's a Marine Corps thing. And I think it's important for the adversary to know that, hey, this is a thing out here as well, too. So you're

00:00:56 not going to get sanctuary in areas that you thought you did. Uh that key maritime terrain that you thought you could just bypass. You now have to understand that you're being held at risk. As a platoon commander, I got this mission and everything started developing really quickly. We met in Norway and were able to pull the JLTVs loading them onto the A400

00:01:18 with the Royal Air Force. So our unit's motto is we enable uh and that's what we've achieved. Uh we've enabled uh US Marine contingent to deploy to an austere environment just to complete their objectives. That's just a downwind.
>> The crew was very efficient. We were able to get to the island very quickly.

00:01:52 The Norwegians provided us security allowing us to do our job and complete the mission.
>> We know the terrain. This is our backyard. Uh so we can bring with us uh the experience we have from fighting in the Arctic and do it together with our allies.
>> As soon as we touched down, we were able to quickly offload the JLTV and get to

00:02:14 the first firing point. The JLTV was really being used as a surrogate for the Navy Marine Corps expeditionary ship interdiction system, the Nemesis. So, we were validating that this vehicle can fit on this aircraft and can be delivered rapidly to this location, which we did flawlessly.
>> Everything we wanted to accomplish, we accomplished. It was rapid. It was fast.

00:02:39 If I was on the other side of this, I would be scared. What's great working in a community of warriors is just that underlying trust. You know, you have the same objectives. They absolutely trusted us in this exercise and we fully trusted them. They got us to the island. They made sure that we were able to occupy our positions. Through that trust, that's

00:02:57 where you get the end result of that shared combined lethality. You see this taking place in sunny tropic scenes and now you're seeing taking place in far off northern lands. Any place that we can carry a gun, you're going to find the United States Marines.