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The USA wants to be ready for a polar war, and discovers that it is no longer capable of it

A polar war is not a war like any other. At 50 degrees below zero, uninsulated batteries discharge within minutes. Tablet screens break. Hydraulic systems freeze, crippling planes, trucks and even howitzers. The satellite dishes must point lower and lower as the troops move further and further north, until most satellites are blocked by the horizon. Even the sweat of the soldiers turns against them, the humidity soaks their clothes and lets in the deadly cold.

General Brian Eifler, commander of the " Arctic Angels" division of the US Army, the 11th Airborne Division, based in Alaska, recently reactivated, had precisely this difficult task: preparing for a polar war, with skis that now have 50 years.

Has the US bit off more than it can chew?

“In the Arctic everything is custom-made,” said division chief petty officer Master Sergeant Vern Daley, showing off the new skis while speaking with Eifler at the Association of the United States Army conference Wednesday, the first in 50 years.

The 11th was formed last year from units that had long been based in Alaska but had deployed around the world, with a focus on the Pacific. Only last year, as part of the service's Arctic Strategy 2021, they were reformed into a single division specifically focused on operations at extremely high latitudes and low temperatures – such as above the Arctic Circle, where the Pentagon and the allies see a creeping Russian threat.

“I don't think that, [when] it's 65 degrees below zero, you can do anything other than try to stay warm – and whoever can stay the warmest, wins,” Major General Eifler said. “But at 30 degrees below zero you can fight.”

“If you have your cell phone with you and you take it out for two minutes, it will go from 100 percent [charge] to zero,” Eifler said. “If we want to use a tablet or something like that to plan or anything like that, and it gets exposed to that temperature, it's gone. … The ambient air that hits it breaks everything."

This is a big problem for an Army that is increasingly investing in high-tech electronics, many of which are purchased “sight unseen” from commercial suppliers and not hardened for extreme conditions. “The military likes to give everyone the same communications equipment, but that doesn't work in the Arctic.”

Often, in these extreme conditions, the older the equipment, the better it works, with troops learning to rely more on FM radios that are decades old but suited to these challenging locations.

The far north is also out of range of most communications and surveillance satellites, which orbit the equator. Only a few satellite communications companies offer coverage in the Arctic, including, according to Eifler, Iridium and Starlink.

Starlink owner Elon Musk, who also owns electric car maker Tesla, even visited the command to explore custom technologies, Eifler added. “We had… Elon Musk and his team up there trying to understand how battery-powered cars and isolated cars work.” Because even Starlink breaks at 50 below zero.

The problem is not just communications. Even weapons, even the most tested ones, can have problems. For example, it is not known how the M777 howitzer, highly appreciated for its lightness and transportability, can respond to certain temperatures.

Even the mobility component needs to be rewritten: the units that formed the new division used 300 Stryker 8×8 vehicles, but these may not be suitable for polar temperatures. So the division has given up on it and for now either it moves on foot or the prospect is that of air assault training. Moving as infantry “The old fashioned way” is not… a walk in the park in a polar environment. In the meantime , BAE's CATV vehicle is being tested for the winter period. These are tracked vehicles designed for the extreme Arctic environment and the army has invested 278 in their purchase.

Alaska is highly mountainous, the polar ice is patchy and prone to melting, so in such difficult terrain many operations must be conducted on foot. For this, individual equipment is needed, such as new skis or recently introduced winter clothing, in particular the Cold Temperature & Arctic Protection System, which is designed for temperatures down to -55 C after current cold-weather equipment wears off. proved to be inadequate for Alaska.

The Army's Soldier Systems Center has even developed special medical supplies, such as an insulated sleeping bag and stretcher combination for evacuating victims whose unstable body temperatures put them at even greater risk of hypothermia. The center has also developed a quick-assemble mini-tent to allow medics to work on the injured without exposing them to biting winds.

The fortune of the USA is to have allies ready for this type of confrontation: Sweden, Norway and Finland, who have great experience in polar warfare and know the equipment and needs. But then the Stars and Stripes soldiers must learn how to behave in these conditions using their own abilities.


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The article The USA wants to be ready for a polar war, and discovers that it is no longer capable of it comes from Economic Scenarios .


This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gli-usa-vogliono-essere-pronti-a-una-guerra-polare-e-scoprono-di-non-esserne-piu-capaci/ on Sat, 14 Oct 2023 06:00:16 +0000.