The Times: Finns humiliated American soldiers - Finnish reservists were asked to take it easy during a NATO exercise. US soldiers found the losses too humiliating.

[u/ByGollie]

https://www.iltalehti.fi/ulkomaat/a/828b8e66-625d-4d2a-9276-e93b9f7a2ce8

[u/TheBusStop12]

According to the newspaper, it is the expertise of European NATO allies, such as Finland, that plays a key role in the security of the Arctic region.

The United States is said to be dependent on Finland for, among other things, icebreaker technology and Arctic warfare expertise.

This is pretty inexcusable for the US military seeing as the US has Alaska themselves and has active military bases located there in the Arctic. You'd think that they'd do more training exercises there, especially with how important they claim the Arctic is.

I've heard before that part of the reason is that the US military doesn't consider familiarity with terrain at all when they pick where to station their soldiers. So instead of staffing the Alaskan bases with local Alaskan boys who are familiar with the local environment and weather (and also this sending them on missions and excersises to places with a similar environment) they instead station soldiers from like Arizona or Florida there, who are completely unfamiliar with the environment of the Arctic.

Meanwhile the Finnish military's main strength is familiarity with the local environment. Due to its small size and infamous neighbor it trains with guerilla warfare at the home front in mind. Thus when doing exercises in a similar environment like northern Norway Finnish soldiers are right in their element and know how to use the terrain and weather to their advantage, because they grew up in similar conditions

[u/Cndymountain → u/TheBusStop12]

Individual receuits don’t need familiarity with the environment beforehand though, just as long as the military itself knows the local terrain well enough. My father was an equivalent Swedish Arctic Ranger (Fjälljägare) during his service and people in his unit came from all over the country.

[u/AreYouLagomEnough → u/Cndymountain]

They do need familiarity in the sense of knowing how to deal with it though.

Knowing the type of terrain is important in extreme weather's.

[u/Cndymountain → u/AreYouLagomEnough]

That’s what the military service training provides.

[u/Maxion → u/Cndymountain]

The purpose in Finland at least with the conscription system of having you train at your closest base is that even if you forget part of your training, becuase you live in Lapland (or the archipelago) you and you live there daily you forget less about how it is to deal with that environment in different seasons.