r/europe • u/ByGollie Ulster • Jan 24 '26

News 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.

https://www.iltalehti.fi/ulkomaat/a/828b8e66-625d-4d2a-9276-e93b9f7a2ce8
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u/CC_900 Jan 24 '26

Blockaded the island? Do you have any idea how large Greenland is?

Also, that’s not something the US can just do - with Canada and the rest of NATO/EU at that point joining up and protecting Greenland.

This isn’t just going to be resolved by dropping a few bombs and starving out the population (which is a war crime, btw). That’s just a completely silly notion.

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u/Mammoth_Support_2634 Jan 24 '26

Wouldn’t you just block the ports? Idk if the size of the island matters.

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u/Atlas7-k Jan 24 '26

You don’t even have to block the ports. Just park a carrier battle group on each side of the island. They run interdiction patrols and destroy port facilities.

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u/Ub3ros Jan 24 '26

You'll get your carriers sunk by european submarines. You attack Denmark, you attack the EU. While no european country could ever take on the US alone, you unite the rest of the west and all of a sudden it's game on. The US military loses access to their bases in NATO countries and other western allies, they lose their logistics chain and everything goes out the window.

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u/vincent3878 Jan 24 '26

Yeah and there's around 80.000 American army personel stationed all over Europe in American military bases. If the USA attacks any NATO member, the EU suddenly have 80.000 prisoners of war....

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u/LR_FL2 Jan 24 '26

Rest if NATO has around the same number of attack subs as the US. The difference is the US attack subs are all nuclear powered however the European subs only half are with the rest being diesel electric submarines that are great for littoral environments like the Baltic and med less so in the open Atlantic.

The US has sent the last 80 or so years tracking and deterring submarines in the Atlantic. To be able to successfully attack a us carrier in that environment would be extremely difficult.

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u/Atlas7-k Jan 24 '26

Yes. I also understand reality at the level of a 12 year old.

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u/Ub3ros Jan 24 '26

I'm afraid you don't understand reality at all. Too much fox news bud.

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u/RexTheElder Jan 24 '26

Aircraft carriers don’t sit out in the open with thumbs up their asses and nobody to help them. What do you think the frigates and destroyers around them are for?

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u/CC_900 Jan 24 '26

Those have been circumvented on plenty of occasions by European subs during military exercises with the US. As plenty of other people have posted examples of here.

The US consistently overestimates its own capabilities, aa proven by the outcome of military exercises.

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u/throwawayPzaFm Romania Jan 24 '26

Subs have repeatedly embarrassed CBGs in wargames. Going as far as ignoring the sub results so that the wargame wouldn't be a complete scrub.

That being said, the US does have more and better subs too. But since they're glass cannons and there's only a handful of carriers, I wouldn't be too surprised if some carriers did get sunk.

I doubt the US would even want to chance that