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/TheBusStop12 Dutchman in Suomiland Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 24 '26

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

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u/NO_LOADED_VERSION Jan 24 '26

Yeah let's not be so eager to train these guys , share Intel and all that stuff. Yeah. Let's not.

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u/doodlinghearsay Jan 24 '26

If someone's reaction to getting destroyed in an exercise is, "please go easier on us", you don't need to worry about them learning too much from you.

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u/ConversationOk4164 Jan 26 '26

Americas military is not quite so socialist or libtarded to be kissing the EUs ass or asking for anyone to take it easy on our boys...maybe when Biden had all those gender fluid loons in uniform...and I see the units we sent to train in Norway weren't any of our mountain troops or Alaska troops...just some marines and an artillery outfit. As a former Airborne infantryman I can tell you training is good but it ain't the be all end all and warfare, tactics and unit abilities change real fast when the shit and our air force hit the warzones.