winter conditions

Another concideration is outfitting your troops, like the difference between being dressed for winter and jumping into your car and being dressed for winter and going skiing. No country can afford to equip all of its soldiers with the best of everything. So everyone gets warm clothes but only select groups get the realy good parkas in winter camouflage.

The following video shows some of the basic pure infantry equipment like shoes, tobaggan, etc. Note the uniforms can be folded to exhibit various degrees of brown and white. This is better than pure of either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah-_ivTF54c

Of course machinery helps/is necessary, but as another person mentioned, the forces here are trained to exist and operate without it for a time. Good stuff: Magnesium snoshoes, wonderful double wall tents, transport tobaggans for unit level equipment, great clothes. Must cost a small fortune even before further mechanization.

EdThomas wrote:

jgnfld wrote:Infantry in open country before air power? Yes.

SNIP

Hi,
Thanks for replying. I was thinking infantry, straight leg infantry, even if on skis, wouldn't be able to carry enough support weaponry, machine guns,mortars, anti-armor, etc to survive any contact with a larger unit or installation. Duhh question. does modern arctic infantry pull sleds when they're on skis or snowshoes?
There seem to be a large number of small wheeled or tracked vehicles available but in my mind their use moves the infantry into the "mechanized" class.
It sounds as if your son's picked a good time to be serving in arctic forces. Another of the things I discovered in my "poking around" is the emphasis Canada's putting on arctic operations. I saw a number of large patrol boats are planned but didn't see anything for the Army other than larger and more numerous forward equipment depots.

If you want a good example of what properly equipped snow troops can do to modern army look at the Winter War 1940 between Finland and Russia. Finland was handing the Russians there heads until spring rolled around to the tune of a 10 to 1 casualty count.

saber964 wrote:If you want a good example of what properly equipped snow troops can do to modern army look at the Winter War 1940 between Finland and Russia. Finland was handing the Russians there heads until spring rolled around to the tune of a 10 to 1 casualty count.

Absolutely except that modern air and sensors obviate many of the old advantages.

Louis R wrote:Again, it depends. As I understand it, yes, when the term was introduced, that was the distinction between 'mechanised' and 'motorised' infantry. I have no idea when the CF dropped the latter designation - it was gone before I joined - but the former hasn't been in formal use since 4CMBG was shut down in the mid-90s. All the battalions are mechanised now. When they need to be. There's still an awful lot of places where they need not to be - and they spend at least as much time training for the dismounted role as they do for mechanised and combined-arms ops.

Oh, interesting. So, essentially, there is no longer a "mechanized infantry". All infantry use vehicles when they need to, including armored vehicles when appropriate. I guess that's an important part of the modern flexible army.

SWM wrote:
Oh, interesting. So, essentially, there is no longer a "mechanized infantry". All infantry use vehicles when they need to, including armored vehicles when appropriate. I guess that's an important part of the modern flexible army.

I don't have any experience with this sort of thing, but I would imagine that while infantry are transported from point a to point b much of the time, they are still trained to use shanks' horses (marching) when needed and that the occasion when that that is called for still happens by.

Don

EdThomas wrote:Thought/question for those who've done it and Tenshinai ( our resident Finn).
In open country would infantry be able to function? I'm thinking the battle would be largely between armor, helicopter gunships and ground support aircraft like the A10. Would mechanized infantry work?

In heavy snow, ski-troops is about the only thing that can move at all. Armor gets stuck.
Next step down is specialised vehicles, like snowmobiles and things like the:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandvagn_206
which has extremely low ground pressure, about the same as a skier.
(an example of what is really heavy snow, just for comparison, i read an article a few weeks ago about a place in Norway, where they had to cancel opening a ski resort because of too much snow, just about none had melted from winter snowfall, and then early June they had an extra 3-4 meters snowfall in just a weekend, ending up with a grand total of around 15-16 meters, which after a winter of selfcompression still means 3-5 meters of hard snow(but far from hard enough for a tank to move on top), and while this is a bit extreme, 2/3s of that isn´t
http://www.akaskidor.se/artiklar/nyhete ... r-sno-juni
you can check the pictures, pretty awesome looking
)

Medium snow, still ski-troops that rule, most vehicles can move, but getting stuck is VERY common and easy, and heavier tanks are clearly disadvantaged, you want low ground pressure AND low total weight.
There´s also the issue that standing still with vehicles, if you don´t take care you risk melting snow and then having it freeze up again, worst case, it can freeze up the tracks completely in less than an hour.
And of course, most military vehicles rely on lubricants and stuff that rarely agree completely with severe cold, and especially not with cold and wet climate, like what you can find up here in Sweden and Norway, and to a lesser extent in Finland and Northern Russia.

Once you´re down to "light" snow, half a meter or less and decently compressed, possibly with a sturdy frozen crust, tanks and armoured vehicles do become quite useful, in fact mechanized warfare can actually be more effective on this than on summer terrain.
As long as the troops don´t get too much frostbite or freeze to death at least.

Gunship helicopters and ground support aircraft can be extremely effective, but thick snow also means any troops not on the move have a very easy task in hiding from them, even PIR can be camouflaged against very well when you have unlimited building blocks everywhere.

What it means is essentially that air support cannot(or at least damn well SHOULD not) operate as normal, because then they´re going to end up having manpack SAMs shoved up their tailpipe on a constant basis, coming from places where they can see nothing but snow, and with surprise comes a severe increase in SAM deadliness.

Basically, air support can do lots of damage at best, but can be totally uselessly smacked down themselves at worst.

And oi! Swedish not Finnish!

EdThomas wrote:In the great northern forest belts would anything but infantry be able to operate? Small tracks could probably work but would big tanks and mech artillery be limited to roads and roadside clearings?

Yes and no, infantry is what can be used "normally", but for vehicles, well that´s what you have engineering troops for.

Thanks for replying. I did some poking and was surprised to find how narrow the LAV3 and Stryker are. I'd thought they were too big to work in the boreal forest but it seems that's not the case. Also came across the "Hagglund" over the snow vehicle. This seems to be big favorite for arctic operations because of variety of roles it can perform.

Hehe, the name of the linked Bv-106 is the Hägglund Bv-106...

Duhh question. does modern arctic infantry pull sleds when they're on skis or snowshoes?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Hi,
Thanks for replying. I was thinking infantry, straight leg infantry, even if on skis, wouldn't be able to carry enough support weaponry, machine guns,mortars, anti-armor, etc to survive any contact with a larger unit or installation.

That´s why winter warfare is usually about stealth and raiding rather than fullscale assaults. Machineguns and lighter mortars as well as AT and manpack SAMs are no real problem if the troops are well practised enough, but heavy mortars, .50 MGs etc, once you start hitting those sizes, their effectiveness is just not justified compared to the trouble of moving them.

Another of the things I discovered in my "poking around" is the emphasis Canada's putting on arctic operations.

Amusingly enough, due as much to USA rejecting the Arctic treaty as Russia trying to find ways to push its own claims further as part of the treaty.



###########

Louis R wrote:I can't answer to the state of Russian [Soviet, in those days] training and equipment, but it was my impression that we were sufficiently better than they were that there was a reasonable prospect of taking Murmansk away from them.

Pipedream. Soviet equipment was overall better suited for winter warfare than that of NATO. In NATO, winter warfare was something you trained and equipped some troops extra for, in USSR winter warfare was mostly just "normal".
They learned that lesson from the Finns in the Finnish winter war.

In fact, if you look at analysis done by BOTH Soviet and NATO people in the 80s, USSR had by far the best chances of winning a conventional war in Europe during wintertime.

Also, seriously, Murmansk? Your two options to GET THERE is from Norway or by ship. Getting there on ship is suicidal, all it takes is one single Soviet SSK being nearby and *poof*, and USSR always kept a couple or more of them in the area.

And from Norway in winter? It would be a slower suicide, but pretty much suicide all the same. The terrain there is bad enough in summer even without the fixed defenses the Soviets put there, but in winter, i would simply refuse an order to try to attack Murmansk from there, because such an order would be on the level of the most stupid "rush up from your trenches and chaaarrge" orders during WWI.

The defenses that covered Murmansk is the kind where a platoon could stop a battalion, even in summer. Winter is a magnitude worse.

I don't recall seeing this described in the text, but our solution to the problem is a] mits with trigger fingers and b] taking off the trigger guards [!]

Swedish weapons, AK-4, AK-5, M/45 etc has a larger triggerguard, allowing normal use even with decent gloves or mits, because you really don´t want to remove it completely.

OTOH, boreal forest can be surprisingly easy to move through. You have to take it slow and easy, but you can do it with the right terrain and tree density - and if either changed abruptly, you would be in deep doo-doo.

Oh yeah... One of the reasons the defender is often extra advantaged in winter warfare.



#####

As have already been said several times, overall the main theme is definitely "it depends".

jgnfld wrote:

saber964 wrote:If you want a good example of what properly equipped snow troops can do to modern army look at the Winter War 1940 between Finland and Russia. Finland was handing the Russians there heads until spring rolled around to the tune of a 10 to 1 casualty count.

Absolutely except that modern air and sensors obviate many of the old advantages.

Not nearly as much as you might think.

And like i mention in my previous post, snow is a wonderful thing to play with when you´re doing camouflage. If opposing troops are welltrained for winter warfare and in camouflage, modern sensors are going to be as much of a disadvantage as an advantage, because the opposition can exploit ways that you can bypass them while those using them relies on them to not "fail".

Exercises in north of Sweden in winter have shown this repeatedly, with troops actually managing to go straight through "defenders" unseen just by good use of terrain and the abundancy of snow. Because the defenders thought that having their modern sensors cover everywhere from multiple directions was good enough.

It´s since been made a standard caution in the winter training, both how to avoid modern sensors, and how to use them without allowing yourself to be fooled by relying too much on them.

As long as "your side" knows what sensors an enemy has, snow can be exploited as a major advantage.

n7axw wrote:

SWM wrote:
Oh, interesting. So, essentially, there is no longer a "mechanized infantry". All infantry use vehicles when they need to, including armored vehicles when appropriate. I guess that's an important part of the modern flexible army.

I don't have any experience with this sort of thing, but I would imagine that while infantry are transported from point a to point b much of the time, they are still trained to use shanks' horses (marching) when needed and that the occasion when that that is called for still happens by.

Don

To clarify, when I said "infantry use vehicles when they need to", I meant "infantry use vehicles when vehicles are needed or appropriate." I was not implying that they use vehicles all the time.

I think you're confusing 'NATO' and 'US'

understandable: the Yanks do it all the time

Tenshinai wrote:
Pipedream. Soviet equipment was overall better suited for winter warfare than that of NATO. In NATO, winter warfare was something you trained and equipped some troops extra for, in USSR winter warfare was mostly just "normal".
They learned that lesson from the Finns in the Finnish winter war.