Icelandic armed forces - a video

In this video we can see some of the equipment used by the modern armed forces of Iceland. Mostly the Coast Guard with its naval patrols, the ICRU units deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and the Viking squad special forces unit of the National Police.

In between are scenes from what seems to be the second Cod War with the United Kingdom and Germany, where Icelandic patrol vessels clashed with British frigates and destroyers in the waters around Iceland in what amounted to a very limited or primitive form of warfare that was mostly fought through the media.

Icelandic armed forces - part II

The onset of the Cold War worried the Icelandic nation to a certain degree already in the late 1940s. The government looked at various solutions to this security problem. Among which an alliance with the Nordic countries with military aid from the US was considered very preferable. However the US was unwilling to support such a venture. Instead Iceland became one of the founding members of NATO in 1949.

[Soviet bomber shadowed by a US interceptor out of Iceland.]

One of the governments primary aim was to keep no permanent foreign military troops in the country. However the start of the Korean War and large fleet of Soviet dual purpose vessels stationed north of the country (fishing fleet allegedly) changed the predicament. A military defence treaty was signed with the US and a considerable contingent of American troops were based in the country. The main goal of this contingent was Anti Submarine Warfare and the interception of bombers, its ground force merely designated to defend the immediate areas around the main base in Keflavík.

[Icelandic Coast Guard in the 1970s.]

All other security measures still fell on the shoulders of the Icelandic nation. In spite of the immense subversion and propaganda activities by the Soviet Union and their political allies within Iceland the Icelandic government managed to continue with a number of reforms in order to improve the country's readiness to face Soviet aggression and other ensure its sovereignty. However not all reforms were  successfully completed. Among them the establishment of a Coast Guard infantry force to complement the Police in the countryside and in wartime was not finished in the 1950s as planned and instead it still only exists in an embryonic form to this day. The Coast Guard did however receive new small-arms and the ships armour was much improved already in the late 1940s and in the 1950s.

[Icelandic Coast Guard patrol boat. Considerable armour was put on the smaller wooden hulled vessels.]

Iceland's success in the Cod Wars in the 1950s and 1970s cemented popular support for the Coast Guard and blunted communist propaganda aimed at it. Not much was done in the form of improving its naval capabilities however since such defence activities were primarily to be performed by the US forces stationed in the country. Iceland would remain focused on internal security, counter-intelligence, military deception and defeating minor incursions. These activities fell mostly on the Police, its reserve force as well as the civil defence to a certain degree.

[Viking Squad members training in the 1980s.]

In the 1970s the threat of international terrorism became so prevalent that some defences had to be prepared. The well trained old guard that had served in the Police from the 1930s until the 1950s had retired by then and the two decades of US military presence had somewhat dulled the military training regime Icelandic policemen were subjected to. The response was to form a special unit which would be known as the Viking Squad (Víkingasveitin).

[Viking Squad soldier in olive green uniform.]

The early plans for the Viking Squad would consist of small groups of older and more experienced policemen, but later it was realized that their training and physical condition were substandard. It was decided to ask for Norwegian help and Lieutenant Arnór Sigurjónsson, an Icelander serving the Norwegian army, was tasked with overseeing the training of the first squadron of Viking Squad members. The founding date of this special force is considered to be in 1982 when this group finished their special force training school in Norway.

[Viking Squad assaulting a terrorist hideout.]

The group's main activities would be anti-terrorism and defence against Soviet spetsnaz raids in practice however they were to be mostly employed for minor gun related law-enforcement activities. For the most part the Viking Squad was armed with H&K MP5 sub-machine guns, shotguns and pistols such as Smith&Wesson .357, H&K P7 and Glock 9mm. It was also equipped with machine guns and at least one mortar in order to deal with more heavily armed Soviet troops. 

Icelandic armed forces - part I

Iceland is probably among the more mysterious NATO countries. It has for decades officially claimed to maintain no armed forces and that claim was even acknowledged by NATO as can be seen towards the end in the following video.

To support this it is also sometimes claimed that the country's constitution forbids or forbade the forming of standing armies despite the fact that the exact opposite is true.

The truth appears to be convoluted in this matter.

In the 1990s following the dissolution of the USSR Icelandic historians started to research the Soviet archives and interview former KGB agents. To their surprise these agents praised the professionalism of their colleagues in the Icelandic  secret service an agency these historians had never heard of before and was generally unknown in Icelandic society.

As it turned out the Icelandic government had formed this counter-intelligence service in the 1930s within the Directorate for Immigration. It's primary purpose was to protect the country from Soviet and later Nazi German agents.  It operated in utmost secrecy until the very end of the Cold War without so much as a newspaper article indicating its existence. All of its operations and successes during the period had been attributed to the regular Police forces and vigilance of upstanding citizens.

[Icelandic militia gun-club in the late 19th century. Iceland had a vibrant nationalistic militia culture until the end of WWI when it started to diminish.]

Similarly the Icelandic government decided in the late 1930s to form an armed defence force to protect the country. This was again mostly caused by the perceived Nazi German and Soviet threat. Although it was already in the 1920s when Iceland got its first taste of communist threat. When a violent and armed mob of communists defeated the catpital police force repeatedly and refused to hand over a teenage boy suffering from a contagious disease.  This led the government to permit Icelandic militia riflemen under the leadership of the newly formed Icelandic Coast Guard to defeat them. Which they then did in short order.

[Commander Jóhann P. Jónsson of the Icelandic Coast Guard led the combined Coast Guard and militia force in the 1920s.]

By the late 1930s the government felt however that this level of defence which the Coast Guard and militia provided  was insufficient. Which was hardly surprising due to their sharp decline in quality as a result of the global economical depression. Thus the police force was ordered to study modern warfare tactics and leadership which they could then in turn teach the reserve force and together they would form a national defence with the pre-existing Coast Guard and militia.

[Icelandic police officers training in Iceland just before WWII.]

This plan was understandably not advertised, not only was the nation threatened by the communists who had kept up their violence throughout the 1930s but now they also had allies in the form of Nazi Germany as made apparent by their joint invasion of Poland in 1939.

However the arrival of British troops in the spring of 1940 lightened the burden on the Icelandic nation in this regard. Formation of a national defence force was put on hold for the duration of the war, although the Coast Guard was strengthened very considerably because of the submarine and mine threat caused by the belligerents. The Coast Guard received hundreds of Lee Enfield rifles from the British government and other equipment for disposal of drifting mines as well as depth charges and machine guns for self defence against German submarines and aircraft.

[Icelandic Coast Guard vessel Þór. Much of the burden of cleaning drift mines in the North Atlantic fell on the Icelandic Coast Guard during and after WWII.]

The end of the war and withdrawal of the foreign troops caused the Icelandic government to consider very seriously how to ensure the security of the nation. These discussions eventually led to Iceland becoming one of the founding members of NATO. But even before that the Icelandic police force had continued to restart the earlier plan on forming a national army and even sent some of its officers abroad for training.

[Icelandic police officers during training exercises in Sweden in 1948 where they studied new concepts in the Swedish theory of Total War.] 

To be continued...

Invading and conquering Ukraine

Like many I've been following the recent invasion of Ukraine by Russian armed forces this spring. And it was quite shocking at first to hear news of armed men capturing airfields and military bases in Crimea, but in retrospect I could have anticipated this. After all I played the original Su-27 flight simulator.

(Russian mechanized infantry in Georgia)

Only about 6 years ago Russia invaded its neighboring Georgia and successfully swept aside its armed forces  mostly with what seemed like a mix of equipment mostly from the 70's and 80's with minor modernization. This war which seemed engineered by the Russians through supporting Ossetian rebels was primarily a response to the newly introduced alignment of the Georgian government to the Western powers and possible NATO membership of the country which Russia opposes naturally.

(Orthodox Christianity seems very central to resurgent Russia. Here are two Russian invaders in Ukraine accompanied by priests.)

The invasion of Crimea and perhaps especially the continuing operations in eastern Ukraine are however very different in nature.
While the Georgian invasion was a rather traditional massive attack with combined arms the invasion of Ukraine was mostly a special operation reminiscent of the unsuccessful Soviet attempt to defeat the Baltic nations in their bid at reclaiming their independence in the 1990s.  Both employed a mix of special operators (spetsnaz) of various official services such as army and KGB/FSB as well as criminal/mafia elements or terrorists.

(Estonian riflemen. In the 1990s the Baltic countries defeated Soviet special operators creating chaos within their borders and regained their independence.)

Russia is now very firmly in control of the Crimean peninsula it seems but its still a question whether the Ukrainians will be able to defeat the Russian mafia/spetsnaz forces that have occupied some easterly provinces. 

The Ukrainian armed forces seem very run down and judging by its actions its morale is clearly not the most solid in the world. It nonetheless possesses considerable firepower as well as industrial and technical know how in its weapons industry and the influx activists and demonstrators into the armed forces seem to have improved its valor without diluting its level of training too much.
Nonetheless things still seem quite fluid and its hard to say who will win despite the fact that the Ukrainians are on the offensive at the moment. It will be very hard indeed for them to secure their long borders with Russia where spetsnaz operators and mafia members can cross back and forth with impunity.