Placing Hundreds Of Soldiers In A Small Town#

How do you find space for just over 300 soldiers in a town that has around 430 inhabitants on a daily basis?

First Lieutenant and Deputy Commander of the National Support Element at the 4th National Support Battalion, Morten, and his colleagues are all too familiar with this challenge. They are specialists in making the logistical puzzle work when the Armed Forces conduct exercises and missions.

“In short, we are ‘first ones in—last ones out’. We reconnoiter and prepare before exercises and support along the way with terminal tasks, receiving equipment, transport, accommodation and catering for all the soldiers,” explains Morten.

Morten and his colleagues were responsible for, among other things, the accommodation of military personnel in the town of Kangerlussuaq, which is located approximately 300 kilometers north of Nuuk, during the Arctic Light exercise.

The exercise included, among other things, aircraft, helicopters, a frigate and several other Navy ships as well as over 550 soldiers from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and France. For about 300 of them, the exercise took place around Kangerlussuaq, where they were to be accommodated. And it takes a lot of preparation and thorough planning when you have to find space for so many extra people in a small town.

“We have had people accommodated in six different places. It was a constantly changing number. 100-200 people could come in a day, and it wasn’t always exactly according to plan. Then we needed some extra capacity to be put in place, and because Kangerlussuaq is not bigger than it is, there just isn’t much capacity to give away,” says Morten.

Nothing Comes Easy#

The Arctic Light exercise also presented completely new challenges on the logistical front. Kangerlussuaq is located 30 km from the ice sheet, and there are no roads outside the city. You can only sail or fly equipment and personnel in and out. This has required both creativity and flexibility in task solving.

“It has been a great chance to practice something that we don’t get the chance to do otherwise. It is the closest we get to a real task, and the difficult terrain has required our task solving. Nothing came easy, and we had to think really fast—many times,” says Morten.

It is rare for logistics to go smoothly with such a large-scale deployment. When 200 employees were stranded in Nuuk on a flight to Kangerlussuaq to participate in Arctic Light, the National Support Element, in collaboration with the Joint Movement and Transportation Organisation, had to react quickly and find accommodation and food for everyone until they could fly on.

The majority of the many people were accommodated on camp beds in the local sports hall, but also office and storage rooms at Arctic Command were included in the large accommodation project.

An Indispensable Piece#

Although Morten’s work mostly takes place behind the scenes of an exercise like Arctic Light, there is no doubt that the exercise could not have been carried out without him and his colleagues from the National Support Element. Because people need a place to sleep, access to food, petrol, weapons, ammunition and transport to support everything that an operation requires, and so that everyone can do their best.

“Maybe you can fight for a few days without it, but if you don’t have a strong logistical organization behind you, you won’t last long. I think it’s a fantastic thing that we were able to be up here and really test ourselves in this difficult terrain,” Morten concludes.

Source: forsvaret.dk (in Danish)