Posted on May 26, 2018
Marines just took tanks out of secret caves to train near Russia
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Norway
Helsinki
Marines
Tanks
Armor
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The Russians and everyone else knew they were there anyways. This stuff has to be put out months in advance due to the Vienna Document stuff. It was a duty of mine when station in Germany.
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The NALMEB gear and caves are no secret. They've been there for years. In fact the Nazis owned them for awhile during WWII. It's been pre-positioned to marry up with unit(s) as needed, and used for ops in the past. I took a 38 man Detachment from CLNC there to break some out for Baltic Challenge 97. We put most of it on a commercial RO/RO ship and some on train through Sweden. The train element went by barge and made a stop in Finland. We offloaded it all in Estonia and after the op sailed/flew back to put it away. Some other gear came from MPF assets and was handled by another crew that sailed out of GB. There were two other ops in that Partnership for Peace series. They were precursors to bringing the Baltic States into NATO. The first was in Latvia, then Estonia, and finally Lithuania. I believe they have used the gear for other ops in the past, but arctic ops have been on an uptick lately. Some of the larger ops in the past were Bold Guard/Northern Wedding (NATO), but there have been more on a smaller scale. There was a roadblock when headed east from where we were. So, we were semi-contained. A USMCR Infantry Company was there also. Russia wants the Baltic States back and has not hidden the fact. They hold a wedge on the Baltic coast (Kaliningrad) which is troublesome geographically. They have emplaced medium range missiles there and are in violation, but there is a lot of that going on lately. This is all unclas and in public domain. http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/natos-worst-nightmare-russias-kaliningrad-armed-the-teeth-25958
NATO's Worst Nightmare: Russia's Kaliningrad Is Armed to the Teeth
The biggest threat Russia poses from Kaliningrad is its deployment of Iskander-M ballistic missiles.
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I didn't know this photo was out there. These were some of the folks that flew in from CLNC for the actual Op. The red patch is a giveaway that they were with the LSB Det. (Landing Support BN). They control movement of gear over the beach with USN Beachmasters, so wear a red patch to ID them. They control air delivery and other logistics also. The CSS functions were consolidated from 8 BNs in a FSSG years ago, and all units have changed names and makeup, so I don't know if they still wear the red patch. This lot is where we delivered the gear to before the fly-in folks claimed it all in Estonia . https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6607000
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SSgt Mears was in the advance party Det I had to oversee the many drivers. He was a good SNCO. I was blessed with one fine crew overall. We were pretty touchy about the gear due to how hard we worked to prep and ship it to Estonia. When we got there it was a mad dash for gear. Not how it's supposed to be but it usually goes down that way. Read about Desert Storm. The staging lots were basically shopping zones, for folks to grab stuff from. It made things tough trying to account for afterwards, but that's what loggies get paid for. The trigger pullers have larger concerns. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6607016
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