Marines hit the arctic for largest winter exercise since the Cold War

Winter is coming, Marines. [[Matt, -- I changed the lede and the hed as we discussed. I know I get after you for newsier ledes, but in this case, I think your suggestion for this lede is perfect. Winning! GH]] Marines kicked off the largest international cold weather training event in decades.

Members of arines from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade and Marine Corps Forces Europe joined forces with the Norwegian troops and 10 other militaries military and 11 allied and partner nations Tuesday to kick off launch the largest iteration of Exercise  main exercise portion of Cold Response ever 2016.

The 10-day main exercise will thrusts about 16,000 troops Marines, 6,500 Norwegians and 4,000 NATO partner troops into grueling, subzero conditions to test their ability to move and fight together against a common enemy adversary.

For the first time, all of the troops participating in Cold Response will form a it also integrates all participating military personnel under one combined joint task force that will be — formed Feb. 22 — led by Norway’s Brigade North.

That combined with the scale of the exercise will help Marines better prepare to operate alongside NATO troops, said Col. William Bentley, 2nd MEB’s operations officer. During past iterations Cold Response, a battalion of Marines or fewer participated, he added. [[Is this graph OK, Matt? Wanted to set up his quote below. GH]]

"Marine Corps participation was [previously] at the battalion level and below with a lot of unit training going on, but I don’t think we’ve had this scale in Norway," Bentley said Col. William Bentley, 2nd MEB’s operations officer. "Zero [degrees] and below is for most of us extreme temperatures, and being able to put all this together and operate over the better part of 60 days start to finish, it’s just an outstanding opportunity for both coalition and NATO interoperability."

Marines converged on began converging on Norway for the exercise in January to learn to adapt to the frigid climate and conduct live-fire maneuver training in preparation to prepare for the main exercise. They also began unloading gear stashed in Norwegian caves as part of unsealed  broke the seal on the Marine Corps Prepositioning Program — Norway to bring its forward-deployed gear to the table.

"This is about being expeditionary ... , getting out of town, falling in on pre-positioned gear and operating in a really hostile cold weather environment," Bentley said.

With Russia aggressively knocking on NATO’s door — from Norway to the Baltic states to Ukraine and Turkey — Cold Response affords an excellent opportunity for allied troops to operate together and for Marines to keep both MCPP-N’s gear stored in Norway and allied interoperability fine-tuned.

Marine armor moving out for Exercise Cold Response 2016 comes only days after the Pentagon rolled out a substantial increase for the European Reassurance Initiative, its program to shore up European defenses to counter Russia’s provocations.

Requested funding Funding for that program the ERI will rise jumped to $3.4 billion in 2017 from its current budget of $2.6 billion the year prior.

Troops Military forces from Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Canada, Belgium and Latvia are also participating in the cold-weather exercise Cold Response 2016.