Pte Aapo Heikkil\u00e4, 20, who was part of Cpl Arkkil\u00e4\u2019s tank crew, said the drill was invaluable. \u201cWe haven\u2019t fought that much,\u201d he said. \u201cThis was our first real battle, despite being here for days. But we have experienced what sort of real war is.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was also full of praise for British troops, adding: \u201cThey are all professional soldiers, so they really know their stuff well. That really helps when they\u2019re on our side, but also we have to understand when they\u2019re against us, they\u2019re not just conscripts, they are real soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n
More than 10,000 Finns were involved in the training, which also involved hundreds of British troops, as well as Army Wildcat helicopter teams.<\/p>\n
For British personnel involved in Northern Star, it proved a stark reminder about the threat Moscow still poses, with defence chiefs fearing Russia could reconstitute its military by 2030 following its bloody losses in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Lt Col Dave Crosbie, of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said the exercise was about getting Nato troops ready to fight on terrain that is similar to that in Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it\u2019s clear that Russia is the primary focus for the British Army,\u201d he told The Telegraph shortly after British troops took part in an aerial assault drill with American, Italian and Polish troops.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re close to the Russian border at the moment, so the ground that we\u2019re seeing is very similar to one in which we are likely to fight in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the war game, British troops took part in a series of mock air assaults alongside other Nato allies, deploying from two Chinook helicopters. The drill was designed to test how elite allied units could work together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pte Aapo Heikkil\u00e4, 20, who was part of Cpl Arkkil\u00e4\u2019s tank crew, said the drill was invaluable. \u201cWe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[922,925,703,924,67,450,923,675,84],"class_list":["post-1187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-british-army","tag-drones-aircraft","tag-finland","tag-nato-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-standard","tag-tank","tag-top-story","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}