Recommendation 105

The Royal Marines deploy annually to Northern Norway for winter training and we were pleased to learn that the UK has increased the scale and frequency of cold-weather training and exercises in the High North. In March 2023, the UK established a new Arctic operations base in Camp Viking in Northern Norway to serve as a hub for Royal Marines Commandos. 131 The Minister told us that the number of UK personnel with recent experience of operating in Arctic conditions “will be higher now than at any point since the early 1990s”. Mr Heappey told us that training in Arctic conditions was increasing across all domains: “The number of frigates that have painted their bows blue because they have been up into the Arctic Circle is the highest it has been since the end of the Cold War. The Air Force is pulsing up into the High North ever more frequently in order to rehearse the operation of complex fast jets in very austere cold environments.” 132