Arctic Training For Army Air Corps | Forces TV

69 degrees north 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle 80 men are digging in and temperatures which typically sit at about minus 18 and there aren't many hours of daylight six five nine squadron is a long way from dish truth but in order to take off the are to commitment a state of readiness to deploy anywhere in the world at five days notice the Lynx flights have to prove they can operate in any weather second two hours to dig the area for this but the best thing about is it keeps you warm and it's always a bit of banter that we finished verse it cetera it's always good to brag up afterwards which we actually came third I think to their sir we are yeah got the bronze medal they're putting into action their cold-weather survival drills which each section weather aircrew grind ease or rima maintainer z' has trained for in advance it would be madness to attempt combat camping without expert know-how the brushwood is to keep the snow onto the tongue so it's designed is like a bit of protection the walls around over metre high that's to keep the wind off the tongue in the arctic you don't just sit around you get any sleeping bug it's good it's good on ministration so we teach our guys not to feel silly that they're in the sleeping bag at one o'clock in the afternoon like we are now we just keep him warm any sort of temperature any sort of climate we can do it from Belize at the jungle Brunei way out to the Arctic even out to Arizona in the desert side as well so yeah give us a few tents and a few helicopters and we can pretty much go inning hangars are for wimps are they I'm gonna say that was I'm cold myself but you know hang on a bit of electricity be nice right now but no worries right it's a test of character and of problem-solving too with all sorts of mishaps to work around and learn from things generally take three times longer to achieve which all has to be factored in got big massive mittens what everybody's gotta wearing your hands and fill them with straps and trying to pull over from us but challenging out there people that put their tongues out on the side of their rifle and get it stuck on their people that put their hands on the side of weapons and leave their fingerprints behind human beings remarkable however they can't work on aircraft and change rotor heads and blades and engines all day long you have to cycle people through century positions become really quite tough you can't leave people out there for hours on end so you have to cycle it through which means you rotate your manpower which eats into the manpower and that takes a lot longer what is sleeping like in these tents in these freezing conditions some people find it easier has I found last night with another nine people snoring right next to me however some people find it very difficult and and some of the guys you know they say then you get a couple of hours sleep at night because they spend their time shivering but you know that's early days that's what we're here to practice and people get used to it and get accustomed to it and want to get tired enough people sleep currently there's eight people in this tent and throughout the night we'll do one hour's candle watch we have a lantern that provides heat and like we could we could sacrifice sleep for the lantern but I think that would be a very stupid oh my dear we'll just rotate around one hour watching a lantern which is for certain nakusha keeps you alert and then the other seven will be asleep it's not TV it's day three of the forum exercise and conditions get a little more testing more wild and more remote six five nine squadron has filled in its last camp and headed here to East 240 moon where they've dug another for another night in the Arctic snow its reasserting chance the guys too haven't learned from experience they've had lost me for hours to practice again and really kind of build a lesson you've learned the tents were designed for the Arctic and the military has been using them for twenty years at least as they say you don't change what works the Vivi's are tried and tested too but it's a case of relearning techniques which might have been shelved during Afghan deployments or teaching newer recruits for the first time obviously we're not getting shot at out here but as far as a hostile environment goes this is probably the worst you can get I've done exercises in the jungle and in the desert where we've lived out of Bergin's for two three four weeks here I wouldn't fancy doing it for more than two or three days it's not a very nice place to be if you can come and operate here I personally believe you can come and operate anywhere in the world and the the Armed Forces have had quite a good reputation operating in the desert of recent years this is clearly an extreme of that it's a sense of achievement definitely yeah but are you looking a hot holiday soon definitely and in tomorrow's programme we'll look at the challenges of getting the links up and running in these conditions and we're on board for a day on the firing range Julie Knox forces news in Norway

Channel: Forces TV

Views: 34,542

Rating: 4.9000001 out of 5

Keywords: British, Forces, News, Army Air Corps, Exercise Clockwork, Arctic Training, Norway, Joint Helicopter Command, Extreme Environment, Ex Clockwork, British Armed Forces, Forces TV, BFBS, British Forces Broadcasting Services, Arctic, helicopter, Chinook Arctic

Id: rrYgrGLlF2c

Length: 5min 3sec (303 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2013