Iceland signed yesterday a joint declaration on defence matters with the United States – including a “temporary presence of the US Army” in Iceland.
The declaration is an addendum to the deal signed back with the US Government back in 2006 putting an end to permanent US military presence. It states that “the security situation in Europe and the North Atlantic region has changed” since the US Army left.
From the Iceland Monitor, HERE.
Note- It does say ASW, and last time I looked the US Army doesn’t ‘quite’ have that capability… Of course the Icelanders consider all services to be US Army. We loved that, because it meant THEY got the blame in the press, not us…
Ah yes, the fun days in Kef, the smell of drying fish… Snowing sideways at -30… The nearest divert 2+ hours away…
And with the Brits and Dutch out of the ASW game, it falls back on the US, Canada, Spain and Germany to pick up the load of the GIUK gap… They French are too busy drinking wine in the back of the bus to bother to participate, and the Portuguese are waiting to pick up the targets south of the dog box…
Good times… 🙂
More work for the P-3/P-8 crews!
Now, will the current admin deploy?
Build a wall. A really tall wall.
Back it up with serious border troops.
Monitor outside of the wall for stuff affecting the inside.
And tell the rest of the World to Go To HELL!
Sigh.
gfa
The Brits are out of the ASW game?! Have they lost their minds? When did that happen? Jeez, I’ve been away for too long.
Will you come out of retirement to get the operation up and running? A great chance to get back to a colder, more comfortable climate.
LL- Yep, they’ve already done one ‘det’ up there!
Ed- Dets, yes… Deploy, who (*&$ knows…
gfa- Agreed, but walls don’t work on water… sigh
N91- They cancelled the Nimrod II in 2011 with 9 of them already in production. They have ‘seed cord’ crews (2) flying with VX-1 at Pax.
WSF- Um… NO! Too damn cold!!! 😀
Everything old is new again. And congrats to PP, baby, you & the whole family!
Rev- Thank you sir!
I’m not sure why you think the United States Army doesn’t have extensive ASW capability. Granted, we don’t use sub-hunter planes, but as far as hydrodynamic pressure wave detection, magnetic anomaly detection, FLIR and other hyperspectral imaging, the US Army is pretty dang capable. And if you expand this to include ELINT, SIGINT, COMINT, etc, (which this probably actually is) then the US Army is simply unparalleled, I don’t think there’s anybody close. After all, these kinds of capabilities are why there’s a hundred Army stations in Italy, despite rumors that the bases are there just for the wine and weather.
I spent a summer in Iceland, several years ago now. Awesome place. Just as happy to not have experienced their winter though. Supposedly it’s not any worse than what I get to deal with here, but I’m betting the winds are way worse, considering the differences between their landscape and mine……
Back to Kef! Sign me up. Of course, we’ll never be able to reclaim the buildings we used before so we’ll probably wind up building a whole new base somewhere around the airfield. Oh well, as long as they start up the USO Friday fish fry again, all will be well with the world.
I did two VP deployments and two tours with the ASW ops center there. I was single up until the last tour at the ASWOC. Living in a co-ed barracks through those long winter nights with nothing to do. Yeah, there are worse places to be stationed.
Rockeye- LOL, but you don’t have torpedoes… 🙂
Ruth- Oh yeah, the winds… sigh…
Ray- Amen on the fish fry!!!