 U.S. Marines and Norway to prepare for steadfast Defender 24. U.S. Marines braved howling winds, and frigid temperatures to prepare for, exercise steadfast Defender 2024, the largest NATO exercise in decades. U.S. Marines braved howling winds and frigid temperatures to prepare for exercise steadfast Defender 2024. The largest NATO exercise in decades. The troops from 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment arrived in Satermoen, Norway in January for several weeks of cold weather training. They'll need it when they move to the country's remote Finmark region for exercise Nordic response, which is part of the steadfast Defender series. After some classroom instruction, the Marines headed into the hills above Satermoen Camp, where they established a camp and honed their survival skills, boiling snow for water, digging defensive positions, and learning how to navigate around the snow-covered landscape. At night, the temperature dropped below minus 20 centigrade, forcing the Marines to rely on their training to avoid injury. Towards the end of February, the Marines are heading north to practice defensive and offensive operations alongside troops from Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Nine other allies are also participating in Nordic response, including Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. Steadfast Defender is a series of exercises designed to test allies' ability to coordinate troop movements and operations across multiple regions. The drills will run until May and involve 90,000 troops from all 31 allies in Sweden. So we're in Satermoen, Norway and right now 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines is conducting cold weather training in preparation for exercise Nordic response, which is part of the Steadfast Defender NATO exercise. Now we are transitioned from that kind of classroom and practical application to a longer duration field exercise where the Marines have to take all those individual and small unit tasks that they learn and then actually sustain operations over a longer period of time. We have a large number of Marines who have never been in the snow in their life before. So to take a Marine that this is the first time seeing snow and then end up having them on skis, able to move around on skis is a very large and but rapid learning curve. And I think that's one of the things that we see with our Marines and sailors in this training is how rapid they can gain skills to meet a level of proficiency necessary to execute operations. But like anything, it just takes practice. You got to take that feeling of unknown and uncertainty with a new skill and you just got to attack it head on as the Marines have done and just grow in that proficiency through the repetition. So during exercise Nordic response, our battalion will be part of a larger Marine Airground Task Force that will be operating under 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force and fighting alongside a Norwegian Division and a Swedish and Finnish Division in the ability to conduct offensive and defensive multinational operations. So far with the United States Marine Corps we have done small unit exchange from everything from heavy weapons to winter training and Nordic response we will move our units up to Finmark and train in a harsh Arctic environment battalion by battalion side by side and confirm that we on a multinational joint environment can solve difficult operations in difficult climate. Being in Finmark in harsh temperatures, cold temperatures, lots of snow, very difficult to operate that will enable us to operate anywhere in the world. It could be a desert, it could be in tropical areas, but the Arctic climate prepares you for most environments on the planet.