SETERMOEN, Norway — With a boom that shook the light armored vehicle and echoed inside, a rocket took flight, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake.
Operated by a small team of US Marines, the HIMARS launcher fired three training rockets in under 20 seconds across a snow-covered forest more than 150 miles above the Arctic Circle.
These Marines were trained at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune, but there’s only so much on-the-ground experience to be gained there for the missions they face. As Arctic defense takes on greater significance for the US and its NATO allies, it is increasingly critical to know firsthand how to fight on frozen battlefields.
North Carolina can’t mirror the conditions in Norway, Sweden, and Finland above the Arctic Circle, said Col. William Soucie, the 10th Marine Regiment commanding officer.
“There’s almost no way to replicate the elements, the environment, and test the equipment the way in which we’re able to do it here,” Soucie told Business Insider during a visit to a firing range in Setermoen last month.
Long-range precision fires like the HIMARS, or M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, have proven their worth in multiple conflicts, including Ukraine, used by Kyiv to hit key Russian targets well behind the front lines, especially in the early stages of Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
NATO allies have taken note of the HIMARS’ successes in Ukraine. Estonia, for instance, said in 2025 that it planned to buy more systems after it received several earlier in the year; more recently, on Tuesday, the US State Department said it approved the sale of 20 to Sweden.
HIMARS, like other systems that can fire precision-guided rocket artillery or missiles over vast distances, would be critical assets in any future conflict in the Arctic, which often features open, rolling terrain.
“There’s a lot of nasty weather up here,” First Lt. Landon Foster, the HIMARS platoon commander, told Business Insider. “It snows all the time, and aircraft can’t always come in in low-visibility conditions, which you experience during snowstorms and whatnot.”
The HIMARS, Foster said, allows Marines to deliver effects similar to what those aircraft can do when conditions make using the latter difficult.
For some troops, operating in the Arctic is unlike anything they might have done before, and training to fight in the harsh conditions occurs at the group and individual levels.
Marines first need to learn to survive in the extreme conditions — they spent several weeks in Norway doing that before Business Insider visited — then actually maintain those skills while they’re training with their weapons and systems.
Cold weather extremes make everything more challenging in the High North. Equipment, vehicles, and weaponry are all vulnerable to breaking or malfunctioning. Marines may even have to make adjustments that they didn’t think were necessary.
When the platoon first arrived in Setermoen and started putting snow chains on a few vehicles, they quickly learned that all vehicles — and most of the collective tires — needed chains, Foster said.
“Things get slick — you get into deep snow, and you can’t get traction. Little things like that have been good lessons learned,” he said.
In real combat scenarios, commanders acknowledge that supply and logistics chains would become a challenge for the Marines. The terrain is notoriously difficult to navigate, and moving ammunition or fuel requires large, reliable vehicles that can survive the environment.
“You can look throughout history and see examples of where logistics has been a challenge in environments like this, and I would say that would probably be a challenge for us as well,” Foster said.
One of the things that the Marines are practicing in Setermoen is ensuring that they have reliable access to maintenance, ammunition, and communications to support artillery’s main role — firing in support of maneuver.
“Everything is harder above the Arctic Circle because it’s colder,” said Soucie, the Marine colonel. “Human reactions are slower; machine reactions are slower. The electromagnetic spectrum is a bit more challenging as well.”
“So when you look at the multi-domain fight,” he said, “it is just more challenging, which is why we’re here working with our friends and colleagues to understand better what that means and how we can best protect each other.”
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