Marine reacts to Finnish Jaeger Brigade 

Everybody's gangsta until snow starts speaking finnish.

Our last Mannerheirheim knights was buried yesterday...

Fun fact: you can remove the camouflage garment from the helmet and it has two sides, summer and winter camouflage colors. So for example if you have training somewhere where it's early winter but no snow you can use the summer side and if it's going to rain snow heavily next morning you can switch to your winter side and change to your winter uniform that you have in your huge backpack. Finnish military has thought out their things through very well regarding seasons and Russians haha.

This channel is probably the only one where I don't skip any part of the video

I have lived in Finland for Eighteen years,they do what is needed,very well.

Oh i remember serving in Sodankylä, one day at end of may, it was like warm weather and everyone was wearing t-shirts and enjoying sunny week. One morning it started to snow suddenly and we were like "Ah yes, Finnish summer". Good times

A "fun" test they have in the Arctic survival training here in Finland is something I've never tried but it sounds awesome: You jump into a hole in the ice with skis and body armor, fully clothed etc. Then you have to get out and you have to dry yourself before you go hypothermic. Basically only fire is available.

I don't know anybody who does not like the M05 snow camouflage pattern. It not only works, it is kind of pretty and stylish too.

Wear Hawaiian shirts on top of long-sleeved shirts! Also fun fact; after WWII a number of Finnish soldiers, the so-called "Marttinen's men," moved to the US and among other things became arctic warfare instructors for the US Army.

The history of finnish jaegers is pretty interesting you should look it up ;)

Everyone goes "oh no poor machine gunner" no one goes "oh no poor anti tank guy", those big AT rockets weight more and are really annoying to carry on your back

Finnish snow camo is amazing. When we were on a shooting range, some of our guys went for a piss. There were handful of people standing right next to me and I didn't notice them until they started walking. Snowy forest is basically all white with some black here and there, the contrast is so great that you can easily become invisible when wearing good snow camo.

aah yesss. Another Finnish video your reacting to. Always love to see what other people think of us. Keep up the great work!!

The further you go north in Finland the more hostile nature itself becomes. During winter you get darkness as a bonus to cold weather. Above arctic circle (where f.e. Jaeger Brigade is located) sun doesn't rise over the horizon in many weeks straight so you basically operate in the dark and cold environment. Therefore actual surviving those conditions need training. First and most important tip i would give is to always keep a layer of dry clothes (especially underwear) with you and if you get a chance to change clothes or dry out your sweaty clothes on bonfire / tent stove, do it. Second tip is to drink a lot of water and take a dump/piss if you really need to. Funny now but important on the field since holding your "product" in actually messes up your body heat system. Same thing if you get dehydrated or don't eat enough (warm food is the best one to keep you going in the freezing conditions). Third tip would be lighten your clothes when you know you are about to move. When you are a bit freezing and shaking when standing still it's a good amount of clothes for the movement if it's under -15*c. When you stop moving add more clothes. If it's a short break remove your vest and put your winter jacket on in order to keep your body warm. If you want to learn more there's public FDF winter training manual. It's in Finnish but translatable via google. It's called "Talvikoulutusopas"

There is so much to tell, but I will just tell couple of points. Hardest thing is keeping yourself(as well as the equipment) in shape. Nutrition is HUGE in winter conditions. It think Finnish army supplies like 6000kkcal worth of food in winter conditions per day. Clothing. Layered clothing. It would go something like this, I'll use upper body as an exampme. From the bottom:Tube necked long shirt and t-shirt on top of it(wool long shirt psuhes sweat from you skin to the t shiet that absorbs it, standard summer jacket, winter camo jacket, body armor, combat vest. And you can add more clothes for like guard duty in the night where you stay still. One other thing that is quite interesting. During night/resting in the tent you have to keep the rifle behind you head(against the outer wall of the tent). Otherwise it warms up too much and going out with it there might be condensation water that freezes and makes the rifle jam in the least. There is so much more, but I am on the phone and writing too much is hard. Would be easier to talk face to face over beer :D Anyway great reaction as always! Keep it up man! -2nd lt jäger platoon leader, FDF army reserves

In school, during winter, PE was sking and skating/hockey.

Finns are usually brought up playing outside in the snow. That makes a huge difference in the mindset of how to prepare and tackle challenges, since most things are default and basic understanding for the "normal" kids. I.e. -Warm feet, head, neck hands is a must. The rest will be fine. -dont get wet, change if u do. -wear layers of clothing And so on. There is generally so much we automatically do differently in our everyday lives when it is -10°C and snow.

Always nice to see you reacts Finnish army videos.

You got the maintenance part quite rigth but forgot the most important, the soldier itself. The clothes and guys get wet and cold and it is of utmost importance to keep yourself dry and warm so that you can keep yourself in operative condition

You really should get invited to check out the Finnish military. With your 159k subscibers and your pro-military view shouldn't be that hard in this day and age. -ER doc, Lieutenant

I cant remember if we had any "Arctic warfare" training literally or any courses like that, it was just normal training during winter. Maybe pulling a sled and some tips on how to keep warm for long period of times or similar skills could be concidered as such, but pulling sledge or riding one or skiing or layered clothing are very normal to any Finn anyways I guess. :D

A thing that might be quite obvious atleast to fellow finns but possibly less so to others is that in the finnish army soldiers don't (generally speaking) have their own individual tents, but squads typically share a squad or half platoon tent heated by a wood stove. Being able to sleep in a very warm and dry tent where you can dry your wet gear is an absolute bliss especially in winter. There's nothing like falling asleep listening to the gentle hum of the fire in the stove or sitting on the lantern box on spark watch reading a book in the light of the kerosene lantern while feeling warm wearing nothing but a T-shirt while its -25C outside the tent. The exact same type tents are also what we had during the winter war and judging by the various older camo patterns on the pieces of cloth that have been used to patch holes on the tents, I wouldn't be surprised if atleast a handful of the them were indeed from WW2.

cool, hello from Russia. With great respect

Quality video as always, love your chilled style like everyone, very impressed by all of the Scandinavians who comment, so clever, informed, passionate, cool, excellent English - Salute! 🇫🇮❄️

Finns, they beat Russians at winter warfare, nuff said.

Skis are a good thing in the snow. I remember one morning in the military here in Finland, when recruits were complaining about that we have to wake up earlier and gather at the beach to put the skis on. No lights, in a dark, freezing cold beach trying to put your ski straps on without gloves, fingers freezing etc. They were complaining A LOT. Then one recruit said something like "Why dont we just walk across the lake?" I told him to go ahead and try. Try to march an entire platoon in 3 feet of snow across an entire lake. Half of the platoon would pass out in the middle. Skis keep you on top of the snow. There's more surface area and you can glide on top of the snow. You can go 100 meters on snow with a few strokes on skis. If you walk, you have to struggle to get even 10 meters. It's way more demanding to walk on snow than to go on skis. We went a 12 mile march on skis and everyone was functioning after that. When we set up our camp without the skis, tents, fireplace, guard duty etc. Everyone was exhausted after 15 minutes because we had to walk in the snow. Without skis. This is what I call a professional arctic warfare knowledge :D

2018: "According to a report by the Swedish Defense Forces Research Institute FOI, the Finnish Army is better able to respond to threats than most other European Armies." "Finnish Army is praised in Sweden -" Guards of the entire Nordic region "

I was in Finnish army in early 90´s I served in Jaeger Brigade and got trained as messenger, "runner". We had communication training, snowmobile training and enduro motorcycle training .Those were not easy, but they were best times in there!

in lapland its normal to have 1m snow.

I served there -94,-95. After a couple of weeks to some -40C (-40F) exposure, it feels allmost comfortable weather to have "only" -20C (-4F)! :D

“If you can stay combat effective and fight in snow you can fight anywhere”

I like these types of videos because I get to learn about more military and I also love watch you so its a good combination for me!

Loving the Yorkshire tea behind you bro.....much love from a Yorkshire veteran.

Seeing the place where I served my conscription makes me really proud. Thanks for this! :)

0:59 "It's always awesome to see people who..." get cold instead of me?! Glad to say there is a healthy exchange between the Finnish & Swiss - they have some of the same kit as us (Swiss). Healthy respect for the Finns. All the best, Rob in Switzerland

Really like your vids about our military, youre givin an outside point-of-view to our forces, and its really bit of an eye-opener. Keep it up! And times like these, its a bit of a relief too, to see a pro commenting FDF quite positively =)

"I'd really want to try cold weather training..." Yea, cold weather training sounds 'fun' until you realise what the chainsaws really are for at the start of the implementation phase... You start off with a little swim, the chainsaws makes it possible and it goes further south from there.

I love your channel and videos thanks so much these.

lots of love from finland!

Great to hear you get home soon brother!

I served in the Jaeger Brigade in Sodankylä 97-98 as a Recon scout/forward observer/radioman and indeed the Brigade was a test bed for testing new gear, most of which is standard issue nowadays. Also glad to see much of the gear has greatly improved since then lol (helmets, body armor, optical sights on the RK what is this madness?!!). Oh and the secret to arctic combat is to strip your weapon of all the oils in there, we spent a good hour every time before going out wiping down all the parts of our weapons cause oil freezes in freezing temperatures. Cause science. I had zero misfires in my time in the service. With my rifle. Anyhoo the cold weather is just like hot weather, you just have to get used to it and with the right gear you'll function just like normal. PS. The coldest temperature I know for sure I was in was -43 degrees C, according to the temperature gauge outside the conscript sauna in Rovajärvi. It was so cold firewood felt sticky when picking them up cause my hands were insta-freezing when I grabbed them. I assume they have bullet-resistant-picking-up-firewood-in-freezing-cold-mittens nowadays. *hopefully* :)

This video came to my recommended videos just now. When I am in the middle of my military training in this very same prigade

Your note regarding "missing little things" is absolutely true. For example, the swamp regions (which are plenty in Finland) will never permafrost. To pass such swamp regions your mechanized units need to have a very large footprint with a lot of square feet. Otherwise you will just sink in those swamps. To my best knowledge, during each Arrow exercise in Finland where the US Marines heavy mechanized units were involved they have sunk at least one or two Abrams tanks in said swamps.

when the alternative is to be balls deep in snow, you really start to appreciate skis

I remember serving in Jaeger Brigade II/13 and at TJ0 in the middle of June it snowed :D good times

I bet if you keep doing these videos finnish defence forces will invite you doing some cool stuff as PR stunt. As they already follow you.

Currently watching the Falklands video and came here to say greetings from Yorkshire! Glad you like the tea ;)

Thanks for another great video! Always makes my day a bit better hearing your opinions about pretty much whatever. Cold weather training and operating in winter environments is quite terrible to be honest :D Everything is much slower, everything gets wet eventually, which makes you cold when you stay still and there's just a few hours of daylight - if even that, so after dark it often gets even more miserable. Just by following a few main principles you can make your life a lot easier though! 1. Keep your feet dry and change your socks often 2. Keep a fire going in the tent stove so that you can dry your equipment 2b. Have someone watch the fire at all times :D 3. Drink often. Operating in snow is exhausting and because you're cold, it's harder to feel the thirst 4. Move and dance around to stay warm. Don't blow on your hands to warm them up. Wiggle fingers and squeeze into fist and relax repeatedly instead. 5. Don't dip your gun in the snow! 6. If there's a ton of snow in the trees etc. go for full snow camo. If there's snow just covering the ground, but it's otherwise clear, wearing only the snow camo pants and forest camo top is an option.

It's same shoes in summer and winter, only wear some (more) wool socks in winter. Served in 2000 and always remember coming back from first free weekend, it was -36 C.

One of the main things operating in that environment is to maintain the combat readiness and effectiveness of the troops and equipment. It is an environment where you need to pay attention to the elements or else you’ll get quickly in trouble.

Finnish Defense Forces equipment doesn't need to be tested at below 0c. All FDF equipment works below freezing temperatures. Otherwise it would not be FDF equipment.

Loving all the videos, you should watch sas survival secrets behind enemy lines, Eddie stone is one of a kind

Excellent commentary. As a nonmilitary man I gained a lot of insight into the concept of expertise, mastering highly technical skills...and I developed a lot of admiration to those who are experts. Thanks!

Issue with skiing in the forest isn't about being able to ski per se but to avoid, dicthes, branches and other things that can be really hard to get out of if you get stuck especially with a full 40kg rucksack since you sink immediately if you step off your skis and dear god if you actually drop some equipment, fishing that in hip deep snow is fun for the whole squad.

I were a Norwegian conscription guy in the mid nineties. My snowmobile (Lynx 5900 something) looked the same as these. And then we had the sameish tracked vehicles (BV 206). But assume there have been more improvements to these vehicles than it looks like. Served in a “Carl Gustav 84mm RFK-platoon”, with nine cannons, twelve (or was it thirteen?) snowmobiles, and one BV 206 for the big guy. Found this to be a little bit cool/cold. 🤙🏻

One thing that might not be common knowledge is that no face paint is used by arctic warfare specialists. The reason is that some of the sweat/condensation from the skin gets trapped under the face paint. In an arctic or subarctic environment that will lead to frostbite pretty fast.

Winter is fun time. First it goes to +1 celsius and everything gets wet. Then suddenly it goes to -15 without a warning within hours and everything you had on freezes. The drinking water freezes and eating snow only makes things worse. The endless darkness makes you extra tired and you start seeing things. And the skiing? 20 years of experience might help but with 50+ kg of equipment on, you will eventually fall and your gun breaks your teeth in the process. Then you are laying on your face in the snow but you can't get up because the soft snow under your arms gives in. You have to take at least your backbag off to get up but your legs are tangled up with the skis and you can't really turn on your side either. Even in that situation you can still get up alone but you better not panic. Want to try snow shoes? Good luck marching 20km at the speed of 1km/h.

More on the maintenance part as someone who recently completed my service where the film was shot you constantly have to dry off your more delicate kit like weapons and radio equipment because the snow really wants to get into all those nooks and crannies. I remember this one time where a teammate of mine had her rifle locked completely by the cold freezing the mechanics up after the snow and ice had melted inside the tent and re-froze in the morning again. An officer to beat the damn charging handle against a tree for a solid 10 seconds to get it work again. Will never forget that look the officer gave her, shit was priceless. :D

"Snow operations at night time looks so cool" Me getting PTSD flashbacks to the long dark winter nights of Boden !

Yes, they test the arctic gear first there. As for the logistics, my brother who served in Utti airborne long range reconnaissance told how they were parachuted in wintertime to Lappland. The 10 man team lived the whole week in snow cave they dug. For food logistics they butchered a reindeer and caught small game with traps. Since training how to operate deep in enemy territory for weeks or months, they tested how well air dropped support would work. To give some challenge for the whole logistics organization they could order anything they could imagine. My brother`s team decided to order the smallest, cheapest and most useless thing they could think of: a single steel 6mm nut they knew fits no gear or bolt they had. An other team ordered eleven different custom pizzas delivered warm (from 500 km away). What would you have asked for?

"Swamps generally get like a foot deep." Man, I wish I was kidding but on a search and apprehension exercise. Trailing the opponents I fell all the way to my groins in to a swamp. With gear similar seen in the video. For a second I thought I was about to become the Shrek.

I always envy their gear when I'm watching Finnish Combat Camera. They are sooooo much better than we had in the eighties when I served :)

I remember back in the mid 1980's my American Brothers in Arms training up here in Alberta Canada with us at Camp Wainwright for winter warfare. Those were good exercises.

During my basic training in coastal infantry platoon here in Finland, we were doing some coldwater training also. Not in freezing ice thou. Funny story comes to mind. One time we were doing ~20km march in the local forest and our platoon had 10min break almost end of the march at nearby natural spring lake. The platoon leader Lt. gave two options. Go around this lake (round 2 kilometers around) we were having the break, or go to swim on that water. Water temp was round +10...+15 degree celsius. So ruffly 2/3 decided to go around, since 1.5-2km isnt much (they thought) and the water was freaking cold. After the group left, the Lt. said "oh did I forget to tell you guys that in the military word "swimming" means you go to water and dip to your neck under and come out". So basically I was maybe 30seconds on that cold water and the 2/3 of platoon were actually doing in reality 4+km extra run in really ruff terrain. We propably were there 2 hours waiting them to get back and just chilling and enjoying the warm august weather. When group came back they were tired as f.. :D

Really fun to be in military in the winter. -30C and we slept in tent. Stove made it bearable but when guy who suppose to add wood falls asleep during his turn...

yeah it was fun during the winter. When I was a squad leader during my service and having an exercise in the arctic and we had american and russian observers they always wondered how in hell we managed to keep water liquid in those temperatures and it was hard to explain as those things are normal for us but not for most :D

Combat on ski's is AMAZING ! It was the most fun i had in the army and i normally dove a Cv90. You get this amazing endurance to cover distance at speed that you don't get when walking, so when you run your squad and platoon level combat you can do flanking motions much easier.

3:40 well in the winter the most of time is dark at least here in Finland. So it is just one short time in the day when it is bright ;)

Simple tip: keep your canteen close to your body to keep it from freezing. Hydration is important but eating snow lowers your core temperature and thus wastes energy you need to stay operational.

Do a reaction on ”taistelusukeltajat” its prolly the toughest training in finnish army.

I did my basic training in winter. It wasn't that cold as it came down to -20 C (- 4 of the other units) but still all that ice and snow made it a bit difficult to run, jump and run some more during basic training...also the waiting hours for anything whilst trying to stay in cover under the trees was chilling. That was ofcourse until you got used to it of course.

Dude, you seems to love Finland. You should visit here like the Forgotten Weapons guy :)

Cool snow!😜 I grew up in northern Ontario. Keeping dry is the big thing. Sweat is an enemy but unavoidable at times. Have you presented on the Arctic Rangers, Canada?

Talvisota '98 survivor here. -35° to -42° degrees and 3 feet of snow with no proper winter gear.

In the arctic winter conditions personal maintenance is a huge thing. You have to do everything to keep yourself operating

When I started my service (in the same Jager Brigade that's on the video) my winter boots (just wellingtons with a bit thicker sole) were a bit too small. Normally you fit this felt sock in the boot, but mine didn't fit. I had to wear two pairs of woolen socks, some chemical warming pads and newspaper. Even in - 22°F I didn't get cold. Newspaper is awesome insulator. I learned a lot of neat tricks to keep yourself warm in cold conditions.

You could check out the older "Taistelukenttä" version from 1998. It has a darker tone than the new one since it is only meant to introduce new conscripts to the horrors of war. The video lacks subtitles but does not have much narration anyways. It can be found on the official Finnish Defence Forces channel.

I loved winter training in finnish military, wasnt even freezing because we were provided proper clothing and im used to cold weather.

My love for pkm might sound weird for you but let me explain. Our alternative lmg would be kvkk and that thing is only good if you want to get mad or suicidal real quick. Look it up if you dare.

You should definitely check out royal marine commandos arctic warfare training in Norway. The ice breaker worst thing I ever put my body through.

Fun Fact; the scenes from The snow planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back(Star Wars) is filmed in Norway with similar conditions like this, Finland also has a border to Norway

The Finnish m05 snow camo is impressive. It makes people just disappear in a snowy forest. On vehicles the brighter green parts are painted over with white to make them blend in. The tracked vehicle is Hägglunds BV-206, it is smaller than the BvS 10 Viking. They are getting old and are being replaced in the near future. maavoimat.fi/bv206 I am pretty sure all the conscripts have their full winter gear, I know we did back in my time. So nothing special in those.

You got it right, experience gained from actual exposure is the best prep you can get...no training manual can substitute.

The by far most important things in keeping the unit operable and battle-ready: 1. wearing dry socks in warm footwear 2. Having enough to eat. People may use up to 7000 kcal per day for keeping the body temperature. Just imagine the amount of arctic training you might be getting, if pres. Trump's idea of US buying Greenland had succeeded... The largest island in the world, completely in the arctic. The coldest record temp in Greenland is -69,6°C (-93.3°F) Personally I did not serve in an arctic unit, but I have done some military skiing. We participated in a military ski night orienteering relay competition with a team from our unit, total length of about 100 km. It was -25°C (-13°F). It was cold and arctic enough for us. But it was nice variation to the sometimes boring routine service duties.

The rubber tracked snow vehicles are Finnish Nasus (Sisu). When I was young officer I trained with them in Lapland. They just sail over the snow but if you jump out you sink in the snow down to your waist and can't move anywhere.

In cold weather everything comes down to the gear. On my Beret march Sleeping on snow on top of a yoga mat and covered with a wool blanket, when the temperature dropped down to -4 F was somewhat uncomfortable after we ran out of firewood. You would not be able to keep going like that for many weeks. With proper gear and good sleeping bags -22F and windy was unpleasant outside but much more enjoyable with sleep. But the worst is wet spring snow in Lapland. When you are stomach deep in wet heavy snow and ankle deep in water,with leaking rubber boots, you know you are in hell.

Did my basic in winter in Manitoba Canada , -35 much respect to the Finns

They actually taugth us how to do snow shoes from branches to ease moving in deep snow

The part where they are walking through the snow, I was actually there. I don't appear on the video but i was in that excercise. It was a fun time :D

Again great video bro. I served a year in the Jaeger Brigade 120mm mortar company as a mortar team leader. Are we having a little thing for Finland? :D You should come and visit!

Night? That could be about 14:00 here in Northern Scandinavia, there are even places that won't see ANY sun mid winter.

Nice to see sneak peak of my old unit here. -snowmobile guy

Finnish army look awesome nice kit

Usually when there's snow on the ground and maybe even some drizzle in the air, lights can be seen from very far away. Seems like in this exercise they didn't control the amount of light very much. In finnish winter you should use red lights and try to keep your eyes trained to low light conditions as much as possible. If you see something bright you're basically blind for several minutes.

guy at 0:08 has the best and worst task in the group... i know, its a love-hate relationship with that damn PKM. Especially in during winter

In Finland we used to have more snow in winters, but now the climate change is affecting us so, that in the Souther Finland we hardly get any good old snowy winters anymore. Also, most of the people are living in Southern Finland and on the coastline, so that all Finns could ski is mostly a myth nowdays. However, the more north you go in Finland, the better people are at it. And what it comes to military, every conscript is trained to ski, so when your service is done, you at least have the basic skiing skills.

I remember this training, it was held after we heard that the combat training in norway was cancelled due to covid

Lots of great stuff in the comments, but so far I have not seen anyone comment on the things that stuck to me the most while I did my year in the FDF. The everyday basic survival stuff such as keeping all your water canteens next to your skin under all the clothing to keep them from freezing over and choosing a spot for them where they wouldn't break your ribs when you went to ground or otherwise hinder movement. For me that place was right above my hips a little closer to my back than my front. I remember seeing my silhouette one day and thinking "Oh, a baby whale with legs, how cute." Another thing was that using tent pegs was a pain in the ass, firstly to strike them into the frozen, often also rocky, ground was not ideal, getting them out once they were frozen stuck was an even bigger pain in the buttocks. So instead we gathered branches strong enough to serve as pegs placed them upright on the ground, piled snow over half of it and sprinkled water on them, in like 5 minutes it was frozen stuck well enough to support our tent after which we tied the rope around it as usual. When we would leave the place we wouldn't need to free them from the solid ice, since who would care about a bunch of twigs left behind, but leaving FDF issued tent pegs would obviously have been a no no. Although we could only do it in places where we were told that not leaving evidence of our presence behind was not a priority (these places were way too few as far as we were concerned), in other places a circle of upright branches with conspicuous snow domes around each of them would have been as bad as leaving the tent pegs.

Simple History's Digby Tatham-Warter animation would be well worth a watch. The man who fought and lead wearing a top hat and carrying an umbrella.

In WWII they used to improvise a snow camouflage by taking slack lime and water and forming a “slurry”. Then they would take paint brushes and brush on the slurry directly onto the vehicles sides and top. When it dried the vehicles turned from green to a whitish color and it could be easily removed if needed but was durable enough for some time. I served in the Corps and did a few deployments to Iraq with 1st LAR BN (41 Las Flores on Camp Pendleton). Some of the other LAR BN’s had desert painted tan vehicles but almost our entire BN (when we took our own vehicles instead of just using the previous BN’s vehicles when they rotated home). Anyway… all our vehicles had forest green camo paint schemes and a version of the white wash technique was to take paint rolllers like you would use for house painting and then coat them in some POL (usually differential oil or engine oil or whatever). When the oil was applied we would just take regular sand and throw handfuls of it on the oil vehicle and a lot of the dry sand would adhere to the vehicles turning them a brownish color. Same with the lime wash… with some hot soapy water you could clean them back to being green. Just figured I share. Maybe some young devil might find the info useful some day. Semper Fi.