What is Tundra Merlin?

 

"For those who have visited Alaska know this much - it is beautiful country, but also rugged and unforgiving. To be stationed in the Northern Command takes a special kind of ruggedness. But be it land, sea or air, guarding our arctic frontier is very, very important. With some of the melting of the arctic ice cap, more northern sea lanes are open to bad actors like Russia and China. We need to make sure we have them in check."

It may look like Canada and the US are having a spat right now, but that disturbance in the force is mainly in trade issues. As far as the common defense of North America is concerned, the Canadian Forces and US forces are still locked together tighter than a drum. How so? There is a training exercise, which goes beyond training and has become a standard defense program called Tundra Merlin. An odd name for not so odd of a reality. This is our northern command, holding up an Aegis type of shield, against all enemies foreign and domestic who try to exploit our arctic door to the northland.

How serious is this threat? As serious as serious gets. One of the main reasons why Donald Trump was trying to tie up the addition of Greenland into our Arctic shield. With the help of Canada, we want the Arctic doormat, from Alaska, through the northern part of Canada, and then over to Greenland, secure. How important is it? Of the utmost importance. And now that the agreement is signed with Greenland, our common security is even more secure.

What really is this Tundra Merlin? It is an exercise which never stops. It is the Canadian and US forces "watchmen' being vigilant 24 X 7 x 365. And our Northern Command has said more than once that we stand ready to "flex" our commitment to that region depending on the nature of the threat. What does that mean? Not only can our forces stand guard in the Indo-Pacific, support our military action in Iran, battle the cartels in Mexico, and back up NATO in Europe - we can also guard our joint arctic region with Canada. And if we need to flex more troops to support Tundra Merlin - we can do it quickly.

For those who have visited Alaska know this much - it is beautiful country, but also rugged and unforgiving. To be stationed in the Northern Command takes a special kind of ruggedness. But be it land, sea or air, guarding our arctic frontier is very, very important. With some of the melting of the arctic ice cap, more northern sea lanes are open to bad actors like Russia and China. We need to make sure we have them in check.

I suspect as time goes on, there will be more and more information shared about what is going on in our new and expanding arctic frontier. But knowing that Canadian Forces, along with US Force are protecting us up there, none of us need to sleep with one eye open. And once our Golden Dome is finished, we will be even safer.