Preparing Nato allies for arctic challenges at France’s elite mountain warfare school
The threat of conflict in the Arctic means that all Nato forces need to train for extreme cold-weather fighting conditions. An elite military training school in Chamonix is practicing some very chilly drills.
A snowball’s throw from Chamonix is the École Militaire de Haute Montagne, the French armed forces’ elite cold-weather training facility. Here, recruits learn to ski, march and fight on the postcard-pretty slopes. As the Arctic region becomes more geopolitically fraught, the expertise of the academy’s officers is increasingly sought out, as its commander-in-chief, Colonel Gaëtan Dubois, tells Monocle.
Anyone visiting Chamonix, the genteel ski resort at the base of Mont Blanc, should keep their eyes peeled for an unusual sight this year. Whether you are hiking halfway up the Aiguille du Midi or taking a cable car to the top of Le Brévent, look out for packs of skiers hauling heavy loads and clad in white camouflage parkas. They are probably cadets from the École Militaire de Haute Montagne (EMHM), an elite facility founded in 1932 to train French officers for combat at high altitudes and in extreme cold. The French military’s official definition of the latter is a consistent ambient temperature of minus 21C. It hardly ever gets that chilly in the Alps but the ability to operate in such conditions is becoming increasingly crucial. “Global warming has turned the Arctic into a strategic hot spot,” says Colonel Gaëtan Dubois, who runs EMHM. “And the integration of Sweden and Finland into Nato has heightened the need for operational readiness in extreme cold even further.”
In addition to training a class of 35 fresh-faced (and probably rosy-cheeked) cadets every year, the school is also a centre for studying the effects of very low temperatures on combatants. More than 600 officers, many from France’s Nato allies, attend training courses here annually. For those seeking more extreme challenges, some of the school’s advanced training programmes are conducted in the Arctic Circle. EMHM also plays a key role in readying French troops for Nato’s biannual Cold Response drills, which take place in the Norwegian Arctic. “Every aspect of preparation is critical,” Colonel Dubois tells Monocle. “In that environment, you can be neutralised before you even encounter the enemy.”
