Five heavy transports land at Keflavik in sleet. Royal Marines, French fusiliers, a SAMP/T battery on the Reykjanes lava, and Typhoons on continuous patrol. Iceland's demilitarised status ends overnight.
Five heavy transports on the apron at Keflavik in horizontal sleet. RAF and French. Royal Marines coming down the ramps in cold weather kit.
Iceland has no army. This morning Iceland has a garrison.
Prime Minister Frostadóttir to the Alþingi: "Iceland holds no armed forces of its own, but we will not allow our sovereign airspace and waters to become an unmonitored corridor for lawless aggression. Keflavik is restored to full defensive operational status."
There are Royal Marines buying coffee in my shop.
They were polite. One of them apologised for the queue. Iceland has no army and now there are foreign soldiers here being polite about the queue, and everybody is being very normal about it, and nobody is normal at all.
Half of Iceland is proud today and half of Iceland is terrified and I have served coffee to both halves since six this morning.
The proud ones say we finally have a defence. The terrified ones say we finally have a target. They are both right, which is the worst possible outcome.
The Prime Minister to the House: "The GIUK gap is not an abstract strategic concept — it is the direct maritime and air shield of the British Isles and Western Europe. We are locking the gate."
Britain and France have just put a missile battery on Iceland. Seven hundred miles from our people in Greenland. Pointed west. Pointed at us.
Remember who moved first here. It wasn't us and it wasn't today.
The battery was a French SAMP/T deployed at the invitation of the Icelandic parliament, eleven days after American Marines took Greenland by force. Nine days later a saturation strike destroyed it and killed nine of its crew.
SAMP/T on the Reykjanes lava, Typhoons on CAP, Norwegian P-8s laying sonobuoy barriers across the Denmark Strait.
Two hundred men and one missile battery have just turned an open ocean transit into a contested approach. That is what geography buys you.
It is also, now, a target.
The Prime Minister to the House: "The GIUK gap is not an abstract strategic concept — it is the direct maritime and air shield of the British Isles and Western Europe. We are locking the gate."
A French missile battery. Seven hundred miles from our Marines. Eleven days after we secured the Arctic.
Everyone screaming about aggression this month suddenly has nothing to say about this one. Funny how the escalation ladder only counts when we are on it.
It is an air DEFENCE battery. It shoots down things that are flying at it. It cannot hit Greenland, it cannot hit a ship, it cannot hit anything that is not already attacking Iceland.
I am not being clever. That is what the letters SAM mean. If the presence of a defensive weapon on the territory of a country that invited it counts as provocation, then there is no such thing as defence and we should all stop pretending.
me, 6 weeks ago: what is the GIUK gap
me now: [40 minute unprompted explanation of the GIUK gap at my sister's birthday]