grey funnel ops

Six hours, no resupply, no air cover, against a MEB with naval gunfire and Cobras, in sleet.

Whatever else is said this week: 45 Commando held Keflavik for six hours. That is not a defeat anyone should be embarrassed by.

Sigga

The whole sky over Reykjanes just lit up. Not lightning. It went up, not down. My daughter is asking me what it is and I am telling her it is nothing.

Inga Skram

Keflavik is under attack. Confirmed: the French air defence battery has been destroyed. There are casualties. Runway is cratered at both ends. I am fifteen kilometres away and I can see it.

Elín

I have been awake since 02:40. Everyone in this building has been awake since 02:40. There is no shelter. There is no siren. There is no procedure. We are a country that decided eighty years ago not to have any of that, and this morning we found out what that …

Ming

They destroyed the air defences first, then the aircraft, then cratered the runway, then landed. I have read that sequence in staff college papers about my own island for twenty years. Watching it executed on a NATO member at four in the morning has been the s…

GIUK Watch

Sequence as far as we can reconstruct it: 02:40 — SEAD package off the carrier. AARGM-ER and JASSM. MAMBA battery kills four, is overwhelmed by the second salvo. Radar and generators destroyed. 03:15 — Four Typhoons scramble. Two shot down BVR by F-22s staged …

Élysée

Neuf militaires français ont été tués cette nuit à Keflavík par des forces des États-Unis d'Amérique. Nine French service personnel were killed last night at Keflavík by the armed forces of the United States of America.

Paulette

Neuf. Nine. Nine French families were woken up this morning by an officer at the door because of a decision taken in a room in Washington by people who will never learn their names. I taught for forty years that this is how it always begins. Not with a declara…

Rachel

They put a missile battery seven hundred miles from our troops and pointed it at them. I am sorry about the nine. I am. But do not ask me to pretend those men were standing on that rock by accident, or that the alternative was nobody getting hurt.