Radiation Scare: US, Canada Training for Nuke Satellite Crash in Arctic

US and Canada are busy preparing to fend off the threat allegedly posed to them by Russia’s new weapons, above all a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

In late February, members of the US National Guard and Canadian reservists held a joint drill, codenamed Exercise Arctic Eagle 2018, to respond to potentially dangerous radiation releases in the Arctic, The War Zone reported.

The drills, conducted near the US Army’s Fort Greenly in Alaska, included, among other things, mock crises, a scenario involving the need to locate a crashed satellite and contain the radiological material it had deposited across a wide area as it plummeted to earth.

While US land forces have been going through the training exercise in Arctic conditions in Alaska as part of the Arctic Edge 2018 exercises, the US and Britain are holding joint naval exercises  near the North Pole.

In a parallel development, two nuclear-powered US submarines participating in the Ice Exercise event have released several training torpedoes to “test under-ice weapons systems and validate tactics for weapon employment," Ryan Dropek, a weapons tester for the US Navy, said in a March 19 news release.

Washington plans to significantly expand its naval presence in the Arctic as polar ice caps melt away and the navigable ocean there expands.

READ MORE: Cold War: US Arctic Drills Prep For Frigid Fight