FORT GREELY, Alaska — Army paratroopers with the 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, set up fighting positions in the cold dark just before dawn near Fort Greely, Alaska, during a massive first-of-its-kind exercise in March.
Temperatures hit minus 20 degrees, but weren’t the most frigid conditions the Arctic could dish out. “A warm day at the beach,” joked a junior enlisted soldier, who had a dip in his mouth as he held an M249 light machine gun.
The soldiers had trudged through knee-high snow carrying rifles, Javelin anti-tank weapons and rucksacks to set up a mock convoy ambush for the exercise, but they would end up waiting days for the training scenario to begin. The Army’s Stryker vehicles had broken down along the 100-mile route from Fort Wainwright to the site.
Strykers line…