Words by

grapevine

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LCPL John McGarity, USMC

Military aircraft and personnel from numerous NATO countries will be visiting Iceland as a part of “Iceland Air Meet 2014”.
In a statement from NATO itself, it is reported that the even will be “an air-defence flying training event for pilots and ground support personnel, including fighter controllers, in Iceland from 3-21 February 2014.”

The Iceland Air Meet 2014 (IAM2014) will bring together participants from NATO member nations Norway, Iceland and the Netherlands, and from partner countries Finland and Sweden, to conduct a wide range of air defence-related flying activities.
It will take advantage of the deployment to Iceland of a Norwegian air-defence detachment on 27 January, to conduct the regular NATO peacetime preparedness mission. This mission is conducted by NATO Allies only and is separate and distinct from IAM2014.
IAM2014 will be the first time that Finland and Sweden have deployed to Iceland. As such, it will improve deployability and interoperability, provide additional training opportunities and further strengthen Nordic defence cooperation (NORDEFCO), between both NATO members and non-members.
NATO will act as the overall coordinator for the event from its Combined Air Operations Centre (CAOC) in Uedem, Germany.
Norway will act as the sponsor nation for Finland and Sweden, and will provide a training director for IAM2014. The Finnish and Swedish assets will be placed under his operational control.

Further, Allt Um Flug reports there will be about 300 NATO troops in Iceland during this time, along with military jets and helicopters of various models (the linked article also provides a “computer generated illustration” of what the entire fleet will look like in one place).
Iceland is a NATO country but, having no standing military of its own, allows other NATO countries to regularly conduct military exercises here.