Mountain troops as elite force

Besides the Indians and Chinese who keeps large numbers of real old school
mountain troops?

Pretty much no-one does anymore. There is little need to do this, the relatively small number of these special units that people like the US and UK have are enough to handle any immediate deployments and provide time to train other units as necessary.

Mountain warfare training is time consuming and expensive and most militaries have better and more widely useful things to spend their budgets on.
 
Pre WWII the British Army in India troops that fought on the Northwest Frontier had mountain training, but that was more of a case of where they were fighting and who they were fighting. As the regiments were sent there for duty they received training on fighting there.

The US military has Mountain schools for the Marines in California, Army in Vermont and they also do some training in Alaska. The Navy will send Seals to the USMC school IIRC. Part of the Ranger school course involves operations in the northern part of Georgia, US State not country in Caucasus, where they train in the southern Appalachian mountains.
 
The only places I can think of where the mountain troops do not have elite status is Hungary, Denmark, Netherlands (all three due to obvious reasons) USSR, Poland, USA, Czechoslovakia and Britain, in fact.

In Belgium, Romania, Yugoslavia, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Greece, Finland (Jääkari, not mountain troops as such, but in the same mold), Turkey, Norway, Sweden (again, Jägare, but the same concept) mountain troops are the elite of the army.

I second to that opinion. And as a matter of fact the Soviet Army DID have elite mountain formations, they just weren't called that officially. And it may come to you as a shock, but they were stationed in Hungary for one very obvious reason - they were to push through the Austrian Alps on to Italy.

About the second part of the list: in Switzerland and Austria the mountain infantry aren't elite forces for the simple reason that they form more than 60% of those countries' combat forces. Don't know much about belgian mountain troops, I don't think the Chasseurs Ardennais count as such. In Romania the Mountain Hunters ARE an elite arm. Even after the start of the operations in Afghanistan they rehearsed Counter-Terror special operations at their training center. In Yugoslavia the mountain troops were supposed to secure Bosnia which was to be so to say "the hard core" of resistance in case of a full-fledged invasion. In Bulgaria we didn't have formations called "mountain troops", but that doesn't mean we didn't have them at all. In the Cold war the plan was to stop a turkish invasion in the eastern part of the Thracian Plain by combined mechanised forces OR in case the Greeks invaded to block the valley of the river Struma and when they pushed through the mountains to bypass the blockade to anyhilate them in the Rila and Rhodopes mountains with specilly mountain-trained motor-rifle formations. One of them was 10th Motor-Rifle Regiment, considered an elite unit ever since the Victory at Adrianople from the First Balkan War of 1912.
After that the 101st Motor-Rifle Regiment was formed as an "experimental alpine unit". The regiment was downsized to a battalion and even the plans are to bring it under the Special Forces Regiment, so absolutely an elite unit. The Greeks don't have mountain troops by name, but the 1st Raiders Regiment used to be called 1st Mountain Raiders Regiment and this is still its main purpose, and it is under the elite "Paratroops-Raiders" Brigade, so also elite by name. The Turks have a brigade, that is called "Commando and Mountain" Brigade.

So this is the actual situation.
 
The british army used to have/still have the Mountain and Arctic warfare cadre, they were/are special forces who saw service in the Falklands.
 
Wiki says Sweden disbanded it's mountain regiment in 2000. And that now only maintains a platoon of mountain guides. Has that changed?

Honestly I have no idea, but Fjälljägarna are still around. They may be those mountain guides referenced these days, but still.
 
Besides the Indians and Chinese who keeps large numbers of real old school mountain troops?

The Pakistanis have a mountain warfare school. US Army SF used to train there.

It is no longer important to have specialized mountain troops unless we're talking about small special forces units. Armies only need mountain schools to familiarize regular forces when such skills are necessary. Before the age of helicopters the art was more demanding than it is now. Mountain troops needed not only extensive conditioning, they had to use completely different equipement than the regular army. From specialized light weight weapons like pack guns, to portable stoves and sleeping bags in lieu of blankets. Now days regular forces with helicopters can be trained to do it, no need for a large standing mountain army.

Most armies though are too poor to maintain large air assault units. So it's possible for a smaller army to have one single air cavalry division with their own helicopters. In the US the 101st was converted from parachute to helicopter, in another army this unit could be formed from an old mountain division and hence keep the name. In practice they would be tasked with all sorts of non-mountain related rapid deployment missions.
 
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I dont think Norway even have any units designated as "mountain." :confused:

I could be wrong tough... :eek:

Fleischer's Grensejegere battalions were equipped for mountain warfare in Finnmark and around Narvik and did quite well against Dietl's mountain troops 1940. AFAIK, while not having an official "mountain" designation, the entire 6. Brigad/Division in Narvik was equipped and trained for mountain warfare.
 

Oddball

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Fleischer's Grensejegere battalions were equipped for mountain warfare in Finnmark and around Narvik and did quite well against Dietl's mountain troops 1940. AFAIK, while not having an official "mountain" designation, the entire 6. Brigad/Division in Narvik was equipped and trained for mountain warfare.

For the WW2 era, this could be said about all Norwegian regular infantry batallions. So still no elite involved.
 
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