The main character of the game is Captain Blake, a member of the Arctic Marines, a fictional component of the United States military. In real life the U.S. military has a two units specifically trained and outfitted for arctic warfare, one is a regular military unit, the other special forces. The first is the United States Army's 11th Airborne Division known as the "Arctic Angels", the unit specializes in air assault and airborne operations, combined arms, maneuver warfare, and urban warfare in cold-weather and mountainous terrain environments. The 11th Airborne is based out of two locations the first being Fort Wainwright, Alaska near Fairbanks, which is the location of the Army's Arctic Aviation Command "Arctic Attack", 1st Infantry Brigade Combat Team "Arctic Wolves" and the Northern Warfare Training Center where Army infantry and special forces units receive arctic warfare training. Their second location is Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a joint Air Force/Army base near Anchorage, it is the location of the 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) "Spartans" and the 17th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion. While the Marine Corps doesn't have a dedicated arctic warfare unit they have a program known as Marine Rotational Force-Europe (MRF-E) where certain units including Marine Expeditionary Units and the elite Marine Force Recon unit undergo arctic warfare training alongside other NATO allies in Norway. The U.S. military's only dedicated arctic special warfare unit is the Naval Special Warfare Group's SEAL Team 2. All of the U.S. military's primary special forces units like Air Force Pararescue & Special Tactics Squadron (STS), Army 75th Ranger Regiment & 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force), Marine Corps Marine Raiders and Navy SEAL's including the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU, formally called SEAL Team Six) receive arctic and cold-weather warfare training. However SEAL Team 2 is the only special forces unit that is primarily trained and specially equipped for arctic warfare & combat operations in extreme cold, mountainous, and high-latitude environments and do most of their training at the Naval Special Warfare Cold Weather Training Center in Kodiak, Alaska and at the Army's Northern Warfare Training Center.
Although under international law none of these units would be allowed to conduct operations in Antarctica. The Antarctic Treaty of 1959, initially singed by Australia, Chile, France, Norway, New Zealand, the Soviet Union, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and as of 2024 49 other nations, designated the continent as a scientific preserve and banned all military activity on the continent. Any military operations on the continent would have to be black ops, the U.S. military's primary black ops units are the Army's Delta Force and Navy's DEVGRU.
