NATO to hold biggest drills since Cold War with 90,000 troops
NATO to hold biggest drills since Cold War with 90,000 troops
NATO is launching its largest exercise since the Cold War, rehearsing how U.S. troops could reinforce European allies in countries bordering Russia and on the alliance's eastern flank if a conflict were to flare up with a "near-peer" adversary.
Some 90,000 troops are due to join the Steadfast Defender 2024 drills that will run through May, the alliance's top commander Chris Cavoli said on Thursday.
More than 50 ships from aircraft carriers to destroyers will take part, as well as more than 80 fighter jets, helicopters and drones and at least 1,100 combat vehicles including 133 tanks and 533 infantry fighting vehicles, NATO said.
Cavoli said the drills would rehearse NATO's execution of its regional plans, the first defence plans the alliance has drawn up in decades, detailing how it would respond to a Russian attack.
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Im sure someone will have deeper input, but isn't this really small compared to op for (I.e russia). There is considerable difference in tech, training, quality and logistics, along with a defensive position but it seems insufficient
No, this is actually huge for NATO and comparatively a big show of strength. NATO isn't a monolithic military like the US or Russian military. NATO is an alliance spanning the globe and nations from all over the world are participating. The amount of logistics required to pull it off is tremendous and that alone shows what they can do.
If we compare that to the largest "maneuver" Russia held in recent memory, that was the shoring up of their invasion forces in 2018 along the Ukranian border, disguised as a maneuver.
While meat wave tactics will eventually wear down even the staunchest defender, Russia is just as stuck in Ukraine as Ukraine is trying to push out Russia. Ukraine is a single country, not part of an alliance like NATO. While they receive a lot of aid, a lot is still being withheld (think certain long range missile systems, aircraft, etc.). Numbers don't matter all that much against superior logistics and the ability to raze the enemies logistics to the ground.
Remember how columns of supply trucks got obliterated in the first days of the invasion? Russia tried to go for Blitzkrieg but failed hard. If your supply lines are cut, you're done. Doesn't matter how many soldiers you got. Once they are starved of ammunition and food, your army stops being effective at being an army. They can barely keep an army supplied that sits right at their own border, while suffering relatively few strikes at any of their infrastructure within their own borders.
NATO demonstrating that they can coordinate such large numbers and keep supply going, should sufficiently scare the ever living crap out of most opposing military analysts, because that's how you win wars.
For a drill? Not small.
That's an amount of gear and people comparable to what a mid-sized European country could have and what a big European country could muster on short notice. It's "only" a factor of 2 or 3 less than what Russia prepared for Ukraine at the beginning. It's likely more than the combined forces of the Baltic states' militaries and the NATO contingents stationed there.
With a generous dose of optimism it is a force that would at least hold a conventional invasion at bay, if not defeat it via superior tech and sea support. It is a lot even in absolute terms, for an exercise it's massive.