Thursday, January 14, 2016

Return of Forces to Europe

Strategypage writes about a new American effort to store equipment in new NATO states to deter Russian aggression:

The United States Army has established storage and maintenance facilities in East Europe. The Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria facilities will support U.S. Army weapons and equipment that is already there or arriving by end of 2016. In the case of Hungary the equipment will not arrive until 2017. The U.S. already has the equipment for an armored brigade in the area and this is being moved further east, to Poland, Estonia and Latvia. These are among the few NATO members that are adjacent to Russia. In addition to the brigade worth of equipment (which includes 1,300 vehicles, a fifth of them armored) there will be smaller stockpiles of weapons and equipment for NATO allies in East Europe, for use if war breaks out.

This is what I was calling for after the Russians marched through Georgia in 2008.

Yet even in 2012, we failed to take notice of the warnings the Russians were giving us.

But as I've said, rotation of ground forces to Europe is nice--a corps would be better.