Thursday, February 02, 2012

One Brigade for New NATO

I figured that we'd send battalion-sized task forces through bases in Romania and Bulgaria from US forces back home for periodic training. Secretary Panetta indicates that a single US brigade will be earmarked for this mission:

And in addition to [two brigade combat teams based in Europe], we are going to have a brigade in the United States that will be dedicated to NATO, and what they will do is rotate battalions -- battalion task forces to Europe twice a year to conduct exercises in Europe.

I assume this means that twice a year, the US-based brigade will dispatch a reinforced battalion to Europe. Once to Bulgaria and once to Romania. I don't know how long the deployments will last.

I suppose our two brigades in Europe (one in Germany and one in Italy) could also rotate similar-sized forced through those two bases or elsewhere (Poland or the Baltic states would be nice).

I'd rather have more. But what can you do? Could we at least beef up our equipment stockpiles in NATO Europe to allow the rapid reinforcement of a couple more heavy brigades?