NATO to start biggest drills in decades with 90,000 personnel

Aimed at showing the capabilities of the alliance to defend all of its territory up to its border with Russia, NATO announced to launch its biggest military exercises in decades next week with around 90,000 personnel set to take part in months-long wargames.

The exercise, composed of a series of smaller individual drills, will span from North America to NATO’s eastern flank, close to the Russian border. It will involve 50 naval vessels, 80 aircraft and over 1,100 combat vehicles.

The exercise — the biggest since the 1988 Reforger drill during the Cold War — comes as NATO overhauls its defences in the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

NATO as an organization is not directly involved in the conflict, except to supply Kyiv with non-lethal support, although many member countries send weapons and ammunition individually or in groups, and provide military training.

The US-led alliance has dispatched thousands of troops to its eastern flank and drawn up its most extensive plans since the collapse of the Soviet Union to protect itself from a Russian attack.

In the months before President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, NATO began beefing up security on its eastern flank with Russia and Ukraine. It’s the alliance’s biggest buildup since the Cold War. The wargames are meant to deter Russia from targeting a member country.

The exercises – dubbed Steadfast Defender 24 – “will show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometers (miles), from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any condition,” the 31-nation organization said.

Troops will be moving to and through Europe until the end of May in what NATO describes as “a simulated emerging conflict scenario with a near-peer adversary.” Under NATO’s new defense plans, its chief adversaries are Russia and terrorist organizations.

“The alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro-Atlantic area via transatlantic movement of forces from North America,” NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, U.S. General Christopher Cavoli, told reporters.

Cavoli said it will demonstrate “our unity, our strength, and our determination to protect each other.”

The chair of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, said that it’s “a record number of troops that we can bring to bear and have an exercise within that size, across the alliance, across the ocean from the U.S. to Europe.”

Bauer described it as “a big change” compared to troop numbers exercising just a year ago. Sweden, which is expected to join NATO this year, will also take part.

U.K. Defense Secretary Grant Shapps has said that the government in London would send 20,000 troops backed by advanced fighter jets, surveillance planes, warships and submarines, with many being deployed in eastern Europe from February to June.

With inputs from agencies.