The US Navy’s Mesa Verde vessel will participate in the Northern Coasts exercise. Photo: Northrop Grumman.
12th. September, 2023. NATO is preparing its biggest live joint command exercise since the Cold War next year, APA reports citing the Financial Times.
According to FT, NATO is assembling more than 40,000 troops to practice how the alliance would attempt to repel Russian aggression against one of its members.
The Steadfast Defender exercise comes as part of NATO’s rapid push to transform from crisis response to a war-fighting alliance. It will start in spring next year and is expected to involve between 500 and 700 air combat missions, more than 50 ships, and about 41,000 troops, NATO officials said. The exercise is also a first in terms of technical capability, using real world geographical data to create more realistic scenarios for troops.
Sweden will also be included, bringing the total number of nations involved to 32. The drill will take place across Germany, Poland and the Baltics in February and March and forms part of a new training strategy that will see the military alliance carry out two big exercises every year, instead of one.
According to the source, NATO will also train to counter terrorist threats outside its immediate borders. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, said in June last year that the alliance would increase its number of high-readiness forces from 40,000 to “well over 300,000”. It forms part of a historic overhaul to shift the alliance towards heavy military capabilities as opposed to the light and mobile forces deployed in the Balkans and Afghanistan.
A training exercise in Poland in May this year. Nato is pushing to transform itself from crisis response to a war-fighting alliance, prompted by the invasion of Ukraine