The EU has been working closely with NATO to improve military mobility across the continent
be America’s largest deployment of troops across the Atlantic since the cold war. Instead, “Defender 20”, an exercise designed to test America’s ability to move a division into and across Europe, was stricken by covid-19 and cancelled in March. But the lessons of the truncated drill are vital for Western war plans, which depend on armies being able to dash east over Europe’s disjointed road and rail system in a crisis.
Some obstacles are procedural, like border checks on military goods. Others are to do with infrastructure. The difference in European and Baltic rail gauges requires switching trains at the Polish-Lithuanian border, for instance, while the key Poznan-Warsaw highway, like many roads in eastern Europe built to handle lighter Warsaw Pact armour, cannot take America’s1 Abrams tanks.
General Hodges says he eventually realised that European interior ministries and border agencies were better interlocutors than his fellow generals. “I also discovered that the European Union was actually the better institution for addressing most of the challenges,” he says. Whilehas been working more closely withEven so, under currentrules it could still take a leisurely five days to issue “movement permissions” for most units.
“Scaling back Defender 20 is really a lost opportunity to effectively test that logistical knowledge of Europe’s infrastructure,” says Mr Lété. The planning efforts “were a huge success”, insists Rear-Admiral Pete Stamatopoulos, the director of logistics forEuropean Command. But only 6,000 or so American troops had arrived in Europe when the plug was pulled.
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