DNATO’s largest exercise is called Steadfast Defender and takes place every three years. Last time, in 2021, it had to be trimmed down quite a bit because of the pandemic. Next time, in spring 2024, the exercise will be even larger: with 40,000 army soldiers, more than fifty naval ships and several squadrons of combat aircraft.
Nothing like this has happened since the Reforger maneuvers in the Cold War. And that’s not the only innovation: the soldiers will test the alliance’s recently decided defense plans – according to realistic scenarios.
“We throw all the forces that we test in exercises into sheer reality,” says the man who plans the exercise. Gunnar Brügner, brigadier general in the Bundeswehr, 55 years old, is responsible for maneuvers at the alliance’s military headquarters in Mons, Belgium. “It’s about what the enemy can really do. It’s about boundaries that we show on maps. And it’s about real geospatial data.”
The enemy used to be called “Bothnia”
He sees the latter as the greatest progress. “For example, if you don’t practice target selection with actual geospatial data, from the top level to the tactical level, you won’t encounter the problems that need to be overcome.” For example, some targets can only be attacked if the supreme commander for Europe she releases. However, whether the processes will work quickly and efficiently will only become clear in the specific case.
Until now, NATO soldiers were used to waging war in carefully constructed fantasy worlds. For a long time, the enemy was called “Bothnia,” a pseudo-democracy that threatened members of the Alliance, preferably on its eastern flank. That’s why planners have built an entire universe that they roam through on exercises. Of course it meant Russia, but this fictitious state had fictitious roads, ports and borders.
Brügner knows the complaints about artificial scenarios; he was a troop leader himself for long enough. After his most recent deployment to Afghanistan, he was eager to be transferred to SHAPE, the headquarters’ name after its military acronym, in early 2022. He felt that now was the best opportunity to leave a mark because the alliance was in the midst of change.
This began before the Russian attack on Ukraine. In June 2020, NATO adopted its “Concept for Deterrence and Defense in the Euro-Atlantic Area”. It reflected the change from crisis operations outside the alliance area to classic national and alliance defense, albeit under the conditions of modern warfare.
Russia and Belarus are on the maneuver maps
Russia was no longer classified as a possible partner but as the greatest immediate threat. On this basis, NATO then developed a new force model and new defense plans; Both were decided by the heads of state and government at the summit in Vilnius in July. For the first time since the Cold War, large troop formations are again being assigned to specific operational scenarios. And they have to be practiced now.