United States European Command (EUCOM) - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

Don’t Tell Russia: U.S. Forces in Europe Lack Firepower

David Axe — Sun, 21 Apr 2019 01:23:47 +0000

That’s one problem that U.S. Air Force general Tod Wolters, the commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa, described in a wide-ranging interview that Air Force magazine published in April 2019.

US forces in Europe are getting smarter and more flexible. But they still lack firepower.

U.S. president Donald Trump has nominated Wolters to head U.S. European Command, taking over from U.S. Army general Mike Scaparrotti.

Wolters said EUCOM’s mobility and intelligence operations have improved. He mentioned improvements to air bases in the Baltic states as well as the new base in Poland for Air Force MQ-9 drones.

But the 67,000-strong EUCOM still lacks the forces to precisely strike an attacking Russian force deep behind the front line. “You always want to shoot faster, you always want to shoot more accurately, and you always want to shoot longer,” Wolters said.

Air Forces Europe oversees just three fighter wings. One in the United Kingdom flying F-15Cs and F-15Es and one each with F-16s in Italy and Germany.

The three wings combined possess fewer than 200 fighters, none of them stealthy. F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters and bombers including B-2 stealth bombers frequently deploy to Europe on a temporary basis as part of the $7-billion-a-year European Deterrence Initiative, Washington’s response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine.

“You want to be able to put more targets at risk across the potential battle space, wherever that battle space may be,” Wolters said.

“With the current posture, we’re probably not as fast or as deep as any commander would prefer, and to be more effective you would like to be able, for example, to deliver fires from all domains. Not just from the air, but from the maritime, from [Special Operations Forces], from space, from cyber and certainly from land.

As we look into the future about the potential of each one of those domains possessing the capability to deliver fires, we want to make sure that from an alignment perspective, and a deconfliction perspective and a coordination perspective, the effect that we want to get in the battle space is exactly the one that we will get as a result of meshing all of those domains together … on a potential target.

If you do that … you create tremendous challenges with a potential foe, because they have to defend, not just against what may come at [them] from the air, but also what may come at [them] from the land and from the maritime.”

Wolters said he and his fellow commanders must “ensure that we have fine-tuned the effect that both of us can deliver for a given problem set and a potential battle space location, to make sure that we’ve got the right fire at the right time coming from the right domain.”

But as a result of deep cuts that began in 2013, EUCOM lacks forces in the air, on the ground and on the sea. A U.S. Army regiment with 300 Stryker wheeled vehicles is the only mechanized American force permanently in Europe. The Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade also is based in Europe.

The Army also temporarily deploys one armored brigade at a time to the continent. A typical armored brigade has around 90 M-1 tanks and 130 M-2 fighting vehicles plus around 18 M-109 self-propelled howitzers.

Scaparrotti previously complained that EUCOM doesn’t have enough warships. In March 2019 he told a Senate committee he wanted two more destroyers to supplement the four that the U.S. Navy already stations in Rota, Spain.

The general said he also wants a “better pace” of carriers and amphibious ships deploying to European waters, according to USNI News reporter John Grady. The extra ships would help deter “an evolving and modernizing Russian fleet,” Scaparrotti said.

The Navy is struggling to expand from 289 major warships to 355 in order to meet growing demand from regional commanders. The Air Force likewise has proposed to grow from 311 front-line squadrons to 386. Both efforts currently lack the necessary funding.

The California think-tank RAND in 2016 war-gamed a Russian invasion of the Baltics. In RAND’s scenario, the Russian forces quickly overrun lightly-armed NATO forces. The Western alliance quickly deploys helicopters and air-mobile troops to confront the Russian advance. But NATO tanks are too slow to arrive.

“What cannot get there in time are the kinds of armored forces required to engage their Russian counterparts on equal terms, delay their advance, expose them to more-frequent and more-effective attacks from air- and land-based fires and subject them to spoiling counterattacks,” RAND explained.

Wolters said he and other commanders in Europe struggle to coordinate the forces that they do have in order to hit an enemy force fast enough and hard enough to defeat it. “Those are areas … none of us are satisfied with at this time.”

David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/dont-tell-russia-us-forces-europe-lack-firepower-53597

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US ‘outgunned & outmatched’ by Russia in Europe, admits top general seeking budget increase

RT — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 07:46:48 +0000

FILE PHOTO: A convoy of US troops near Warsaw, Poland. © Kacper Pempel / Reuters

US troops in the Baltic countries would be “outranged, outgunned and outmatched” by Russians in case of a conflict, the head of the US European Command told lawmakers, seeking to secure funds in the face of a Moscow “threat.”

“If you look at it in a concentrated way on the border of Eastern Europe and only on the ground force, I would agree with that statement,” General Curtis Scaparrotti told Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday.

Inhofe was referring to the recent RAND Corporation report which found that Russian forces could take the capitals of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania within 60 hours. The report has been compiled over the past several years, with the assistance of EUCOM, Scaparrotti said.

“I don’t have any argument with the basis of the report and the threat that we have,” he added. Though the RAND report concluded that NATO has “sufficient resources, personnel, and equipment to enhance conventional deterrence focused on Russia,” it argued a “more robust posture … is worthy of consideration.”

“Hence my comment that I don’t have all the forces I need in Europe today,” Scaparrotti lamented, despite admitting that the US has “repostured forces” and “rewritten plans” of containing Russia over the past few years.

Last month, EUCOM requested $6.5 billion for its European Deterrence Initiative in 2019, which is roughly $2 billion more than requested for fiscal 2018.

Following plans drafted by the Obama administration, the US deployed military forces into Poland and the Baltic states last year, to “reassure” its allies in the face of “Russian aggression.” Reserving the right to defend its national security, Moscow has long sought compromises in the face of the US and NATO’s creeping expansion towards Russian borders after the end of Cold War, with Poland joining in March 1999 and the Baltic States in 2004.

Scaparrotti took over EUCOM in May 2016, and has continued the drumbeat of hostility to Russia set by his predecessor General Philip Breedlove. He asked the lawmakers to approve the budget requests for more troops, supplies and information warfare programs to counter the “threat” of Russia.

At Thursday’s hearing, he accused Moscow of seeking to “change the international order, fracture NATO, and undermine US leadership.” Russia continues to intercept “routine reconnaissance flight operations over the Baltic and Black Seas, flying dangerously close to our aircraft and occasionally causing unsafe conditions for our pilots operating in international airspace,” Scaparrotti informed lawmakers, adding that Russia also “continues to hold snap exercises and to limit transparency of planned exercises.”

The US general failed to mention, though, that most of Russia’s military drills take place inside its own borders. The one exception was the September 2017 ‘Zapad’ exercise jointly organized with Belarus. Even though Moscow and Minsk were upfront and transparent about the number of troops involved and the objectives, some NATO, US and Ukrainian officials claimed they were a cover for something more sinister.

Meanwhile, as Scaparrotti was complaining to the senators about Russia’s threatening drills, some 3,700 troops from 26 NATO member states were conducting artillery exercises at the Grafenwoehr range in Germany. The drills, dubbed Dynamic Front 18, began on February 23 and are scheduled to end on March 10.

Just last year, EUCOM conducted “over 2,500 military-to-military engagements, including over 700 State Partnership Program events in 22 countries,” Scaparrotti informed the Senate, as well as 22 exercises with nine allies under a special program for Eastern Europe. The US military is also stepping up efforts to “counter Russia’s propaganda and misinformation campaigns” through a joint effort with the State Department called the Russian Information Group (RIG), Scaparrotti said.

Among the long list of ills Scaparrotti accused Russia of was conducting the June 2017 NotPetya cyber-attack, interfering in elections across Europe, and endangering the Balkan countries’ “brighter future as part of the Euro-Atlantic family of nations.” The general also spoke approvingly of the recent Trump administration decision to sell Javelin anti-tank missiles to the government in Kiev, and noted that the US has spent “over $850 million” in aid to Ukraine since 2014.

Though Scaparrotti argued that Moscow could challenge US dominance by 2025, there was little mention of several new weapons in Moscow’s arsenal, revealed last week by Russian President Vladimir Putin as a message to the US and NATO that their attempts to intimidate and contain Russia have failed.

“All the things you were trying to prevent through your policies have already happened. You have failed to hold Russia back,” Putin said.

Source: https://www.rt.com/usa/420836-general-russia-outgunned-nato/

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