The huge military exercise 'Defender Europe 2020' launched in January. with an overall 37,000 soldiers from 18 countries partaking in the drill. The historical military drill will take place in Germany, Poland, Georgia and the Baltic States.

The innovatory Defender 2020 has five stages. As Army Recognition notes “in the second phase, an immediate response force from the 82nd Airborne Division will conduct joint forcible entries in Georgia.” Amongst the European host nations, Poland will be the one that will accommodate the largest number of troops.

These five phases of the military exercise are as follows:

The first phase includes a reception, staging, onward movement and integration, or RSOI, of a division-sized element, while many other units, including a National Guard brigade, will draw prepositioned stocks in Belgium and Germany.

In the second phase, an immediate response force from the 82nd Airborne Division will conduct joint forced entries into the country of Georgia.

The third phase has a division command post exercise that will have units spread out across the continent. It will also involve a Joint Warfighting Assessment to test multi-domain operations as well as capabilities being pursued by Army Futures Command.

Soldiers will then conduct a river crossing in the fourth phase, as well as forward passage of lines and a maritime prepositioned force off-load mission. The fifth phase will consolidate Army forces and redeploy them

The exercise will cover 4,000 kilometers of convoy routes and rely on 10 European countries to host exercise activities.

US Army Europe officials note that “moving and sustaining thousands of troops for months at a time, along with their tanks and armored vehicles, will cost the US about $340 million.”

US Army Europe also wrote on twitter, “During the first phase of #DefenderEurope, 20,000 [American] troops will deploy from the US to Europe. These troops will be the largest deployment of US-based forces to #StrongEurope for an exercise in more than 25 years.”

By B.Alexishvili

20 January 2020 15:28