Archive: February 1, 2024

NATO has a munitions problem, and Europe needs to step up

In March, European Union countries pledged to supply Ukraine with 1 million artillery shells by spring 2024. It is now clear that the EU is unlikely to deliver on its promise. Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, between 2022 and 2023 the U.S. Army succeeded in doubling monthly production of 155mm shells.

The war in Ukraine has provided desperately needed momentum to renew the European defense industry. Efforts to supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces with weaponry have exposed startling gaps in Europe’s readiness for large-scale conflict. European nations have been found lacking not only adequate munition stockpiles, but also the industrial base required to refill inventories to keep up with Ukraine’s continued pleas for weapons. At the same time, the United States’ own production challenges and competing regional priorities suggest European NATO members cannot count on Washington to save the day.

NATO has a munitions problem, and the European defense industry needs to step up. Now is the time to think big.

While much of the conversation about European munitions center on the manufacture and supply of 155mm artillery shells, a narrow focus on artillery shells fails to capture the full scope of improvements needed in Europe’s munitions capacity for NATO to maintain a credible deterrence. For some European NATO members, artillery shells are just the tip of the munitions inventory and weapons industry iceberg.

There are at least three competing munitions demands on the European defense industry that require immediate attention. First, European states, NATO and the European Union must continue to supply weapons to Ukraine. The sources of these munitions include continued pulling from (dwindling) stockpiles, the transfer of previously existing orders to Ukraine, and new orders of munitions whose production has scaled up relatively quickly, such as 155mm shells.

Second, European NATO members must refill their own inventories of weapons depleted by transfers to Ukraine, including artillery shells, anti-tank missiles, longer-range rockets and surface-to-air missiles. Some of these weapons dated from the Cold War and were nearing obsolescence; others were more current. In either case, nations must purchase modern versions of these weapons or pursue other capabilities that accomplish the same missions.

This is an urgent requirement: NATO cannot plan on Russia being too weak or distracted to be a threat. If Europe’s industrial base cannot meet these demands quickly enough to ensure NATO’s near-term readiness requirements, members should consider foreign suppliers or purchases of alternate capabilities, like novel loitering munitions or air defense solutions.

Third, European NATO members must build up larger stocks of modern and future weapons to meet revised defense requirements through the end of the decade. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has exposed the inadequacy of Europe’s previous war reserves: It is not enough to refill stocks — they need to be expanded.

Sustained munitions requirements for protracted conflict are likely much higher than previously assessed, as NATO’s secretary general admitted last year. To fill these requirements, European nations must build a modern arsenal sized for a protracted conflict in the next decade. This begins with precision-guided munitions, cruise missiles and other long-range strike capabilities. Group purchases of weapons, such as the NATO-supported purchase of Patriot missiles, would increase European buying power and potentially reduce unit costs.

While purchasing currently fielded weapons, NATO members must also simultaneously develop the next generation of munitions and pursue advanced technologies such as hypersonic, autonomous and low-cost weapons. The production timelines of existing weapons and the development timelines of future weapons require Europe to invest now to attain sufficient stockpiles by the end of the decade. Given uncertainties about future threats, these development programs should focus on versatile and modular weapons that afford military planners increased flexibility across a wide range of scenarios.

Moreover, in addition to performance requirements, NATO militaries should prioritize European manufacturability and true interoperability as design criteria for future munitions programs.

Finally, in pursuing these three priorities now, Europe must foster a munitions-industrial base capable of competing with a mobilized Russian industrial base. Commentators often point to Europe’s gross domestic product being nearly eight times that of Russia, but GDP alone does not produce weapons. Working alongside the European Union, NATO — given its convening power and its role in setting munitions requirements and standards for much of Europe — should lead conversations about how to support a European defense industry scaled not only to refill and increase stockpiles but also to provide high-tech weapons in the future.

Built into a strategic approach to the European munitions industry is the recognition that not all munitions are the same and Europe may need to pay for the maintenance of excess or “surge” capacity. The production capacity of some weapons — like artillery shells — can be increased more quickly and so can be more fungible, though do require regular investment from governments. Other production lines — like for cruise and interceptor missiles — are less flexible, so orders must be consistent over time to ensure that NATO has enough when it needs them.

Two years into the Ukraine war, European defense officials are coming around to the reality of these varied demands. This is a positive sign, but European NATO members must move quickly to make good on pledges to increase defense spending and provide a sustained demand signal for critical munitions. Russia is well ahead of Europe in expanding its munitions production capacity. It is time for European NATO members to acknowledge the true scale of their weapon requirements and adopt a strategic approach to meeting them in the near and long term.

Katherine Kjellström Elgin is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments think tank where she focuses on U.S. and European defense strategies. She is the author of the forthcoming CSBA report “More of the Same? The Future of the Russian Military and its Ability to Change.” Tyler Hacker is a research fellow at CSBA, where he focuses on great power conflict. He is the author of “Beyond Precision: Maintaining America’s Strike Advantage in Great Power Conflict.”

Russian leaders have high hopes for new nukes this year – again

MOSCOW — The Russian ministry of defense has declared 2024 as the year when several nuclear weapons will enter the inventory of Moscow’s strategic forces, moving a number of goalposts that were meant to be reached last year.

Deputy Defense Minister Alexei Krivoruchko said on Jan. 26 that the entry into the armed forces of the Sarmat strategic missile system, Tu-160M bombers and the Borei-A nuclear submarine Knyaz Pozharsky are the main tasks for 2024. The objectives have remained the same since December 2022, when Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced atomic-weapons plans for the then-upcoming year during a speech at the Defence Ministry Board.

The development of the Sarmat missile system has been behind schedule for a long time, and only one successful flight test of the missile is recorded. This is due to the fact that the production and testing of the rocket are under the jurisdiction of Roscosmos, which suffers from low profitability, accumulated debts and increased losses.

The CEO of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, in a December 2023 interview with Rossiya 24 TV channel, said that the corporation had lost 180 billion rubles ($2 billion) of export revenue due to the strong impact of sanctions.

The closure of access to Western technologies and components required the search for alternatives, which led to the fact that Roscosmos enterprises incur additional costs, as due dates for equipment deliveries approach.

The desire to reduce costs led to the fact that from 2019 to 2021 Roscosmos laid off 17,000 workers, and in 2023 halved the staff of the headquarters office.

Due to lack of funds, Roscosmos seeks to find investments in cooperation with countries such as Algeria and Egypt, and in 2023 entered the borrowing market for the first time, planning to issue bonds worth 50 billion rubles.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2024/01/23/russia-angles-for-drone-making-partners-in-the-middle-east/

As a result, orbital launches have decreased and stagnated at the level of 15-26 launches per year for the last eight years. Test launches of Russian land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles also decreased from 6-10 in 2013-2017 to 2-5 in 2018-2023, publicly available figures suggest.

Roscosmos subsidiaries involved in the production of Sarmat have financial and production problems. In particular, the Proton-PM plant, which produces the missile’s propulsion system, “faced limited access to Western equipment, tools, raw materials of imported origin and an increase in the interest burden on loans,” director Ivan Krasnov said in 2022.

As stated in the company’s corporate magazine, officials instead bought Russian, Belarusian or Chinese machining and foundry equipment.

In addition, several top Proton-PM managers were arrested last year on charges of embezzlement to the tune of 195 million rubles in connection with planned equipment upgrades, regional media reported.

Chemical Automatics Design Bureau (CADB), which produces the second stage of the Sarmat missile, is in a pre-bankruptcy state. The company has had a chronic shortage of working capital.

After the start of the war, money appeared, but while employees’ wages came through on time again, other CADB contractors are still having difficulty getting paid, a source at the company told Defense News on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. Management also failed to modernize the workshops, as was promised in late 2021, the source added.

Plant managers have been selling non-core assets, like a production site and a canteen for 247.8 million rubles, according to the source.

Meanwhile, the Kazan Aviation Plant (KAP), located in Kazan, Tartastan region, is engaged in the modernization of the existing Tu-160 bombers to a Tu-160M standard, while also producing new planes. The government has previously said the company had prepared four modernized Tu-160M, one of which was transferred to the Ministry of Defense in 2022. In 2023, the Ministry of Defense continued testing it together with Tupolev Company, while the rest of the aircraft are continuing factory testing.

Tupolev is on contract to deliver 10 new bombers by 2027. The first Tu-160M, an upgraded Soviet-era plane, made its first flights in January and December 2022. The second one started factory tests only one year ago, making it unlikely that four upgraded bombers could have been delivered in 2023.

“KAP produced 1-1.5 aircraft per year, that is, it is not able to fulfill the plans of the Defense Ministry,” said Pavel Luzin, senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a U.S.-based think tank.

The company is said to be lagging with the modernization of its production facilities, which was supposed to be completed by 2020. In addition, there is the bite of Western sanctions.

“Due to the sanctions, there is a problem of access to the latest machines and tools, high-quality composite materials, high-strength steel, electronic components and other material,” said a professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute who wished to remain anonymous. “There is a replacement in Russia and Asia, but the quality leaves much to be desired. A lot of time is spent on improvements and not everything can be found in the required quantity.”

In addition, KAP has been experiencing a shortage of workers for years. A year before the war against Ukraine, the Tatarstan region’s minister of industry and trade, Albert Karimov, said that 70% of industrial enterprises in the region needed workers, 26,000 thousand people. Among the companies experiencing the greatest shortage, Karimov named the KAP plant.

As a result of ongoing delays, the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade previously sued Tupolev for 5.8 billion rubles as a penalty under the Tu-160M contract.

According to TASS reports, Russia’s state-owned news agency, the Borei-A-class submarine Knyaz Pozharsky was to be launched in 2023, and two more submarines were to be laid down. While experts don’t consider production shortfalls as the program’s bottleneck, the delay may negatively affect the test program, since the deadline for the delivery of the Navy submarine remains December 2024.

“Plans for the laying of 11 and 12 Borei-A class submarines have not been canceled. Besides, for the Russian authorities, it is necessary to load the plant with something in the 2030s, otherwise it is not very viable in the current political economic situation,” says CEPA’s Luzin.

House eyes higher dollar thresholds for arms sales notices to Congress

WASHINGTON ― A House task force established to speed up the foreign military sales process will debate its first bill in the Foreign Affairs Committee next week, marking what could be the next legislative step in untangling arms deals backlogs.

The bill raises the dollar threshold at which the president can approve an arms transfer without notifying Congress, while requiring the drawdown of weapons from U.S. stockpiles to compensate for delayed foreign military sales. It has generated pushback among some arms control advocates who fear the legislation would chip away at a key congressional oversight mechanism used to track weapons deals with other countries.

As head of the task force established last year, Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., introduced the Tiger Act in December.

“The tempo of conventional high-intensity war that we’re seeing means that countries are burning through their defense equipment much faster,” a Waltz staffer told Defense News, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the bill. “That is something that we on the Hill were taken by surprise [by] in places like Ukraine: the shortage of precision munitions, the shortage of 155mm shells.”

In addition to Ukraine, the Biden administration has transferred thousands of munitions to Israel since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks even as it seeks to rush arms to Taiwan to deter a potential Chinese invasion.

The bill raises the threshold for which the executive branch can approve an arms sale of major defense equipment without congressional notification from $14 million to $23 million. It also raises the threshold for the sale of defense articles, upgrades, related training or other services without congressional notification from $50 million to $83 million. The staffer said the numbers were selected to reflect inflation since 2003, when Congress last adjusted the thresholds.

“Ensuring that countries have the ability to purchase some of these weapons without, as years go on, being increasingly penalized by rising inflation rates seems to be common sense,” the staffer said.

But arms control advocates argue the bill would cede congressional oversight authority.

“Notification thresholds are really at the core of Congress’ arms sale oversight regime,” John Chappell, an advocacy and legal fellow at the Washington-based Center for Civilians in Conflict, told Defense News.

“Raising the threshold would undercut Congress’ ability to be aware of the proposed arms transfer. That would mean Congress wouldn’t be able to conduct oversight, and they would lose the opportunity to ask questions about specific arms sales, to put informal holds on them and to raise concerns about issues related to civilian harm, human rights, armed conflict and other issues,” he said.

Chappell noted many U.S. arms sales to Israel since Oct. 7 have fallen below the existing notification thresholds. He also highlighted a 2020 State Department Inspector General report, which found the Trump administration approved 4,221 below-threshold arms transfers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates amounting to $11.2 billion between Jan. 2017 and Aug. 2020.

Waltz’s legislation emerged from a bipartisan taskforce of three Republicans and two Democrats who sit on the Foreign Affairs, Armed Services and defense appropriations committees. But Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, declined to comment on the legislation.

Drawdown authority

The Waltz bill also requires the secretary of state to use drawdown authority from U.S. stockpiles to transfer weapons to a security partner or ally if a sale has been delayed for three years or more. However, the secretary of state may waive this provision so long as he or she explains why to Congress.

“What this is saying is if there’s a long-running [foreign military sale], the secretary must explain why it can’t be prioritized,” said the Waltz staffer. “Let’s say you have the sale of Harpoons to Taiwan that have been outstanding for three years, and we have Harpoons in our arsenal.”

The staffer noted the drawdown language is still under negotiation and the legislation may change via amendments in the Foreign Affairs Committee markup next week.

Harpoon anti-ship missiles comprise part of the roughly $19 billion foreign military sale backlog to Taiwan, caused in part by contracting delays and U.S. industrial base constraints. Several other U.S. partners, including in the Middle East, have been hit with arms sales delays.

But Chappell argued the provision would make “presidential drawdown authority specifically a routine occurrence” and could be used to circumvent congressional holds on an arms transfers that top lawmakers on the foreign affairs committees sometimes place over human rights concerns.

Additionally, the bill seeks to beef up the Special Defense Acquisition Fund, a revolving account used for foreign military sale procurement that the Pentagon hopes to lean on more as it works to expedite the process. The Pentagon released the results of its own Tiger team task force to speed up arms sales last year and has a separate task force focused on Taiwan. It’s also recently established another Tiger team task force to speed up arms transfers to Israel, according to The Intercept.

The Foreign Affairs Committee will debate and vote on the legislation next week, potentially referring it to the House floor for consideration.

The Waltz staffer noted the task force seeks to make additional legislative adjustments to the foreign military sales process later this year as Congress drafts the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill.

The FY24 defense policy bill, which Congress passed in December, includes a provision authorizing each combatant commander to hire up to two acquisition specialists as part of a bid to speed Pentagon contracting of foreign military sales.

Cyberattacks on Guam could sap US forces in Indo-Pacific, Nakasone says

WASHINGTON — Successful Chinese cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in Guam or other Indo-Pacific footholds could cripple U.S. military capabilities in the region, the leader of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command said.

Guam is a key outpost for U.S. forces in the increasingly competitive area, where Washington thinks a fight with Beijing could erupt. The island serves as a logistics and munitions hub, as well as an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance node.

An assault on the networks and information technology that support Guam’s distribution of electricity, water, food and emergency response could “have a very significant impact” on the options available to military commanders at the time, said Gen. Paul Nakasone.

“Communications, an ability to leverage our most lethal weapon systems — these are all areas that we would rely on,” he said during a Jan. 31 hearing held by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. “We have to operate every day, we have to have vigilance, we have to have offensive and defensive capabilities.”

The Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance — made up of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. — in May warned a Chinese espionage group slipped past digital defenses in Guam and other locations. Microsoft detected the intrusion and attributed it to a group known as Volt Typhoon.

U.S. officials have long considered China a serious cyber hazard, with the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank placing it in the second tier of its cyber powerhouse rankings alongside Russia. The Pentagon’s 2023 cyber strategy warned Beijing is prepared to unleash cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and defense networks, should war break out.

Such tactics are meant to foment confusion, divert precious resources and hamstring military mobilization.

Nakasone on Wednesday said when hackers are found lurking around critical infrastructure, the “first thing that we need to do is make sure that we get them out.” As head of CYBERCOM and the NSA, the general is in close contact with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which falls under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, among other players.

“We need to have a vigilance that continues onward,” Nakasone said. “This is not an episodic threat that we’re going to face. This is persistent.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher, the committee chairman, told reporters before the hearing he had seen reports that China is shifting some of its attention away from traditional economic espionage and toward targeting critical infrastructure.

That move signals an eagerness to sabotage, according to the Wisconsin Republican, as there is “no economic value in pre-positioning on oil and gas pipelines or water utility companies — there’s no intellectual property to steal.”

Missile defense interceptor competition enters critical design phase

Both teams competing to develop a new homeland missile defense interceptor for the Missile Defense Agency have entered the critical design phase with Northrop Grumman announcing it had passed its preliminary design review, according to Jan. 31 statement.

The teams competing to replace the Ground Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptors with a Next-Generation Interceptor, or NGI, have been working on staggered schedules. The Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne team completed its PDR at the end of September 2023.

Northrop and its Raytheon partner passed through the same gauntlet on Jan. 26, Lisa Brown, who is in charge of the company’s NGI program, told Defense News in a Jan. 30 interview.

The teams are now one year ahead of the original contract date for PDR completion and Brown said its PDR wrapped up successfully one month ahead of an established accelerated plan.

Critical Design Review is now expected to take roughly a year. Brown said the team is expecting to reach that milestone in the spring of 2025 and is looking for ways to accelerate the schedule.

Because the program has completed milestones earlier than originally planned and due to an emphasis on digital design methods, both teams remain hopeful they can deliver an interceptor that could make it into underground silos by fiscal 2027, a year faster than the Missile Defense Agency is projecting.

There are 44 GBIs in the ground with the majority in silos at Fort Greely, Alaska, and the rest at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The current interceptors aren’t equipped to counter a missile that could contain multiple kill vehicles or decoys that make the defeat process more complicated, defense officials have said.

NGI is the result of the Pentagon canceling in August 2019 its Redesigned Kill Vehicle program – which would have upgraded the GBI to be able to pursue more complex threats. That program struggled with insurmountable technical issues resulting in delayed schedules and cost increases. Raytheon, as a subcontractor for Boeing, was the developer for the RKV program.

Roughly eight months after the cancellation of the RKV program, MDA launched the new interceptor push.

The companies are designing the new interceptor using digital methods meant to speed up the design process. As a result, Northrop’s engineers were able to build hardware earlier and begin testing sooner.

“In my 30 years at the company, I would say this is probably the most mature PDR level design I’ve ever seen. Frankly, a lot of the components are already at or past the CDR level,” Brown said in the Jan. 30 interview.

As part of the PDR process, Northrop held a “science fair” where attendees could cycle through a large conference room and look at hardware and see actual models running or waveforms being generated, Brown described. This way “they could get a good understanding, hands-on, of a lot of the technology that we employ in the interceptor,” she said. The company showed its working NGI digital twin.

Northrop even used virtual reality to evaluate how a maintainer might access certain parts of the interceptor with a wrench to ensure good ergonomics and optimal access for repairs and maintenance, Brown added.

“We want to demonstrate to MDA that we are a low-risk approach,” Brown said.

Northrop is also in the midst of static fire testing its rocket motors. The stage three rocket motor arrived at MDA testing facilities in December and its stage one and two motors should complete static fire testing by the end of the first quarter this year, Brown said.

Space Force to start charging more spaceport fees this summer

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Space Force will start charging launch companies more to use its spaceports as soon as this summer, following a provision in the defense policy bill that allows the service to pursue new revenue streams to fund range modernization efforts.

While the Space Force has traditionally charged for direct costs like equipment usage at a launch pad, the 1984 Commercial Space Act barred it from asking companies to pay for what are considered “indirect” costs, like facilities repair and maintenance.

The Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law Dec. 26, changes that. The legislation features a provision that lets the Space Force collect additional fees from range users.

Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for assured access to space, said Jan. 31 the service has had several meetings with industry to discuss the implications of the new fees “and make sure everybody fully understood what was coming.”

“The promise that we made to both industry and Congress on this is that we be very transparent with our charging to make sure they understood what was happening,” she said during a media briefing at the Space Mobility Conference here.

The language limits the indirect fees the Space Force can collect to 30% of what a company is contracted to pay in direct costs, with a cap of $5 million per year. Panzenhagen said the service doesn’t expect to collect “a huge amount,” but noted the funding will help the service improve its range facilities and operate them more like commercial spaceports.

She added that if all goes well over the next few years, the service hopes to reduce the caps included in the new law.

“Our intent is to execute the authorities we’ve been given in [fiscal years] ‘24 through ‘26 in a really responsible manner and show the benefits that it has both to government and commercial with reinvesting in the spaceport,” Panzenhagen said.

The change in how the Space Force collects range fees comes as launch rates surge at the service’s East and West Coast ranges. The service’s FY24 budget requested $1.3 billion over the next five years for infrastructure projects aimed at increasing the number of launches it can support.

The provision is one of two major policy changes the service sought heading into the FY24 legislative cycle to enable this new way of operating. The other, which would streamline the process for leasing federal land around military bases to commercial companies, didn’t make it into the final bill.

Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., told C4ISRNET in December he plans to push for the provision to be included in FY25 defense policy legislation.

“There’s a huge amount of viable, productive space around a number of bases, and if it’s done right and appropriately, it could actually provide a revenue stream that, in this case, could be reinjected back into the ranges,” he said.

Europeans set up corridor for rushing NATO troops eastward

PARIS — Germany, the Netherlands and Poland plan to develop a military corridor that would make it easier to move troops and equipment between Europe’s North Sea ports and NATO’s eastern flank, at a time of growing hostility with Russia.

The countries signed a declaration of intent on Jan. 30 to develop the corridor, with plans to tackle infrastructure choke points, such as low bridges, and slash bureaucracy around permits for cross-border transport of ammunitions and other dangerous goods, the Dutch Ministry of Defence said in a statement. They’ll also study how military rail transports can be prioritized over routine civilian traffic.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago made European countries realize they need to be prepared to move their military across the continent, something that previously hadn’t been high on the agenda, Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said at the Military Mobility Symposium in Brussels on Jan. 30. She said the Netherlands, as a military transit country, must able to quickly move equipment from its ports to the hinterland.

“It’s about heavy material that has to pass through on bridges and roads, but it’s also about bureaucracy, it’s also about red tape,” Ollongren said. “We know one thing for sure: If the crisis comes, we are not going to have the time to do our paperwork, the paperwork has to be ready.”

The three governments will study how to standardize the conditions around military transports, including priority for military trains, fewer rules for military convoys and border crossings, as well as resting and refueling stops. The Netherlands coordinates the military mobility project of the EU Permanent Structured Cooperation, or PESCO.

Germany relied on military mobility as a frontline nation during the Cold War, and as the borders have moved east, Berlin needs to offer the same to allies, German State Secretary of Defense Siemtje Möller said in Brussels. Europe needs to demonstrate to Russia its ability to process military personnel and goods via its ports, roads and rail, she said.

European countries are playing catchup after decades of underinvestment following the end of the Cold War, said Sarah Tarry, head of the NATO Defence Policy and Capabilities Directorate. She said the agreement between Germany, Poland and the Netherlands “is absolutely a great model, and we need to do more like this to address the challenges.”

Europe’s three largest ports are Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Antwerp in Belgium and Hamburg in Germany, connected to inland destinations by waterways and an extensive network of roads and railway tracks.

“We have forces that are forward stationed in Europe, but then the vast majority of our forces are still in the United States,” Secretary of Defense Representative in Europe Rachel Ellehuus said at the mobility forum. “So we’d be relying on that throughput across the Atlantic and that ability to be quickly received in Europe.”

Europe has supported Ukraine with military aid in its defense against Russia, and defense budgets have increased across the EU in response to the Russian aggression. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy Chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, in November labeled Poland a “dangerous enemy.”

NATO last week announced plans to conduct Steadfast Defender, the largest exercise in Europe since the Cold War, with about 90,000 troops from all NATO allies as well as Sweden taking part. The exercise aims to test NATO defense plans against a near-pear adversary, and will result in troops transiting Dutch ports and German roads and railways.

Ollongren said governments should use the NATO exercise to explain how investment in infrastructure will increase resilience and improve deterrence. “It’s also going to show to our adversaries, especially the Russian Federation, that we are ready for this,” the minister said.

The EU earlier this month said it would fund 38 additional projects to facilitate transport of troops and equipment for €807 million ($875 million), raising its support for military mobility for the 2021-2027 period to a total of 95 projects and €1.7 billion.

“The quicker we can move military forces from one part of Europe to another, via land, sea or air, the better our readiness to handle sudden challenges,” said Jiří Šedivý, chief executive of the European Defence Agency. “Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has increased the urgency of this indeed.”