In a show of force against further Russian incursion in Europe, President Obama’s budget request will include an extra $800 million in funding to bolster its European presence and the Pentagon will begin moving hundreds of pieces of heavy artillery there.
It’s been almost a year since Russian forces entered Crimea, annexed it, and then began the subterfuge of sympathizing with rebels it claimed it was providing no military support to.
That created a complex scenario for the rest of Europe: Ukraine is not a NATO member country, but the acts of aggression were taken as a larger threat against Europe.
The aggression is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to “fracture the alliance,” U.S. Army Europe Commander Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told reporters Thursday.
“The ambiguity of what going on, who’s doing it, puts a lot of pressure on the alliance on what they should do,” Hodges said. To reassure European allies, Obama requested last year, and Congress approved in December, almost $1 billion in overseas contingency operations funding. The funding increased U.S. training exercises and unit rotations throughout Eastern Europe. For fiscal 2016, the Pentagon is requesting an additional $800 million in those funds to keep up the show of force and help the Ukrainians even the fight.
In the last several months, the amount of equipment and armored trucks resupplying the rebels “has doubled,” Hodges said, and Ukrainian forces have found themselves outgunned by sophisticated rockets and stymied by the rebels’ superior electronic warfare capabilities.
But there’s a catch to assisting Ukraine’s forces: The administration’s policy toward the crisis is to provide only non-lethal assistance, so that the door is left open for a political solution with Russia and the two great powers don’t end up in a war by proxy.
As a result, Hodges said, the U.S. is providing Ukrainian forces specialized radars to detect incoming mortars so they can survive them, but not the capability to shoot them down.
Part of the training will include helping Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior troops, who are responsible for guarding the country’s infrastructure, on how to evade and survive their better-equipped foes.
“Obviously they are going to be targeted by artillery, they are going to be detected, they are going to be jammed, so we’re [going to] help them to be able to operate in that environment,” Hodges said.
The U.S. show of force is critical to reassuring Europe that the U.S. will show up and defend their interests despite the budgetary difficulties it is facing at home.
Putin “wants to create doubt in the mind of Baltic countries, for example, that [the NATO member] countries along the [Mediterranean Sea] or over in North America will not come to their aid if threatened.”
Hodges, who just toured Ukraine, already calls the rebel forces “President Putin’s Proxies” because of the superior weapons, rockets, communications capabilities and training he observed there.
“The quality of equipment, the volume of ammunition they have — this is not something the militia could assemble in the basement of their homes,” he said.
Later this spring the U.S. will begin shipping a brigade combat team’s worth of equipment to Germany to bolster the U.S. European Command. The added force will have more than 220 pieces of equipment, including M1 Abrams tanks, M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, M3 Cavalry fighting vehicles and a battalion of Paladin 155mm self-propelled howitzers. The equipment will be held in Germany for U.S. European Command but could be relocated throughout Europe if requested.
“It’s a significant commitment by the Army to provide this capability to U.S. European Command,” Hodges said.
In a reflection of the defense budget and the state of the military’s equipment after 13 years of combat, however, it will take a year to get the full complement of equipment there, because it is being assembled from across the Army.
