Romaniastarting todayexercise from the «Scudo Marino 24» was born which will be held until April 21st along the Romanian Black Sea coast and the Danube Delta. The objective is to test operations in the fight against illegal activities at sea and on land, search and rescue activities at sea, and ensure the security of sensitive infrastructure also following the intensification of the conflict in Ukraine. At the maneuvers, which began in the port of Constance, More than 2,200 soldiers and 135 marine and river boats, planes and vehicles from 13 NATO member countries or Alliance partners are participating. Military personnel from Romania, the United States, Italy, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Georgia, Great Britain, Moldova, Holland, Poland, Portugal and Turkey take part.
The exercise
NATO held its first military exercises in the autumn of 1951. These exercises trained and tested the Alliance’s new multinational military structures, helping the different units of member countries to transform themselves into an integrated force under a single centralized command. DSince then, thousands of exercises have taken place in multiple areas, including air, land, sea and cyberspace. Throughout the Cold War, NATO maintained a very active maneuver and simulation program to train forces in as many challenging scenarios as possible. Since Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and, above all, the invasion of Ukraine, the number of exercises focusing on collective defense scenarios has increased significantly.
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Troops in the East
NATO’s military presence in the eastern part of the Alliance is a key part of its strengthening of deterrence, which has been strengthened in recent years to reflect “the new reality” of security in the Euro-Atlantic area. NATO’s forward presence (Forward Presence) includes eight multinational battlegroups, provided by the framework nations and other allies on a voluntary basis (the groups operate in concert with the national defense forces and are always present in the host countries). The troops, under direct NATO command, are located in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, thus covering the entire eastern front; Missile defense groups are stationed in Latvia, Poland, Slovakia and Romania and aerial surveillance is active in all countries.
The military presence
After February 24, 2022, the force rose to 40,000 men and the Alliance is now engaged in the process of bringing the battalions to brigade level (from 1,000 to 5,000 men each). The Madrid and Vilnius summits have changed the picture and the entire posture of NATO in the east has changed, with pre-positioned assets, greater air defenses and in general a new force concept, the New Force Model, which is replacing the current Response Force . When fully operational, the Allied Commander-in-Chief (code name: Saceur) will have “100 thousand men available within 10 days, 200 thousand between 10 and 30 days, at least 500 thousand between 30 and 180 days”. But this applies to the entire Alliance, not just the eastern flank. Since 2014, then, NATO has created the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), led in 2024 by Great Britain, for the rapid intervention of elites (about 6 thousand men).
The Russian threat
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States also strengthened its presence in Europe, with approximately 90,000 soldiers in total, 10,000 of whom were deployed at Camp Kościuszko, Poland. Berlin, however, is positioning a brigade (5 thousand men) in Lithuania, to protect one of the most delicate points of the Alliance, the Suwalki corridor, which separates Belarus from the exclave of Kaliningrad. The framework is completed with the recent entry of Finland and Sweden into the Alliance. Stockholm and Helsinki block NATO to the north and north-east, transforming the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. At the moment there are no plans to deploy allied troops in the quadrant, since Finland and Sweden are considered “highly capable” countries from a military point of view and, therefore, more than capable of guarding their quadrant against any threat, Russia first and foremost .
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