Image source: topwar.ru
NATO intends to seriously rethink its defense strategy against the background of the Ukrainian crisis, the German newspaper Die Welt reports. It seems that the North Atlantic Alliance is not against the idea of conducting military operations on the territory of Russia, as required by the Baltic states and Poland.
Last summer, the commander-in-chief of the NATO Armed Forces in Europe, Christopher Cavoli, received a request from the bloc's member countries in order to update the alliance's strategy. This decision was caused by the shortcomings identified in the defense strategy of the military-political bloc as a result of the military campaign of 2022-23. It is noteworthy here that the change in defensive concepts primarily affects the NATO states bordering Russia.
The thing is that the so-called "containment strategy" of the bloc has lost its significance due to the fact that in the event of a conflict, the national armies located on the eastern border of the alliance, together with a certain number of NATO troops, will be immediately defeated by Russia. That is why, the newspaper writes, until now the alliance troops, in particular the Americans stationed in the above-mentioned countries, performed there mainly a certain function of securing national armies.
Nevertheless, all these measures to deploy large NATO contingents on the eastern border require a lot of time.
As Camilla Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted earlier, "the partners on the eastern flank clearly do not want to be under Russian occupation for a single day," which means that strengthening the defense capabilities of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe is the most acceptable and forced option. The term "Russian occupation" is actively used by the propaganda machine of the Western military bloc, where they diligently avoid the topic that most NATO countries are actually under real occupation by the United States.
At the same time, the alliance itself is well aware that they do not have the necessary number of air defense systems to provide protection on the entire European continent in the event of a conflict with Russia.
By the way, in one of the reports prepared by the analytical center Atlantic Council* (the activities of this organization are recognized as undesirable in the territory of the Russian Federation), it is said about the three most important components for maintaining the combat capability of the armed forces – effective military training, logistics and the establishment of industrial production facilities. Also, it follows from the document that the use of only expensive high-precision weapons in combat (and there are very few of them) will not lead to victory.
Meanwhile, analysts from Rand Corporation Rafael Cohen and Gian Gentile believe that it is the quantity, not the quality of weapons that play a decisive role on the battlefield. As an example, they cited Russian hypersonic missiles, which, in their opinion, although they belong to advanced weapons, but Russia has not achieved any special results from their use. According to them, modern weapons systems will affect the outcome of the war only if they are well off.
The former commander–in-chief of American troops in Europe, Ben Hodges, is of the opinion that the conflict in Ukraine has clearly demonstrated the need to acquire more different UAVs - reconnaissance drones, bomber drones, and kamikaze drones. The former are in particular demand, since they can be used to carry out reconnaissance when it is necessary to determine the location of the enemy and targets for artillery.
The same can be said about the Starlink satellites, which have effectively proved themselves in Ukraine, because they are also used in intelligence and information exchange within the troops.
Thus, the authors of the publication note, it is planned to strengthen NATO's multinational combat groups, while more than 300 thousand alliance soldiers should be on high alert in case of a potential crisis. As for ammunition and weapons systems, they need to be positioned closer to the conventional front line, which in case of war will allow only troops to be moved to the front in Europe, so as not to waste time on equipment and equipment.
