The U.S. Defense Ministry plans to deploy an armoured brigade combat team to Eastern Europe next February as part of the ongoing effort to rotate troops in and out of the region to reassure allies worried about threats from an increasingly aggressive Russia, Associated Press reports with reference to its own sources in the Pentagon.
According to an announcement released Wednesday, a full set of equipment will be sent with the brigade to Europe. Earlier plans had called for the Pentagon to rotate troops into Europe, where they would have used a set of training equipment already there.
The new proposal would remove the pre-positioned equipment, send it to be refurbished, and allow the U.S. forces to bring more robust, modern equipment in with them when they deploy. There are about 4,200 soldiers in an armoured brigade, along with hundreds of heavy vehicles, tanks, self-propelled howitzers and other equipment.
As reported earlier, the Pentagon would regard the deployment of Russia’s airbase in Belarus as a sign of destabilization of the power balance in Eastern Europe, Michael Carpenter, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, told reporters in Minsk on Tuesday.
It is to be recalled that commander of the US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe Philip Breedlove stressed during his recent visit to Lithuania that NATO should be ready for the Baltic states’ air defence.
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