Laura Pitel
Source LinkUS general Ben Hodges was overseeing a military exercise in Europe when an unexpected incident occurred at a Polish railway station.
As dozens of Bradley infantry fighting vehicles thundered through, some of them had their gun turrets ripped off by the platform roof. “Nobody got hurt,” said Hodges, who was at the time the commander of US forces in Europe and has since retired. “But that was thousands of dollars of damage. And 10 vehicles that weren’t going to be ready to fight for some time.”
A decade later, crumbling bridges, mismatched rail gauges and labyrinthine bureaucracy remain significant hurdles to moving military assets across Europe. In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, France was unable to send tanks to Romania on the shortest land route through Germany and instead had to ship them via the Mediterranean.
These examples serve as a stark reminder that Europe’s race to re-arm is not limited to procuring weapons or building up big armies. It must also be possible to swiftly transport troops, equipment and ammunition from the west — where the bulk of Nato’s forces are based — to the alliance’s eastern flank.
Nato vessel HNLMS Tromp at Rotterdam — a key port for military equipment arriving by sea from the UK © Frank de Roo/ANP/AFP/Getty Images
Currently it would take roughly 45 days to move an army from the strategic ports in the west to countries bordering Russia or Ukraine, EU officials estimated as they prepared to publish a new proposal on “military mobility” on Wednesday. The aim, they said, was to bring that down to five or even three days.
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