U.S. ARMY RETURNS TANKS TO EUROPE: That’s the title of this NBC report.
Three years after the last American tank left Europe, they are being brought back “as part of our commitment to deterrence,” Gen. Frederick “Ben” Hodges told NBC News.
Hodges, who is commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, welcomed a batch of tracked and wheeled support vehicles to a depot in the Netherlands on Thursday.
For military history buffs, an ironic read on “Bulge” day. (See 8:57 a.m. post.)
Three years ago U.S. withdrew its last tank unit from Germany — soldiers and vehicles. Here’s The Stars and Stripes coverage of the 2013 withdrawal.
“There is no [U.S.] tank on German soil. It’s a historic moment,” said Lt. Col. Wayne Marotto, 21st TSC spokesman.
It was my understanding that we still pre-positioned a few tanks in European depots but there was indeed a hiatus.
In 2014 The Stars and Stripes reported:
GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — Less than a year after they left European soil, American tanks have returned to military bases in Germany where they had been a heavy presence since World War II.
In April last year, the last Abrams tanks left Germany, coinciding with a drawdown of U.S. forces that saw the inactivation of two infantry brigades — the 170th and 172nd.
When the 22 M1A1 Abrams departed the continent it was seen as the end of an era, as tanks had been a fixture on American bases in Europe since landing at Omaha Beach in 1944.
Now, it appears that chapter of history may have been closed a bit prematurely.
On Friday, the last of 29 M1A2 SEPv2 Abrams tanks were offloaded at the railhead at the Grafenwöhr training facilities. These heavily armored vehicles are upgraded versions of the older Abrams that left 10 months ago and will become part of what the Joint Multinational Training Command at Grafenwöhr is calling the European Activity Set.
Dig the Pentagonese “activity set.” Yeah, it’s activity.
“Closed a bit prematurely.” But Obama said the tide of war was receding…
This Defense News article says that in 2015 the Army had 90 Abrams tanks pre-positioned in Europe and was adding more.
The bottom line to the NBC News article: we’re adding even more Abrams and Bradleys to European stockpiles.
This NY Times article from 2015 mentioned the small-scale pre-positioned weapons sites with heavy weapons in Germany. The NYT article focused on pre-positioning equipment in the Baltics. Telling quote: “Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University who has written extensively on Russia’s military and security services, noted, “Tanks on the ground, even if they haven’t people in them, make for a significant marker.”
That’s right. With soldiers in’em the tanks become trip wires. Here’s the confession of a Cold War NATO trip wire.
You can see why the cheeky title of this Jim Dunnigan analysis, “Iron Curtain Replaced By Paper Wall,” struck me as a fine exercise in gallows humor.
April 11, 2016: While the armed forces available to NATO far outnumber those of Russia, there is a major impediment to assembling and moving those forces to the aid of NATO nations bordering Russia. That enemy is the ancient bureaucracy that controls the movement of foreign troops crossing borders, even those forces coming to your aid. This was demonstrated in early 2015 when an U.S. Army mechanized battalion made a very well publicized road march from Poland, Lithuania and Estonia back to its base in Germany. The American battalion required hundreds of hours of effort to complete the paperwork and get the permissions required to cross so many borders in military vehicles.