NATO to Conduct Largest Exercise Since Cold War in Show of Strength to Russia

• NATO to Conduct Largest Exercise Since Cold War in Show of Strength to Russia
  by AFP/ec, via https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news
  BRUSSELS: NATO’s largest exercise since the end of the Cold War will see 50,000 troops deploy into the first snows of a Norwegian winter to show Russia that the alliance is ready to repel any attack, officers said on Tuesday (Oct 9).
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  Officially, November’s Trident Juncture exercise will simulate an attack from a fictional country, but it will bring a huge force into one of Moscow’s neighbours just months after Russia’s vast Vostok war games.
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  The head of NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command, US Navy Admiral James Foggo said that the exercise “must show NATO is capable to defend against any adversary. Not a particular country, anyone.”
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  And he noted that Norway has a frontier with Russia and that the huge force, backed by 150 aircraft, 60 ships and some 10,000 vehicles, would demonstrate that they can mobilise quickly to defend an ally.
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  “The core exercise area is 1,000 kilometres from the Russian border,” said Norwegian General Rune Jakobsen, who will run the exercise headquarters. “There should not be any reason for the Russians to get scared or see this as anything other than a defensive exercise.” Two Russian and two Belarus military observers have been invited to watch the manoeuvres.
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  These will be the biggest such movement of NATO personnel and vehicles since at least the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, although smaller than the Vostok-18 exercise staged by Russia and China last month.
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  The Western allies have stepped up their military posture, with rotating garrisons in eastern Europe and the Baltic States, in the four years since Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea.
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  Exercises like Trident Juncture 18 are designed to teach troops how to move a large force quickly in the event of an invasion against a NATO member triggering the allies’ “Article 5” mutual defence clause.
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