On April 22, Clementine Starling, deputy director of Forward Defense and of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, wrote an article for Defense One entitled “Europe Was Just Getting Better at Moving Militaries.” Previewing the Atlantic Council’s recently released report on this subject, Ms. Starling discusses both the successes in military mobility since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, as well as the challenges and vulnerabilities wrought by COVID-19. She argues for four action items to improve European military mobility: 1) European nations need to make military mobility a high-level priority; 2) Europe requires greater investment in and development of its military and dual-use infrastructure; 3) Europeans must agree on short- and long-term problems; and 4) these nations should prioritize cyber resilience.
Russia will not wait until a bridge has been built in Poland to make its advance, and so military mobility needs priority and investment today, for the sake of tomorrow.
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Image: An Army AH-64 Apache helicopter is unloaded from an Air Mobility Command C-5M Galaxy at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Feb. 22, 2017, in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve. The four Apache helicopters that arrived are part of a larger contingent of helicopters and personnel comprising of Operation Atlantic Resolve, a U.S. commitment to maintaining peace and stability in the European region. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Timothy Moore)