The new Army commander in Europe plans to bolster the U.S. armored presence in Poland and the Baltic states and keep rotations of U.S. troops there through next year and possibly beyond to counter Russia.
Lt. Gen. Frederick “Ben” Hodges, who replaced Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell earlier this month as commander of U.S. Army Europe, said the Army was looking to add about 100 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the forces in Eastern Europe.
“We are looking at courses of action for how we could pre-position equipment that we would definitely want to put inside a facility where it would be better maintained, that rotational units could then come and draw on it and use it to train, or for contingency purposes,” Hodges said in a briefing from Vilnius, Lithuania.
Hodges visited a training site in Lithuania that could be used to store armor and said he would look at similar sites in Estonia and Poland.
“Certainly, I don’t see a need to build infrastructure — a FOB [Forward Operating Base] if you will — or anything like that, that would be used for U.S. forces,” Hodges said.
