The DEFENDER-Europa 20 exercise is the deployment of a divisional combat force directly from the United States to Europe, a set of men and means deployed in different training theaters in Europe. The exercise scheduled for April would have brought 20,000 American soldiers to Europe who, together with the armed forces of six European nations, would have simulated different scenarios of intervention in defense of the European community.
Similar operations are a constant part of the training program of American employment forces with the aim of testing and honing the interoperability capabilities between the different European national armies and the US ally.
The operational staff will be deployed throughout the European region by establishing intermediate bases in collaboration with the allied nations and subsequently carrying out a series of single exercises, which although not an integral part of Defender-Europe 20 are closely connected to it through an interforce command of the mission.
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Defender Europe 20 “is the largest deployment of American soldiers in Europe since the end of the Cold War and has the aim of testing the ability to deploy and contrast threats from European borders with 20,000 soldiers deployed by the United States. The military exercises are expected to involve around 20,000 troops as well as 9,000 US troops stationed in Europe with soldiers from the allied nations participating. Germany will act as a logistics and control center during the exercises, while Poland and the Baltic States will see the construction of new logistics infrastructures.
Like any military exercise, it confronts hypothetical enemy factions that are the result of a geopolitical and geostrategic analysis useful for making the exercise actually realistic. A real enemy is not identified even if there are no doubts that the European borders are threatened by different areas of crisis, in the North with the neighboring Ukraine, in the South beyond the Mediterranean with Syria and Libya scenarios in continuous evolution.
The exercise activity was launched in October 2019 with a schedule that would have seen the full deployment by the end of April to proceed after the start of the activities, however the global emergency of COVID-19 was rooted on this program, which at this moment it caused the Lock Down of Italy and very shortly of France putting at risk the exercise plan.
In fact, the exercise has been reduced in the numbers of the participants but not canceled and will take place on schedule, addressing another scenario together with those already planned, operations in biocontaminated territory