NATO Forces Will Defend Every Inch of Alliance Territory, Says Commander
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To defend every inch of NATO territory’ were the words repeatedly used by Admiral Stuart B. Munsch, Commander of NATO’s Joint Force Command Naples, in his address to the assembled media during Exercise Steadfast Dart.
He was speaking following a mightily impressive show of strength laid on to introduce the world to the capabilities of the alliance’s recently formed Allied Reaction Force (ARF) at the media demonstration day held on the Smârdan military training area in eastern Romania, a mere 16 miles from the border with Ukraine.
Formed only last summer (2024), the ARF is a multi-domain capable force meaning that it combines land, air, naval, cyber and space components to deliver an agile and flexible highly scalable force capable of carrying out a full spectrum of missions. Speaking of the ARF, Admiral Stuart B Munsch described it as, “Leading this exercise in 2025 the Allied Reaction Force is a strategic high readiness, multi-domain and multi-national war fighting team that can be deployed immediately at the direction of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe.”
Exercise Steadfast Dart was the first time the ARF had been rolled out in earnest. The real purpose of the exercise was to prove the ability to surge mass numbers of troops and equipment to a specific region should any ‘inch’ of territory be threatened.
In all, nine countries took part in the exercise and so for its pièce de résistance, the combined arms battle, played out in front of hundreds of cameras, journalists, and NATO’s hierarchy, saw Spanish AV8-B fast jets scream overhead as attack helicopters provided close air support. Romanian TR85 main battle tanks roared into view firing to soften up an enemy trench system ahead of the soldiers from 4 Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland (4 SCOTS) who leapt from their Foxhound armoured vehicles. They skirmished forwards to those enemy trenches and, in a crescendo to the demo, charged forward hurling grenades to finish off any remaining resistance.
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