US troops stage an airborne assault. British marines conduct a nighttime beach landing. French paratroopers drop from the skies after flying across Europe.<\/p>\n
In Estonia, on NATO’s eastern flank, the allies train in the shadow of Russia’s war on Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The message is clear.<\/p>\n
“It says that at short notice we can deploy very fast,” said Lieutenant Colonel Edouard Bros, commander of the French troops in Estonia and taking part in the Spring Storm exercise.<\/p>\n
Fifteen months into Russia’s war on Ukraine, and a month ahead of a summit of NATO leaders in Vilnius, the alliance is reinforcing its eastern defences.<\/p>\n
Now that Moscow has ripped up decades of post-Cold War order, NATO is conducting the biggest overhaul to its defences and planning in a generation.<\/p>\n
“This change will move us from an alliance that was optimised for out of area contingency operations to an alliance fit for the purpose of large-scale operations to defend every inch of the alliance’s territory,” US General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s supreme commander in Europe, said this month.<\/p>\n