Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell Jr., commander of U.S. Army Europe, and Command Sgt. Maj. David S. Davenport Sr., the command's senior enlisted advise, answer questions at a media roundtable at Clay Kaserne in Wiesbaden, Germany, the command's new home. Matt Millham/Stars and Stripes (Matt Millham/Stars and Stripes)
WIESBADEN, Germany — Tightening defense budgets will not derail a U.S. Army plan to deploy soldiers from the States to train with European allies, the Army’s top soldier in Europe said Monday.
The first rotation is expected this fall and will include at least a brigade headquarters – “not a brigade in its entirety … that would come over approximately twice a year for 60 days,” Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell Jr. said. Another similar contingent is expected to rotate into Europe next spring, he said.
There is also the possibility that a combined arms battalion of soldiers of various combat specialties could deploy to Europe as part of the training force, he said.
The rotations are part of a larger Army plan to align stateside forces with overseas commands, and come as American forces in Europe continue to draw down.
U.S. Army Europe is in the process of inactivating one of its three remaining combat brigades.
By 2015, Campbell said, the Army’s presence in Europe will have consolidated to seven major communities hosting 30,000 soldiers – a drastic reduction from the more than 40 major garrisons and hundreds of thousands of forces stationed in Europe at the end of the Cold War.
“I think that’s a good number to be able to do the things that we need to do from a training standpoint, and an exercise standpoint, and a partnership standpoint to continue to meet our obligations to our NATO and our European partners over time,” Campbell said.
The addition of the regionally aligned force — in which units are designated for deployment to specific geographic regions — for training exercises with NATO militaries “sends a very powerful message that Europe still matters and is important.”
In the fall iteration, American rotational forces will take part in an exercise testing a NATO headquarters’ readiness to lead the alliance’s response force, which could deploy in the case of war on or near the alliance’s borders. The response force doesn’t have combat capabilities of its own and requires allies to commit forces to it in the case of a contingency.
The exercise, named Steadfast Jazz, will take place at various sites in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, according to NATO.
Campbell said the alliance must be creative in finding ways to maintain the capabilities it’s gained over more than 10 years in Afghanistan as the war there winds down.
With smaller budgets, simulations could take the place of some live training, he said.
“I believe it’s going to give us an opportunity to really step back and look at training and get better at it.”
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