Romanian and Polish soldiers fire an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, on Feb. 9, 2026, in Cincu, Romania, during exercise Dynamic Front. The drills train U.S. and NATO country forces' ability to coordinate operations across Europe. (Regina Koesters/U.S. Army)
U.S. plans to blunt a potential large-scale aerial assault in Europe were put to the test this month at training grounds across five countries, where American and allied artillery forces confronted a battlefield saturated with missiles and drones.
The math informing Dynamic Front, the Army’s premier fires exercise in Europe, was built around one big number: 1,500.
That’s the number of targets commanders say they must be able to track and strike in a 24-hour period during a large-scale combat scenario in Europe.
Rather than “transforming to parity,” allies must “transform to dominance,” Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter, leader of the 56th Multi-Domain Command Europe, said during a call with reporters Thursday.
“We want to build a capability within the United States, within NATO, that if a peer adversary decides to (invade) NATO territory or the territory of another ally or the United States, that the repercussions will be so extreme, create an experience for them that is so unrelenting, that no nation ever considers doing that again,” Carpenter said.
In addition to being able to carry out 1,500 strikes, allies must be prepared to intercept between 600 and 1,200 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and one-way attack drones every day, numbers drawn from the arithmetic of the ongoing war in Ukraine, Army commanders said.
To block an initial surge of incoming missiles and drones, NATO must fuse air and missile defense across allied networks — including space-based sensors and ground-based radars and maritime platforms — into a layered shield, Army officials said.
French soldiers monitor the observation point Feb. 9, 2026, in Cincu, Romania, during live-fire training for the culminating event of exercise Dynamic Front. (Regina Koesters/U.S Army)
This year’s Dynamic Front, which involved 23 NATO allies, connected multiple mission networks to build fires architecture spanning five countries and nine training areas.
The scale was intended to replicate the distances and complexity that would define a major European contingency and to test whether NATO units could establish the required fires architecture quickly.
Col. Jeff Fuller, the command’s operations officer, said the exercise relied on six networks linked together to provide a foundation for a kill chain, sometimes referred to as a “kill web,” which serves as a networked process to move data from sensors to the right headquarters to deliver fires.
The allied headquarters and units participating deployed and established the fires network “in one-sixth of the time it took us in previous exercises,” Fuller said.
That showed readiness and NATO’s commitment to being able to connect quickly not just for a scheduled exercise, but “all the time,” he added.
One of the digital systems used during the exercise to enable that connectivity was the Artillery Systems Cooperation Activities, or ASCA.
U.S. soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade sight in an M119A3 howitzer during a live-fire exercise at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, Feb. 9, 2026. The training was part of exercise Dynamic Front, which involved 23 NATO militaries spread across five countries. (Kevin Payne/U.S. Army)
It allows U.S. and allied artillery units using different national fire control systems to exchange fire missions in real time.
“It’s one system where everyone can focus on executing instead of translating,” said Sgt. Alexandre Petion, a fire control noncommissioned officer with 56th Multi-Domain Command Europe, which is headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany.
ASCA eliminates the need for manual coordination or voice-based processes that can slow operations, particularly in multinational environments.
“It’s not just fire missions,” Petion said. “We can share unit locations, ammunition status, movement and grids in real time.”
Col. Jeff Pickler, deputy commander of the 56th Multi-Domain Command Europe and commander of the 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force, said striking as many as 1,500 targets a day in large-scale combat will require taking advantage of automation and artificial intelligence technology.
“The modern battlefield is swimming in sensors and we are drowning in data,” Pickler said. “There is not enough people that will ever be able to fully process all of that. It’s going to take automations.”
Army planners are already at work on developing more sophisticated training drills for next year. The intent is to combine Dynamic Front with Arcane Thunder, an exercise more focused on innovation and experimentation, Carpenter said.
The broader goal of rehearsing such complex scenarios is to ensure that NATO can act quickly and cohesively at the outset of a conflict, he said.
“Large-scale combat operation takes echelons and architecture,” Carpenter said. “Europe is a great continent to modernize, transform and train.”
