Air Defender 2023: what NATO is actually practicing and why Russia should be scared
One of the main goals of Air Defender 2023 is to practice the rapid deployment of US reserve forces in Europe
On June 12, the largest air exercise since the Cold War, Air Defender 2023, will start in Europe. They will involve 220 aircraft, of which about 100 will come from the United States, and objectively, the European sky will be somewhat crowded until these maneuvers end on June 23.
The main feature of the exercises will be practicing the deployment of US air capabilities, and it will involve not the air forces of the Armed Forces, but the air forces of the US National Guard, which is objectively a reserve. That is, we are talking about practicing the rapid deployment of all available NATO forces in Europe.
However, it should be noted that the US National Guard Air Force units will fly to Europe on F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 attack aircraft.
The latter directly indicate that not only air battles and long-range strikes will be practiced, but also direct attacks on ground targets on the battlefield.
The areas of the exercises announced by the Bundeswehr are also extremely demonstrative:
Three base areas in Germany itself, from which the planes will fly missions towards Russia, more specifically, the Black and Baltic Seas. Both are the most convenient places to put your efforts.
Again, we are talking about actually practicing the deployment of US air reserves, which should strengthen the capabilities of the air forces of NATO’s European segment.
In the case of modeling a hypothetical war scenario, the power of the US air force should be added to these, and then everything will begin to resemble the beginning of Operation Desert Storm with a large-scale air attack on Iraq. Of course, this is only a hypothetical scenario, but it is the one that NATO is practicing.
And we should not forget that in parallel with the exercises in the sky, a series of successive NATO exercises in Europe are taking place at sea and on land. In total, we are talking about five exercises under the auspices of the Alliance alone, not counting the national maneuvers of the armed forces that are taking place at the same time and will also end in mid-June.
The Kremlin’s response to these exercises will be to intimidate with nuclear weapons again, with great doubt that the whole concept of a breakthrough in European missile defense will work. Because Iskander and Kinzhal were created specifically for these tasks, and the myth about them has been destroyed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
