BALTOPS 2017: NATO’s Baltic drill before Zapad 2017

By Dr. Can Kasapoglu

ISTANBUL

The 45th Baltic Operations Exercise (BALTOPS), which kicked off on June 1, will continue in the Baltic Sea until June 16. Around 4,000 military personnel, a naval contingent of total 50 surface vessels and submarines, and more than 50 aircraft from 12 NATO nations, and NATO’s Enhanced Opportunities Partners Sweden and Finland are taking part in the exercise. According to reports, this year, the BALTOPS is witnessing the participation of an E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft of the U.S. Air Force for the first time in 20 years. Officials explain the exercise has been planned to enhance combined response capabilities for ensuring the stability and defense of the Baltic region.

Although the BALTOPS is a regular exercise, any NATO military buildup in the region has had a more critical meaning since 2014.

Following the Russian hybrid campaign in Crimea which led to the annexation of the peninsula by Moscow, NATO has started to take certain measures to foster its posture in the Alliance’s eastern flank. The first tangible move was the 2014 Wales Summit that brought about the Readiness Action Plan (RAP) and formation of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), a very rapidly deployable response unit. In the 2016 Warsaw Summit, NATO leaders agreed on the Enhanced Forward Presence concept which includes the deployment of four multinational battalion battle groups to each Baltic state (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) as well as Poland.

Prior to the BALTOPS 2017, Baltic states were lobbying for the deployment of Patriot air-and-missile defense system in the region, while Poland has been diplomatically attempting to ensure more transparency with Russian military exercises. Frankly, both endeavors seem more like a dead-end given the present political landscape. What is more, there is a perfect storm approaching that could shake the region this September: Zapad 2017 and the Russian 1st Guards Tank Army.

Should Baltic states and Poland really be worried?

In fact, there are clear pieces of evidence that make the Baltic States and Poland uncomfortable. Recent indicators hint at an even more robust Russian military posture in the region with immense offensive capabilities.

Firstly, back in 2014, Russia reactivated the 1st Guards Tank Army with some units forward deployed in Smolensk. The 1st Tank Army enjoys a remarkable place in the Russian military history. It fought the battle of Stalingrad, was one of the first units that entered Berlin, and it had been stationed in East Germany during the Cold War.

Open-source defense surveys report that the resurrecting tank army will be composed of several motorized rifle and tank divisions as well as separate maneuver brigades once the reorganization is completed. Such a robust order of battle would translate into some 700 main battle tanks, around 500 artillery pieces and multiple launch rocket systems, 1,300 armored vehicles, along with a formidable air defense component on the ground. In simpler terms, the new Russian military formation is to be a heavyweight boxer that punches really hard. Furthermore, this heavyweight will be equipped with very effective weaponry soon, probably by the early 2020s.

For some time, the Russian defense industry has been working on boosting its armored capabilities by introducing a new generation of platforms. In this regard, T-14 Armata main battle tanks, Kurganets-25 and Boomerang infantry fighting vehicles were revealed in the 2015 Victory Day Parade. It is now reported that the 1st Tank Army will enjoy the privilege of being the first operator of these assets.

Secondly, there are the forthcoming Zapad 2017 military drills. Unlike the widely-known snap exercises of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the Zapad drills are scheduled in every four years. Previous Zapads were conducted in the Russian Western Military District and Belarus. The 2013 exercise was much larger than its predecessor, Zapad 2009. In 2013, although Russia notified the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) about the participation of some 22,000 troops -- of which 9,400 were deployed in Kaliningrad -- in fact, experts estimated some 70,000 military personnel were commissioned for the exercise.

Furthermore, these exercises have always had a strategic weapons aspect. Zapad 2009 was reported to have a tactical nuclear strike component, and Zapad 2013 witnessed dual-capable Iskander ballistic missile launches and heavy bomber aircraft activity. As for NATO, Russia had also successfully displayed its high-end anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. Now, Zapad 2017 is expected to be even bigger. Moreover, in some past occasions, Russian exercises brought about geopolitical earthquakes in the post-Soviet area. In this respect, the 2008 Russo-Georgian War came after the Kavkaz 2008 drills pioneered by the Russian 58th Army, and the hybrid warfare campaign in Crimea just popped up following a snap exercise by elite formations including the airborne troops (VDV).

Thirdly, results of the wargaming simulations conducted by several think-tanks hinted at bad news for the Baltic nations’ defenses. One of these simulations were organized by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation of Poland and the Potomac Foundation of the U.S. in January 2017. It is reported that Gen. Philip Breedlove, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and the former chief of the U.S. European Command was among the high-level experts participating in the simulation. The exercise was reported to use a computer-based program, the “Hegemon”, for processing open-source data.

Although the results were not fully revealed publicly, limited number of writings about the event suggest that Belarus was estimated to be at the epicenter of any Russia-NATO conflict over the Baltic states and Poland; and Moscow will enjoy important advantages stemming from the deployment of the 1st Tank Army. Furthermore, the RAND Corporation, a strategic research institution having close ties with the U.S. security and defense establishment, conducted a series of wargaming simulations in 2014 and 2015 and published the results last year. According to the findings, it would take only 60 hours maximum for the Russian forces to reach Tallinn and Riga if war comes. Besides, to put clearly, military geography and logistical factors strongly favor Moscow in an engagement.

New ‘Sum of All Fears’

Notably, all the aforementioned conventional parameters must be analyzed by taking unconventional factors into consideration. If an active conflict erupts, additional game-changers, such as offensive cyber capabilities, private military contractors, and information warfare will come into the picture. In fact, there is a very good chance that Russia will be much more skillful in using them compared to NATO’s eastern flank nations.

All in all, we should see the very fact that there is a new, dynamic military generation in the Russian high command, and their strategic thinking is overtaking the Western legalist concepts that sticks to the post-Westphalian “below the threshold of armed conflict” taboos. While NATO has been striving to confront risks emanating from Russia, little has been done to analyze the Russian way of managing strategic affairs. The BALTOPS 2017 is testing the NATO’s combined operations skills, but Zapad 2017 will test the alliance’s analytical adaptation capacity and strategic culture. Indeed, human beings are a part of the nature, and for survival, adaptation is more critical than muscular strength.

[Can Kasapoglu is a defense analyst at the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy (EDAM), an Istanbul-based think-tank.]

* Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.