IKnowNothing
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Honestly, I found that article rather out of touch. Each of the three countries are lead nations on multi-national battlegroups, it seems like a wild leap to assume that the conversion to a Bde would drop the multinational aspect and become wholly Canadian/British/German.The chickens are coming home to roost...
Building brigades: Canada, NATO allies struggle to shore up Baltic defences against Russian threat
Canada doesn't have enough troops to deploy without resorting to mobilization, report warns
The idea looks good on paper.
But converting NATO's so-called "tripwire" forces in the three Baltic countries to fully topped-up fighting brigades — the kind that could withstand a Russian invasion — is proving to be a challenge for the lead nations involved: Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany.
At the last NATO summit in Madrid, leaders of the western military alliance ordered the conversion of battle groups in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to full combat brigades with anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 troops each, depending on the availability of equipment.
Getting there is proving to be a struggle, according to two recent reports — one from the U.K. House of Commons, the other from a Warsaw-based international affairs think-tank.
Since that June NATO summit, journalists have been asking Canadian politicians and military officials when the Canadian-led brigade in Latvia will be created and what it will look like. Their responses have been vague.
In a recent interview with CBC News, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre wouldn't be pinned down to a precise timeline but said "the first exercise we're looking at is in 2024 … at the brigade level."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-russia-latvia-lithuania-estonia-nato-1.6738735
Maybe this is already the case, but in my opinion they should be setting a consistent template for those Bde's, with a shopping list of needs from contributing countries. Say the US throws their weight around, dictates a Bde pattern similar to an ABCT, 3x mech CAB's, some sort of Cavalry unit, 155mm battalion, engineer battalion, support battalion.
What does the make up that look like to be effective, what does a lead nation need to pony up to be "lead"?
HQ goes without saying.
Then lets say at minimum one of the maneuver CAB's
Then the core of a multinational CAB (Same contribution as current eFP)
Looking at the current make up, if you pull the Spanish and Italians out you still have the makings of a CAB with 1x Canadian mech coy, 1x Slovakian mech coy, 1x Polish tank coy, and the grab bag of supporting contributions.
The Spanish and Italian contributions (each a mech coy + ~half dozen tanks) get you a chunk of the way to to the 3rd CAB, (lacking CS, CSS, HQ, dealing with a composite tank coy). Ideally one nation this on it's entirety.
Looking at the above, there seems like a reasonably straight line to a Bde. What is the biggest impediment?
Gaining contributing nations to round out and clean up the 3rd bn?
Providing HQ + CAB + being lead on a 2nd?
Providing enough of the Cavalry/CS/CSS at Bde level to be a credible lead nation?
Are a hodgepodge of sub and sub unit contributions viable to make a Bde or does it have to be scaled up?