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Exercise Steadfast Defender (STDE)

Steadfast Defender is a series of NATO exercises that take place in Europe every three years, starting in 2021. The exercises are intended to ensure that NATO forces are ready to respond to threats from any direction, and are able to operate together and train. At the present time, NATO exercises are identified by two words – the first word shows the NATO command responsible for scheduling the exercise, and the second word indicates the domain of the exercise (air, land, maritime, etc.).

Before Defender 2020, between NATO and Russia, the NATO-Russia Founding Act served as an understanding between the two whereby NATO avoided crossing the invisible line of bringing large contingents of US troops into the former Soviet space. Whereas Russian officials and researchers have been vocal about this agreement5, NATO had de facto followed it until 2019. Thus, the Defender 2020 exercise marked a notable change. The motivation for this deploymentcan be found in Russia’s actions in Crimea and Donbas.

The Swedes must prepare for war, the country’s defense leadership stated. "There could be war in Sweden," said Swedish Minister for Civil Defense Carl-Oskar Bohlin (Moderates) at a Society and Defense conference in Sälen, Sweden. "Creating resistance in society cannot wait" was the title of Bohlin's speech. "An armed attack against Sweden cannot be ruled out. War can also come to us," added MoD Pål Jonson (Moderates) in his speech.

"Sweden faces a new and more dangerous reality. We and our neighbours are living in the direct shadow of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine," Swedish PM Ulf Kristersson pointed out at the conference.

"We must grasp the seriousness of the situation and mentally prepare at an individual level. Watch news from Ukraine and ask the simple questions: If this happens here, do I have what I need? What will I do?" said Chief of Defense General Michael Bydèn to TV4. As the ultimate consequence, Swedish citizens must be prepared to defend the country "with weapons in hand – at the risk of their lives," stated Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (Moderates). Swedish media reports that many children have been scared, and people are hoarding preparedness supplies.

The Swedish MoD's portrayal of the situation: "The world has become more dangerous than it was just a year ago. The war in Ukraine continues and has developed into a cruel war of attrition. On both sides of the Atlantic, there is uncertainty surrounding long-term military support to Ukraine. At the same time, Russia has mobilized its economy and defense industry for war. With conflicts in the Middle East, we are forced to divide our attention among several hotbeds of crisis. And there is uncertainty about where the United States would be heading after the presidential elections in November. "

Grant Shapps, the British defence secretary, repeated in January 2024 that the UK wants to increase defence spending from 2.1% of GDP to 2.5% in the future. Appointed in August 2023, the new Defence Secretary had previously called for defence spending to be raised to 3pc of GDP, above PM Rishi Sunak's long-term ambition. The world could be engulfed by wars involving China, Russia, North Korea and Iran in the next five years, the defence secretary warned 15 January 2024. Amid such instability, Shapps said it was "critical" for members of the NATO alliance to increase their defence spending to at least 2% of national income.

On 24 January 2024, UK Army chief Gen Sir Patrick Sanders starkly described the British people as part of a “prewar generation” who may have to prepare themselves to fight in a war against an increasingly aggressive Russia. “Hypothetical scenarios” involving possible future wars was “not helpful”, the No 10 spokesperson added, as the row opened up a rift between the Conservatives and the military at a time when cuts mean the army is at its smallest for more than 300 years. The army chief said the UK needed to broadly follow Stockholm’s example and take “preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing”. Such action was “not merely desirable, but essential”, he added. He said: “We will not be immune and as the prewar generation we must similarly prepare – and that is a whole-of-nation undertaking. Ukraine brutally illustrates that regular armies start wars; citizen armies win them.” Sanders was asked to step down early after serving two of three years as army chief.

On 25 January 2024, German defense minister Boris Pistorius said that Russia could attack NATO countries within eight years, but it's unlikely "for now". Pistorius has also frequently called for Germany to become "war ready" and warned that the country needs to be ready to confront the Russian president. Pistorius said the peace and freedom that most of Europe had enjoyed for decades was “no longer an irrefutable certainty” and that Germany was being “more strongly and actively challenged than ever as an active participant in security and policy”.

In an interview with the ZDF television channel, Pistorius feared that “in a few years” Russia would allegedly be able to launch full-scale military operations against Europe. This means that we need to prepare for this, that is, “intensively arm ourselves.” However, the head of the German defense department immediately began to talk only about a hypothetical threat, “about which you don’t know if and when it will happen.” And he referred to German military experts who believe that Russia “will be ready” in 5-8 years.

The German defense minister warned on 18 March 2024 that European countries should prepare for a possible Russian attack. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced during his visit to Poland: We are preparing for all the threats we will face in the coming years. Referring to the war between Ukraine and Russia, Anatoly said: "No one really knows if Russia will attack a European country and it is not clear when it will happen." But what we are really seeing is that they are able and willing to attack Ukraine and have been doing so for over two years. Pistorius added: "So what we all have to learn together as European allies is to prepare for any threat, especially the one that could happen every year with Putin's Russia." This is a task we have to do and we are working on it. In a report, the German intelligence services warned that the Russian army is preparing for a possible escalation of conflict with the West, and it can no longer be said that Russia will not attack the Baltic countries or Finland and NATO.

Steadfast Defender 2021

Steadfast Defender 2021 was a NATO-led exercise designed to ensure that forces are trained, able to operate together and ready to respond to any threat from any direction. It demonstrated the value of North America and Europe working together to keep these nations safe in a challenging security environment.

Over 9,000 troops from more than 20 NATO Allies and partners included North American troops crossing the Atlantic, moving across Europe and exercising with European NATO Allies. The majority of the exercise from May to June 2021 took place in Germany, Portugal and Romania to improve Allied forces' ability to move quickly across the Atlantic and Europe to protect each other, if needed.

The Joint Allied Power Demonstration (JAPDD), the last major event of Exercise Steadfast Defender 2021, occurred at the Joint National Training Centre in Cincu, Romania on Tuesday, June 1, 2021. The event brought together NATO forces from 13 nations to demonstrate the rapid reaction and collective defence capabilities of the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF).

This exercise also confirms that our NATO Response Forces are trained, skilled, and are able to respond to any threat at any time from any direction “The exercise allows us to show the value of Allies working together,” said Admiral Robert Burke, Joint Force Command Naples commander, “this exercise also confirms that our NATO Response Forces are trained, skilled, and are able to respond to any threat at any time from any direction.” The overarching exercise saw some 4,000 troops and more than 600 vehicles and aircraft train together in Cincu. A representative force demonstrated the capabilities during the JAPDD.

Steadfast Defender 2024

NATO would launch its largest exercise since the Cold War with about 90,000 personnel set to take part in the months-long wargames. The drills would rehearse NATO’s execution of its regional plans, the first defence plans the alliance has drawn up in decades, detailing how it would respond to a Russian attack. NATO did not mention Russia by name in its announcement. But its top strategic document identifies Moscow as the most significant and direct threat to member states. The last equivalent large scale NATO exercises were REFORGER in 1988 with 125,000 participants and exercise Trident Juncture 2018, with 50,000 contributing military personnel.

As La Libre Belgique newspaper reported, citing a military source, the Steadfast Defender 2024 scenario is built on an “attack launched by Russia,” which entailed the application of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty on Collective Defense, meaning that an attack against one of the NATO allies is regarded as an attack against all countries of the bloc.

Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko told RIA Novosti that the scale of NATO exercises Steadfast Defender-2024 marks the final and irrevocable return of the alliance to the Cold War schemes. This was stated on January 21 by Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko, clarifying that the exercises are also one of the elements of the hybrid war unleashed by the West against Russia.

“Conducting exercises of this scale - 90 thousand personnel and with the participation of 31 countries - marks the final and irrevocable return of NATO to the Cold War schemes, when the military planning process, resources and infrastructure are sharpened for confrontation with Russia,” RIA News quoted Grushko as saying.

He noted that as part of the NATO exercises, as announced in the alliance, a whole series of maneuvers would be conducted to work out possible scenarios of a collision with a “comparable enemy” in all operating environments and in all theaters in the contact zone.

“It is characteristic that the preparation of the exercises takes place in an artificially heated atmosphere of military psychosis. Irresponsible statements about a possible war with Russia, for which the inhabitants of Europe “should prepare,” were made by the German Minister of Defense, the Commander-in-Chief of Sweden and the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. The goal is clear: by demonizing Russia, intimidating the average person, to justify the unbridled increase in military spending and the completely failed policy of supporting the Kyiv regime with the aim of inflicting a strategic defeat on the Russian Federation. And at the same time, force the Europeans to join the arms race even more energetically, to the delight of the American military-industrial complex,” concluded the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation.

Grushko also added that it would not be possible to intimidate Russia with such provocative demonstrations of force. Moscow has all the resources to ensure its security and defense capability, the deputy minister emphasized.

NATO, conducting major military exercises to contain the Russian Federation, is whipping up passions and wants to show that the bloc’s money is not being wasted in vain, military expert retired colonel Viktor Litovkin told Izvestia on January 18. “The exercises are serious, several countries are gathering, aviation, navy, ground forces, armored vehicles, etc. - NATO is whipping up passions. They need to show that the alliance exists to protect unfortunate Europe from the “insidious” Russians. In addition, to show that the money allocated from the budget of NATO countries is not wasted in vain, and does not go to the bureaucracy,” says Litovkin. According to him, these processes are a non-stop money-making machine.

Russia has been engaged in an information campaign seeking to cast NATO's actions as provocative, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said in its latest update on 19 January 2024. "The Russian information operation aimed at painting defensive NATO actions in response to real Russian aggression on NATO’s eastern flank as provocative seeks to deflect from recent aggressive Russian rhetoric and behavior towards NATO," the ISW said. ISW assesses that Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 not to defend Russia against a nonexistent threat from NATO but rather "to weaken and ultimately destroy NATO – a goal he still pursues."

The exercisee simulated the outbreak of the World War III, after the alleged attack on a NATO member by a fictitious enemy called Occasus, very similar to Russia. Occasus is a Latin word that means "setting," "sunset," "ruin," "downfall," "destruction," or "the west". At the 2023 NATO summit held in Vilnius, Lithuania, allies signed off on regional plans that ended a long era of the military bloc no longer seeing a need for large-scale defence plans, as wars were focused in the Middle East or Afghanistan. The bloc previously felt confident that there was no longer a threat from Russia.

Forces from 31 Allies and Sweden participated in exercise Steadfast Defender 2024 throughout the entire Trans-Atlantic region, NATO’s largest exercise since the end of the Cold War. The alliance also said that taking part would be more than 50 ships, from aircraft carriers to destroyers; more than 80 fighter jets, helicopters and drones; and at least 1,100 combat vehicles, including 133 tanks and 533 infantry fighting vehicles. Steadfast Defender 2024 is comprised of a series of exercises that would continue throughout SACEUR’s Area of Responsibility throughout the first half of 2024.

Steadfast Defender 2024, which had been in development for several years, would demonstrate NATO’s ability to deploy forces rapidly from North America and other parts of the Alliance to reinforce the defence of Europe. It would show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometers from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe in any conditions.

“Exercise Steadfast Defender 2024 would be a clear demonstration of our unity, our strength and our determination to protect each other, to protect our values and the rules based international order,” said Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General Christopher G. Cavoli.

Exercise Steadfast Defender 24, NATO’s largest exercise in decades, began on 24 January 2024 as the dock landing ship USS Gunston Hall (LSD 44) departed Norfolk, Virginia, United States and following a series of operations would commence her transit across the Atlantic. The departure of USS Gunston Hall marks the first tactical movement of Steadfast Defender 24. His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Charlottetown, would depart Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada for Europe later this month.

Swedish Air Force Commander Karl Johan Edström said that during the Steadfast Defender exercise, NATO plans to work out a scenario of escalation from the Russian Federation and military operations in northern Scandinavia. In this scenario, it is assumed that "Russia attacked Finland, NATO activated Article 5 of the collective defense treaty, and thousands of American soldiers flown from Norway through Sweden to Finland," according to the SVT publication .

Poland would conduct Dragon-24 (DR-24) maneuvers with the participation of 20,000 troops as part of NATO exercise Steadfast Defender 2024, the country's Ministry of Defense said. “A total of about 20,000 soldiers and 3,500 pieces of equipment from 10 NATO countries would take part in exercise DR-24, including about 15,000 Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers,” the statement said. Training would take place on land, in the air and at sea. Also, “military actions would be carried out in cyberspace,” the press service noted. The exercise would be divided into two main stages: the first would involve actions in a crisis situation, and the second would be defensive operational exercises.

On January 22, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda announced that Lithuania and Poland plan to hold exercises in the Suwalki corridor between Belarus and the Kaliningrad region in April. Earlier, Bild, with reference to a secret document of the German Bundeswehr , wrote that a likely clash between NATO and Russian troops could occur in this area.

“The Alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro-Atlantic area via trans-Atlantic movement of forces from North America,” said General Christopher Cavoli, Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). “Steadfast Defender 2024 will be a clear demonstration of our unity, strength, and determination to protect each other, our values and the rules-based international order.”

Steadfast Defender 24 would take place in several locations, with associated exercises running until May 31, 2024. It would be the first large scale NATO exercise where new defence plans would be put into action. It would show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometres, from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe, and in any conditions.