Lithuania is launching one of its most intensive cycles of military exercises, involving over 20,000 Lithuanian and allied troops and thousands of pieces of military equipment.
“The intensity of both collective defence exercises and our national exercises is very high this spring,” Chief of Defence General Valdemaras Rupšys told reporters on Tuesday.
“According to rough estimates, about 20,000 Lithuanian and allied troops will take part in exercises in Lithuania,” he said.
Responding to geopolitical situation
The first exercise, Saber Strike, will kick off on Friday and continue until the middle of next week.
During the exercise, around 600 US troops and 120 vehicles will be redeployed from Poland through the Budzisko-Kalvarija border checkpoint to conduct live-fire exercises with the Land Force elements of the Lithuanian Armed Forces and a US battalion deployed in Lithuania.
In parallel, the German Armed Forces’ large-scale exercise Grand Quadriga 2024 will start next week and continue until the end of May, with over 3,000 German troops and 200 pieces of military equipment deploying to the Pabradė and Kazlų Rūda training grounds. These will include Leopard tanks, as well as Puma and Boxer infantry fighting vehicles.
In May, the Immediate Response exercise will be held, where the US and Lithuanian troops will conduct the first live-fire training exercise in the Baltic Sea with the HIMARS reactive salvo firing system.
All these exercises are part of NATO’s Steadfast Defender 24, the largest NATO exercise since the Cold War, involving more than 90,000 troops from 32 allied countries.
According to Rupšys, although the exercises have been prepared in advance, they have been adapted in response to changes in the geopolitical situation.
“If you have noticed and followed the information before, the whole cycle of the Steadfast Defender exercise was of a lesser scale than it is now this spring. This is a reaction to the security situation. A conventional training of this scale was not planned three years ago, it was a reaction,” he said.
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