The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has announced the start of the Steadfast Defender 2024 exercise, which will begin next week and will last until May. It is NATO's largest exercise in decades, which, according to EuroNews, is the largest since the Cold War, with the participation of approximately 90,000 forces from the 31 allied militaries and Sweden.
"The Alliance will demonstrate its ability to reinforce the Euro-Atlantic area via trans-Atlantic movement of forces from North America. This reinforcement will occur during a simulated emerging conflict scenario against a near-peer adversary," said NATO Military Committee Chairman Admiral Rob Bauer.
'Demonstration of our unity'
"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," he added.
Bauer highlighted that the international body now has the ability to coordinate all actions in conjunction with its allies. "For the first time in 30 years, we have the strategy – deterrence and defence of the Euro-Atlantic area – and we have the plans to make the Alliance fit for the purpose of collective territorial defense," Bauer said.
The admiral concluded, "We are now in the process of making our plans executable. This means making sure we have the force commitments, command and control arrangements, and the enablement our plans require".
