Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove on Tuesday handed over his duties as Supreme Allied Commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe to Army Gen. Curtis Scaparotti, who will undertake the rebuilding of a credible deterrent combat force on the continent.
Breedlove, who started his career as a young airman in the 1970s, when Europe was defined by the Cold War, ended his 40 years of service trying to prevent another existential crisis between the same adversaries.
When he took command of U.S. forces in Europe three years ago, Breedlove said he was searching for a defining mission for NATO and U.S. European Command (EUCOM). The United States combat role in Afghanistan at that time was winding down and Europe appeared to largely be at peace, he said during a change of command ceremony at EUCOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
“My, how the world has changed,” he said. “We face a very different Europe than before.”
Scaparotti, who most recently served as chief of U.S. and United Nations forces in South Korea, said little at the ceremony, other than declaring Breedlove’s policies and priorities would remain in place during his tenure.
Breedlove helped sculpt the U.S. military’s planned reaction to Russian aggression along NATO’s eastern flank, including the ongoing incursion in Ukraine and Crimea. Scaparotti will oversee the infusion of cash, troops and equipment to the continent under the resulting European Reassurance Initiative (ERI).
The Pentagon increased its spending in Europe by nearly a factor of five to $3.4 billion in the proposed budget for fiscal 2017. The money will pay for a continuous presence of three brigade combat teams in Europe, one of which will be an armored brigade with M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
At a press conference following the change of command ceremony, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the U.S. military is capable of deterring Russia from further aggression against its NATO allies and could hold its own in a high-end fight.
“We are prepared every day for any kind of circumstance here in Europe,” Carter said. “But we are improving our forces, and that’s the reason for the addition of an American brigade on a rotational but persistently present basis here, and all the other improvements that we’ve announced. And we’ll continue to make them, and that’s why the European Reassurance Initiative funding is so important …So we’ll get better and better, and stronger and stronger in our ability to respond to provocations here.”
Besides increases in the sheer number of U.S. forces in Europe and equipping them with heavy vehicles and artillery, Carter mentioned investments in future weapon technologies that would improve the potency of U.S. deterrence. The Defense Department is making “significant investment” in “important technologies that, “when coupled with revised operational concepts…will ensure we can deter and if necessary win in a high-end conventional fight in an anti-access, area-denial environment across all domains and war fighting areas: air, land, sea, space, cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum.”
The future weapons include new unmanned systems, enhanced ground-based and air missile defenses, new long-range anti-ship weapons, the Long-Range Strike Bomber, the electromagnetic rail gun, lasers and new electronic warfare systems, he said.