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V Corps commander: After Russian invasion, NATO presented with ‘historic opportunity’

European nations are willing to spend "money to modernize their equipment and replenish their stocks, but also money to train their forces," said Lt. Gen. John Kolasheski.

By Andrew Eversden on October 12, 2022 4:02 pm
Lt. General Kolasheski visits soldiers in Zagan, Poland
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John S. Kolasheski, commanding general of U.S. Army V Corps, speaks with soldiers assigned to 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, at Zagan, Poland, March 23, 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Joseph Aleman)

AUSA 2022 — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to a “historic opportunity” for the NATO alliance, according to the Army’s V Corps commander, as the treaty organization is positioned to expand and current members signal enthusiasm for spending on defense modernization.

“There really is a historic opportunity that we are seeing in Europe,” Lt. Gen. John Kolasheski, commander of the V Corps, said today at the annual Association of the United States Army conference. “[There are] potentially two new members. You’ve got militaries and government that are willing to invest in their militaries.”

In May, Finland and Sweden formally requested to join the Atlantic treaty group following decades of neutrality during the Cold War. The US Senate ratified Sweden and Finland to NATO at the beginning of August. All 30 NATO nations have to ratify a new member before they can join. Hungary and Turkey are the remaining hold outs.

“This is probably the most significant strategic event in Nordic history since the Second World War,” Maj. Gen. Lars S. Lervik, chief of the Norwegian army, on the same panel. “It is a game-changer.”

Lervik said that both the Finns and Swedes bring a “very, very capable” military force into the NATO and presents the Russian military with major strategic challenges in the Baltic Sea because all nations sharing coastline will be NATO allies — except for Russia.

“It will have significant strategic importance for how the Russians perceive their area in Kaliningrad and also the St. Petersburg area,” Lervik said. “This is good news and it will increase our overall security.”

On the financial front, US leaders have been pleased to see the level of military spending in NATO increase in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. For years, the fact that NATO allies were spending below the required two-percent GDP threshold on defense was a source of tension within the alliance  — particularly under the Trump administration. But since the invasion, multiple countries in Europe have announced significant military investment.

“That is money to modernize their equipment and replenish their stocks, but also money to train their forces,” said Kolasheski, whose V Corps’ forward command is based in Poland and has served in Europe for decades.

But while European nations set major military spending goals, the question remains whether they will continue that level of spending in the future — especially after the jolt of Russia’s invasion wears off. For some to reach their modernization goals, they’d have to.

Gen. Chris Cavoli, the US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told lawmakers earlier this year that he supports NATO nations spending beyond the 2 percent threshold required by NATO.

“I know all of the land forces chiefs in NATO. Each one of them has a list of requirements. The requirements …would all take more than 2 percent of GDP,” Cavoli said. “So I am an advocate of spending more than 2 percent — at least 2 percent.”

AUSA 2022

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AUSA 2022

Over at Rheinmetall's booth sat the hefty Lynx OMFV (Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle). The company, as its competitors, is hoping to make a strong impression as the Army looks for OMFV proposals later this fall -- the early stage of an almost certainly lucrative long-term contract award. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
All the way from down under, the Australian firm Defendtex presented some of its modular UAVs. Here visitors can see the Drone155, which the company says can be outfitted with ISR payloads or explosives. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
The MVPP from Globe Tech stands for Modular Vehicle Protection Platform, a vehicle add-on that can take the brunt of improvised explosive device detonations. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
AUSA was well attended by international officers and officials as well, and by foreign defense firms. The Korean booth, shown here, featured some products hoping to make a splash in the US military. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Not your traditional defense contractor, the computing giant IBM has a booth at AUSA showing off its flashy but functional quantum computer. The US government as a whole, and the Pentagon in particular, are heavily invested in the quantum computing race with the likes of China. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Among the fleet of vehicles parked throughout the AUSA floor for display was the Flyer 72-U, made by General Dynamics. The company says the vehicle takes a "modular approach" so it can be configured for anything from "light strike assault" to rescue and evacuation. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
The stuff of counter-UAS nightmares, the Virginia-based BlueHalo firm makes drone swarms that use AI and machine learning to provide battlefield intelligence to soldiers. The Army's Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office awarded the company $14 million in February to develop the HIVE. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
It's a .50 caliber Gatling gun, one that Dillon Aero says can fire 1,500 shots per minute, or 25 rounds per second. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
For this year's show AM General rolled its own Humvee Saber, Blade Edition, onto the floor. The company claims "leap-ahead" technology for a light tactical vehicle. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Patria, a defense firm owned jointly by Finland and Norway's Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, made it's way across the Atlantic for AUSA 2022, bringing along its AMV multi-role vehicle. The AMV was recently purchased by the dozens by Slovakia and its home country of Finland. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
At the Pratt Miller Defense booth, visitors will see a full-sized Expeditionary Modular Autonomous Vehicle (EMAV) is the "newest and perhaps most mobile and lethal" of the company's autonomous offerings. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Marathon's Autonomous Robot Targets are exactly what that sounds like: shooting targets guided by computer code and designed to "look, move, and even behave like people," the company says. The robots were on the move on the AUSA floor -- though no shooting was allowed. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
The AUSA show floor offered a fresh look at a futuristic version of an old Army standby: the Abrams tank. This one, the Abrams X, is made by General Dynamics Land Systems, manufacturers of the current Abrams M1A1 and M1A2 battle tanks used by the US Army. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
Attendees may walk by model versions of the famous Iron Dome system, in use for years in Israel, and its sister SkyCeptor system, both made by Rafael. The SkyCeptor, in particular, is meant to "defeat short- to medium-range ballistic and cruise missiles and other advanced air defense threats," the company says. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
As the need for counter-UAS systems explodes, Epirus is at AUSA repping its counter-electronics system Stryker Leonidas, made with General Dynamics. The system's "counter-swarm" weapon "fills a pressing short range air defense (SHORAD) capability gap," the company says. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
A new unveiling for AUSA, Rheinmetall announced this week the Mission Master CXT platform, the newest addition to the company's "family" of autonomous ground vehicles. The company says the CXT "combines the power of a diesel engine with a silent electric motor." (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
The GMC Hummer EV Platform, the first vehicle on GM's New Ultium EV Platform, goes on display at AUSA 2022. All-electric offerings are the center of much of the Army's attention these days as it aims to electrify its non-tactical, and eventually tactical, fleet. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
Two new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicles (AMPV) sit at the booth by Bae Systems. The vehicles are meant to replace the Army's venerable, but old M113s. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
Palantir shows off its prototype for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) vehicle. The company says the TITAN "will be the critical backbone that provides correlation, fusion, and integration of sensor data alongside insights from AI/ML overlaid at the tactical edge." In other words, it's meant to find the signal in the noise. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
A model of a "modernized" Boeing Apache AH-64E shown Association of US Army Conference in 2022. While the Army is about to choose two new airframes, there's currently no Apache replacement on the horizon. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
Lockheed Martin teamed up with Sikorsky to produce the Raider X, the team's competitor in the Army's Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) program, one of two high-profile Army Future Vertical Lift contests currently underway. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
The Bell 360 Invictus is the other FARA competitor, looking to beat out the Lockheed-Sikorsky team. The Army's expected to make its decision in fiscal 2024. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
The defense start-up Anduril has expanded its footprint in the defense market in recent years. This product, the Mobile Sentry, "brings autonomous fixed site counter UAS and counter intrusion capabilities into a mobile form factor," the company says. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith)
The military's no-so-furry friendly robot dogs are back at AUSA this year. This model, called the Vision 60 Q-UGV from Ghost Robotics, is an "all-weather ground robot for use in a broad range of unstructured urban and natural environments for defense, homeland and enterprise applications," the company says. (Breaking Defense/Brendon Smith).
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