The U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) has announced on 19 March that at the direction of the Secretary of Defense, the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, deployed to Europe to exercise the U.S. Army’s ability to rapidly alert, recall and deploy under emergency conditions.

This Dynamic Force Employment makes our activities unpredictable to potential adversaries and provides a clear signal of commitment to NATO while maintaining strategic predictability for our NATO allies and partners. This U.S. exercise involves the participation of allies, which contributes to objectives defined by NATO in order to increase our deterrence posture.

Our ability to rapidly surge combat-ready forces into and across the theater is critical in projecting forces at a moment’s notice to support the NATO alliance. However, this deployment is not in response to any real world situation.

“The 1,500 Soldiers from Fort Bliss, Texas, began arriving in Berlin today. They will now travel to Drawsko Pomorskie Training Area, Poland, where they will utilize more than 700 pieces of equipment pulled from the Army Prepositioned Stock site in Eygelshoven, Netherlands,” said in a statement. 

Prior to the unit’s arrival, elements of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command prepared and transported the APS equipment to Poland via line haul and rail.

The 2nd ABCT, 1st AD will conduct reception and integration procedures, and live-fire training with their Polish counterparts over the next few weeks. The training will culminate with a gunnery and a combined livefire exercise. Once the exercise is complete, the unit will return to Fort Bliss and the APS equipment will return to Eygelshoven.

APS sites in theater reduce deployment timelines, improve deterrence capabilities and provide additional combat power for contingency operation by storing equipment and ammunition required to support an armored unit if and when the combatant commander requires additional capabilities.