Pentagon beefs up combat units in Eastern Europe to deter Russian threat

U.S. officials say the Pentagon will be deploying an armored brigade combat team to Eastern Europe next February as part of the ongoing effort to rotate troops in and out of the region to reassure allies worried about threats from an increasingly aggressive Russia, according to the Associated Press.

The officials said the Army will announce Wednesday that it will be sending a full set of equipment with the brigade to Europe. Earlier plans had called for the Pentagon to rotate troops into Europe, where they would have used a set of training equipment pre-positioned there.

The new proposal would remove the pre-positioned equipment, send it to be refurbished, and allow the U.S. forces to bring more robust, modern equipment in with them when they deploy. There are about 4,500 soldiers in an armored brigade, along with dozens of heavy vehicles, tanks and other equipment.

Wednesday's announcement is also aimed at easing worries in Europe, where allies had heard rumblings about the pre-positioned equipment being removed and feared the U.S. was scaling back support.

***

In the hot azure waters off the Spratly and Paracel Islands — which encompass reefs, banks and cays — the United States and China are jockeying for dominance in the Pacific. From Mischief Reef, where China is building a military base in defiance of claims by Vietnam and the Philippines, to Scarborough Shoal, where the Chinese are building and equipping outposts on disputed territory far from the mainland, the two naval forces are on an almost continuous state of alert, according to the New York Times.

Although the South China Sea stretches some 500 miles from mainland China, Beijing has claimed most of it. Tensions have risen sharply, and the topic is expected to dominate President Obama’s meeting in Washington this week with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

America’s goal is to keep the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, open to all maritime traffic. But administration officials are increasingly worried that tensions will only deepen if an arbitration panel in The Hague rules as expected in the coming months on a 2013 case brought by the Philippines, which has accused China of making an “excessive claim” to most of the sea.

***

A recently declassified Pentagon office that gives the military services seed money to test new ways of employing existing weapons, platforms and sensors plans to issue a call to the defense industry for new ideas, according to the Chicago Tribune.

It will be the Strategic Capabilities Office's first major attempt to enlist industry input since it was set up in 2012 and then declassified in February by Defense Secretary Ash Carter, its director, Will Roper, told reporters Monday at his suburban Virginia headquarters.

Carter's proposed defense budget for fiscal 2017 includes $902 million for the Strategic Capabilities Office, up from $469 million enacted this year and $171 million in fiscal 2015. The Defense Department has highlighted its work helping the Army convert howitzers into potential antimissile systems, the Air Force with micro-drones that might be dispensed from F-16 fighters and the Navy with revamping Raytheon Co.'s SM-6 air defense missile into a ship-killer.

***

A three-star Army general, who serves as the deputy commander of U.S. Pacific Command, wasted government resources when he conducted "predominantly personal travel" to Alabama for his promotion ceremony in June 2014 instead of holding it in Hawaii, the Department of Defense inspector general found, according to Military.com.

In order to secure an official purpose and therefore government funding for travel to Fort Rucker, Alabama, Lt. Gen. Anthony Crutchfield's staff solicited an invitation to speak atMaxwell Air Force Base in Alabama near Fort Rucker as his nomination as deputy commander proceeded, the investigation concluded.

Crutchfield's promotion was held June 6, 2014, at Fort Rucker, his desired location, the inspector general's office said.

"We recommend the secretary of the Army consider appropriate corrective action with regard to Lt. Gen. Crutchfield," it said in a June 15, 2015, memo. It released the report last week on its website.

Crutchfield rebutted the allegations, which started with an anonymous complaint that he "invented a way to get a free plane ticket" to travel to Fort Rucker, according to documents. He had at one time commanded Fort Rucker.

This story was originally published March 30, 2016 at 11:18 AM with the headline "Pentagon beefs up combat units in Eastern Europe to deter Russian threat."