US-NATO exercise rehearses taking out 1,500 targets a day to ‘overwhelm’ an enemy

The U.S. Army and its NATO allies in Europe are honing their ability to to fight back against an incursion by throwing enough artillery at an enemy so stop them in their tracks for good, most recently during the annual Dynamic Front exercise with the Germany-based 56th Multi-Domain Command earlier this month. 

The goal is to be able to shoot down 600 to 1200 ballistic missiles in a 24-hour period, the command’s boss told reporters Thursday, as well as be able to fire on 1,500 targets during that same time. 

“We want to build a capability within the United States, within NATO, that if a peer adversary decides to aggress into NATO territory, or the territory of another ally, or the United States, that the repercussions will be so extreme, create an experience for them that is so unrelenting, that no nation ever considers doing that again,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen Carpenter.

Dynamic Front allows the U.S. Army to not only look at its own capabilities, but to compare across NATO’s partner forces to see where there are gaps that need filling—whether it’s a need for an updated technology or just more of something that already exists.

Cribbing an idea from Ukraine, the Army is looking at acquiring fleets of decoy drones to misdirect enemy fires, and to buy more high-altitude drones that can detect EW systems so they can be destroyed. 

“Ultimately, what we’ll do is we’ll look to develop…a force where we have even more capable unmanned decoys, high-altitude and aerial collection platforms, both terrestrial and aerial platforms that can go ahead and affect the electromagnetic spectrum, and then obviously long-range interceptors and kinetic strike systems,” Carpenter said. 

The command is also looking to protect itself from enemy EW technology that could jam up its ability to locate targets and fire on them.

“How can we create munitions that have the electromagnetic hardening required based on what we’re seeing in Ukraine?” he said. “And then getting that out to the defense industrial base to ensure that they can go ahead and create that capability and compete for those contracts.”

With that in mind, next year Dynamic Front will merge with the Arcane Thunder exercise to game out a battlefield that combines the use of  non-lethal effects like EW jamming and lethal munitions in its simulations. It will be called Arcane Front.