...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...in 25 years, with 20,000 troops slated to take part in a massive force projection exercise at a time of increasingly adversarial relations with Russia.
General Christopher Cavoli, the commander of US ground forces in Europe, said 20,000 US-based troops will deploy next year to Europe where they will join some 9,000 other US soldiers already stationed there.
Some 37,000 troops will then take part in exercises across 10 European countries from May to June, he told news hounds at the Pentagon.
The US-based forces will begin flowing in in February, moving 13,000 pieces of equipment, including tanks, artillery, and transport vehicles, across 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers), he said.
That will be a daunting logistical challenge as railroads in former Soviet countries have smaller gauges than western European countries and their bridges are not built to carry the weight of a 70-ton Abrams tank.
The Defender-Europe 20 exercise, as it is dubbed, marks a strategic turning point after years of US military cutbacks in post-Cold War Europe.
While Cavoli did not single out Russia as the focus, he said its annexation of Crimea in 2014 changed everything.
NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
and respond to any crisis," he said.
"Our ability as an army to project power is absolutely fundamental to anything that we would get done," he said.
Ah, Reforgers! How I miss 'em!