Nato forces have taken over a London Tube station to use as their underground HQ as they simulate launching “deep strike” operations on Russia in the event of an attack on a member state.
In a ramping up of preparations for war, the UK-led Nato Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) moved its military capability to a disused platform at Charing Cross station.
As part of Operation Arrcade Strike, soldiers are testing Nato’s capacity to use electronic warfare to jam Russia’s communications and down the Kremlin’s drones in the event of a Russian invasion of a Baltic country.
Defence sources said the UK only has enough drones to fight for a week, using a few hundred a day, which is well below the quantity that is needed. In Ukraine, that amounts to thousands per day in non-stop use, amid continued pleas from generals for Europe’s defence industry to help meet the challenge of a strategic threat.
Speaking from the Tube platform, US general Christopher Donahue, head of Nato’s Land Command, delivered an unvarnished warning to the alliance, saying that Nato has little time to prepare to meet a potential Russian attack.
“Mission-ready by 2030 is not a slogan, it is what we must do,” he said. “Legacy forms of mobilisation and movement are no longer a given Nato advantage, and a lack of protection in depth will be used against us.”
British ARRC commander Lieutenant General Mike Elviss said that the exercise was necessary to rehearse Nato’s “recce-strike” model, which allows it to find and destroy Russian forces heading into battle.
“In this and every scenario we rehearse for, Russia has two critical advantages,” he said. “First, they can mass combat power at the point of their attack, whereas we have an obligation to defend everywhere, all the time.
“Second, if an attack is to happen, it will be launched by them, so they will have the initial momentum. Our answer to this lies, in part, in our concept of fighting by recce-strike.
“Today’s deployment is a mission rehearsal. We rehearse this not just to be good at it, but because the adversary is watching, and we want him to know that we are ready for the challenge.”
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The scenes underground were reminiscent of the Second World War, evoking similar images from the blitz, when London Underground stations were used by civilians to shelter from Hitler’s bombs.
The public messaging aspect of the images of British troops in the underground network in time of war is deliberate. The UK has fallen far behind other European nations, especially the Nordic and Baltic states, but also Poland, when it comes to preparing the population for a possible Russian attack.
The high-profile exercise comes in the same week as Vladimir Putin carried out his own wargames in Belarus, running nuclear drills across land, sea and air.
It also comes days after the Ministry of Defence (MoD) released footage of two Russian jets flying within 20ft of an RAF aircraft over the Black Sea, and as Donald Trump flip-flops about US troop deployment to Europe.
Taking over a disused platform on the Jubilee line, Gurkha engineers set up a command centre for Nato’s ARRC, which in extremis could be in charge of the deployment of 100,000 troops.
Equipment for the exercise was carried in on specialist London Underground low-loaders in the middle of the night, and was unloaded by waiting troops.
Simultaneously, British and other Nato forces were involved in another exercise – Operation Spring Storm in Estonia – as they prepare to defend against a Russian invasion of the Baltic states.
Putin’s long-range capabilities have been growing, and only Ukraine can rival Russia in its use of drones in modern warfare. So moving a military headquarters to a London civilian location tests the command structure’s ability to survive and improvise.
“Drones have extended the battlefield horizontally and vertically. Inexpensive unmanned aerial vehicles and one-way attack drones now give every combat leader an unprecedented reconnaissance and precision munition capability,” said General Donahue.
Despite the high-profile training exercise, there is no doubt that Nato is behind the curve in the development and use of modern low-cost equipment.
Ukraine has shown its capacity to produce, on an industrial scale, vast quantities of modern drone weaponry – taking months to do what Nato nations have taken decades to achieve.
Russia has adapted almost as fast. Its use of fibre-optic drones, which cannot be jammed, was recently reported to have brought the streets of Kharkiv to a standstill, as “first-person view” drones can now reach Ukraine’s second-largest city.
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Russian drone pilots have posted gleeful videos of their “hunting safaris” against civilians on the streets of Kherson for over a year.
“Failure to learn, adapt, and apply the lessons we observe on the modern battlefield, and failure to do this faster than our adversaries, puts both our deterrence posture and our defence plans at risk. So this exercise comes at a critical time,” said Nato’s supreme allied commander for Europe, General Alexus G Grynkewich.
Britain has committed two divisions to the ARRC, and the UK government has claimed that it spends about 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence – around £79.8bn. But this includes non-military expenditure, such as pensions and intelligence operations.
Tory MP and former security minister Tom Tugendhat has argued that the government’s plans to increase military spending to 3 per cent in the next parliament are a sham, and that Britain’s military capability is shrinking.
Meanwhile, the authors of the UK’s Strategic Defence Review, George Robertson and Dr Fiona Hill, have criticised the government’s response to their recommendations, which has left the country “underprepared and underinsured” in the face of Russian threats.
The government has also delayed publication of its Defence Investment Plan by up to eight months, while the MoD is reported to have found a £28bn shortfall in its ability to meet current plans for upgrades to the kind of equipment being tested on the Tube.
