NATO Is Desperate For Front-Line Air-Defenses. Romania’s Old Gepards Are The Best It’s Got.

[TR_123456]

Romanian Gepards fire at targets during a July exercise.

NATO

Back in 2017, NATO stood up a new battlegroup in order to beef up the flagging defenses along the alliance’s eastern frontier.


NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence Battlegroup Poland—widely know as “Battle Group Poland”—could be one of the first mechanized units to ride into battle in the event Russia attacks the Baltic states.

Battle Group Poland is an impressive force with around a thousand soldiers and scores of armored vehicles. But it also is a reminder of a serious gap in NATO’s force structure. Incredibly, the battle group monopolizes almost all of the 30-country alliance’s short-range air-defense vehicles.


Specifically, twin-gun Gepards from the Romanian army. Cold War throwbacks that, with Russia’s resurgence, all of the sudden are really important again.


Four countries supply troops to Battle Group Poland, which trains to fight alongside a Polish army brigade. The U.S. Army sends a squadron of around 50 up-gunned Stryker wheeled fighting vehicles with 30-millimeter cannons. The Americans also send 155-millimeter towed artillery.


The British Army provides a scout troop riding in Jackal trucks. The Croatian army sends wheeled 122-millimeter rocket-launchers. But it’s the Romanian army’s contribution that makes the battle group truly special.

The Romanians send some of the roughly 40 Gepards they acquired from the German army as the latter was disposing of its short-range air-defenses a decade ago. Those Gepards—which combine Leopard tank chassis with short-range radars and pairs of 35-millimeter cannons—are some of the only SHORAD systems left in NATO.



It’s a problem. There might have been a time in the years following the Soviet Union’s collapse when NATO was fine without short-range air-defenses. Gone were the hundreds of attack helicopters and close-air-support jets that threatened to chew up NATO formations along the front line.

NATO Is Desperate For Front-Line Air-Defenses. Romania’s Old Gepards Are The Best It’s Got.

Battle Group Poland is an impressive force with around a thousand soldiers and scores of armored vehicles. But it also is a reminder of a serious gap in NATO’s force structure. Incredibly, the battle group monopolizes almost all of the 30-country alliance’s short-range air-defense vehicles.

www.forbes.com

 

[Madokafc]

They already had mobile Starstreak or Mistral over Sherpa

 

[Philips]

During one exercise this spring, American mortar teams lobbed illumination shells to help the Romanian Gepard crews practice shooting at night.

The problem is, 40 Romanian Gepards and a hundred or so American M-SHORADs don’t amount to a whole lot of capability.

Hmm, I wonder which NATO member has AAA with modern gizmo's such as ESA radar, thermal sights for all weather engagements, airburst munition to shoot down even the smallest drones and all that on a mobile all terrain platform so it can keep up with mechanized forces?