U.S. airmen and officials stood ready to perform and observe the demonstration of a novel, mobile satellite launch and recovery package for the American drone, opening up a host of new land-based sites from which the Reaper could operation in inclement weather.

The proof of concept — which ultimately succeeded and involved U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa, Air Combat Command, and the 435th Contingency Response Group assigned to Ramstein Air Base in Germany — took place at the Polish Air Force’s 12th Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Base outside of Mirosławiec.

Should an MQ-9 need to land there, a handful of maintainers qualified to service Reapers would need only to hop on a commercial flight with the clothes on their back, as all the necessary gear will already be in place.

The base is now “open for business” and ready to welcome any MQ-9A that needs to land there for basic maintenance, said Air Force Maj. Philip “Flip” West, the project lead for the satellite launch and recovery package, or SLR-P, for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa.

West, a former Reaper pilot, envisioned the package as including the absolute minimum equipment maintainers would need to service an MQ-9A on any base in the world, contained in two conex boxes. The SLR-P includes the Portable Aircraft Control Station developed by MQ-9 manufacturer General Atomics, a starter cart, an electric towbarless aircraft tractor to transport the aircraft into a hangar, and refueling capabilities.

The event last month sought to demonstrate that a handful of maintainers could turn on the aircraft and hand control over to drone operators with the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, using only the equipment contained in the SLR-P, after which the Reaper would then take off and perform a routine sortie.

A thunderstorm had settled over Eastern Europe during the Aug. 30 proof of concept, grounding the aircraft until the following day. Nonetheless, the SLR-P operated as intended, with maintainers using the Portable Aircraft Control Station to get the MQ-9 up and running before handing over control to operators in Pennsylvania, West said.

This wasn’t the only “first” to take place on the Polish base for that Reaper; its landing at the 12th UAV Base prior to the proof of concept was the first weather diversion for the drone to a previously unrecorded runway in Europe. Now, that MQ-9 has mapped the entire runway, allowed any U.S. Air Force Reaper to access the file for easy landing in Mirosławiec.

“This was a huge deal for us,” West said. “Instead of canceling, we diverted the aircraft to the alternate airfield and proved that it can be done [in the] real world, not in a training environment.”

U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa unilaterally acquired the Portable Aircraft Control Station in February, a move that caused consternation at Air Combat Command, a representative told Defense News at Mirosławiec, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak to the media on behalf of the military.

For West, the need to move quickly to develop the SLR-P — and thus directly procure Portable Aircraft Control Stations — was justified. “The events of last year were the driving factor behind the need for us to move faster than the rest of the MQ-9 community,” he said, referring to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022.

“When I acquired our own PACS, we were the first air component to own and control our own equipment, which means we can do with it what we want and how we want to do it,” West said. “We maintained our relationship with ACC by following the exact same regulations and maintenance rules that they follow, and we are open with its maintenance so ACC can still observe what we are doing. But overall, it is USAFE-AFAFRICA-owned and -controlled.”

A greater presence

The MQ-9 is a critical asset for U.S. troops in Europe. Starting in 2021, the Defense Department began operating more Reapers on the continent as it deployed fewer personnel. The Russian invasion last year placed a renewed emphasis on the aircraft’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

The drone type currently operates out of two sites in Europe: Larissa Air Base in Greece and 71st Air Base at the Campia Turzii airfield in Romania.

The Reaper regularly patrols NATO’s eastern front and performs maritime surveillance in the Black and Baltic seas. In March, two Russian Su-27 fighter jets intercepted an MQ-9 over the Black Sea, striking a propeller and causing operators to down the aircraft in the waters below.

As demand grows for its services, U.S. Air Forces in Europe wants to stand up “designated alternate” bases where Reapers land if inclement weather prevents them from returning to home base, or to refuel the drones closer to the front line. That’s where the SLR-P comes in, said West.

“Our northern launch location experiences adverse weather on average 52% of the time during the winter months, based on historical weather data from the last 10 years,” he told Defense News.

While the launch site might not experience poor weather every winter, unpredictability has already led to the cancellation of sorties when the MQ-9 can’t return to its home base. However, the SLR-P allows Reapers to operate out of alternate airfields “in the event we foresee adverse weather that is inbound to the airfield,” West explained.

For now, he said, the SLR-P is equipped for maintainers to only perform what’s known as “code 1″ maintenance, such as refueling; anything more complex, such as a flat tire or an engine failure, would require transporting the aircraft to its home base.

To date, Poland is the only partner to have formally agreed to host an SLR-P system. For now, the two conex boxes used in the demonstration will remain on the base until the system is needed.

Hosting the proof of concept at the 12th UAV Base underscored “the Polish commitment to not only Polish sovereignty, but also to fulfilling its obligation as a key member of the NATO alliance,” said Polish Air Force Col. Marcin Szubiński, the base’s commander.

For the past five years, the Mirosławiec base has been at “the forefront” of implementing cutting-edge intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technologies that focus on interoperability with NATO allies, Szubiński told Defense News.

West hopes to eventually set up similar “designated alternate” bases in the Arctic Circle, the Baltics, the Mediterranean Sea and Africa. Conversations are ongoing with NATO allies and partners who might become future hosts, he said, emphasizing cost savings from using an SLR-P. West declined to identify those potential hosts.

“With this version, it cost a little more than $400,000; whereas a single, one-way flight on a [military jet] could cost around [$500‚000] to $550,000,” he said.

Putting the ‘A’ in ‘ACE’

According to the Air Combat Command representative present at the proof of concept, it can take 90-120 days to move an MQ-9 force package that includes personnel, equipment and other required support for a launch operation. It can require up to eight aircraft — compared to the SLR-P, which can fit in one C-17 transport plane — and up to two dozen maintainers.

The representative described U.S. Air Forces in Europe as “ahead of the power curve” in its efforts to implement the service’s Agile Combat Employment doctrine. ACE, which Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown kicked off in 2022, calls for the the development of “multi-capable Airmen” qualified to perform a wider swath of duties “to minimize equipment and personnel footprints to increase dispersal capabilities and complicate adversary targeting.”

“With ACE, we’re going to have to get used to the idea of sending out a smaller group of people … with a limited amount of equipment,” the representative told Defense News.

Indeed, the SLR-P technology demonstrated in Poland, with its slim footprint of personnel and equipment, is “putting the ‘A’ in ‘ACE,’ ” West said.

The maintainers who demonstrated the SLR-P proof of concept at Mirosławiec were not originally trained to handle MQ-9s. The 435th Contingency Response Group traditionally serviced heavy-lift aircraft at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. But since March 2022, its airmen have undergone a series of training and qualifications to provide ground support on the front line to F-16 and F-15E jets as well as MQ-9s, said the group’s commander, Air Force Col. R. Patrick Rayner.

The team also qualified in so-called hot pit refueling for fighter jets, when an aircraft lands and receives fuel without turning off the engines, Rayner said at the base. The group is now set to qualify in providing ground support to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter by October.

“Multi-capable airmen: That’s what we’ve been doing for 25 years,” Rayner said of his unit.

The SLR-P proof of concept was the first time this squadron of maintainers serviced an MQ-9 on their own, an airman with the 435th told Defense News.

The self-sustaining group is naturally suited to provide its own equipment, said the airman, who spoke on background per an agreement with the U.S. Air Force. Now, with the new package, any maintainer can “get out the door a lot quicker” and use equipment already on site, the service member added.

Following the proof of concept, the 435th provided feedback to West and his team about what else an SLR-P could include, the airman said.

And given extra room in the conex boxes, future versions could help maintainers perform more complex services, West said.

Next steps

The anticipated proliferation of “designated alternate” MQ-9 sites is poised to increase partnerships across NATO and encourage more buy-in from allies in Europe and beyond, stakeholders said at the 12th UAV Base.

In the Indo-Pacific region, for example, SLR-P could be set up at various allied bases, allowing Reapers to island hop to avoid sortie cancellations from weather issues.

In the European region, Poland previously committed to spending 3% of its gross domestic product on defense beginning in 2023 — up from 2.2% in 2021 — and doubling its troop numbers up to 300,000 personnel.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army established the U.S. Army Garrison Poland this past March, intended to host about 10,000 permanent U.S. troops in 11 sites around Poznań and other Polish cities, as well as 4,000 rotational forces and 2,500 surge or exercise personnel.

Poland has also committed to buying new Reapers in the near term. In October 2022, the Polish Defence Ministry signed a $70.6 million deal to lease an undisclosed number of MQ-9A Reapers from General Atomics.

Additionally, the ministry unveiled plans to buy MQ-9B Reapers, which would make the Polish Armed Forces the first military along NATO’s eastern front to buy the medium-altitude, long-endurance drone. Before the deal was signed, a ministry official told Defense News the drone acquisition is related to “the difficult situation on Poland’s eastern border” with Ukraine, which is still fighting off a Russian invasion.

Polish forces are using the leased MQ-9As “in surveillance areas of interest, including along Poland’s eastern border” in order to “facilitate the collection of surveillance data within the field of imagery intelligence … and signals intelligence,” a spokesperson for the ministry told Defense News last month.

Meanwhile, Poland is advancing talks with General Atomics. “Currently, there are ongoing negotiations with the supplier of this weaponry. In line with the Technical Modernization Plan [for the Polish Armed Forces], the MQ-9B Reaper acquisition is planned for the year 2024,” the spokesperson said.

Once that acquisition is complete, the 12th UAV Base will be ready to support the new Reapers with lessons learned from hosting the U.S. Air Force’s 52nd Expeditionary Operations Group Detachment 2 and its MQ-9 fleet for the past several years.

The base became familiar with some support functions such as fueling, fire protection and pre-accident planning, said Szubiński, the base’s commander.

“Learning to operate the aircraft and, more importantly, integrating it into combined arms of the Polish military requires some time,” he explained. “But we’ve certainly taken the first and, by some accounts, the most critical steps.”

Jaroslaw Adamowski in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.

“We are left in a space where it’s very difficult to see the way forward other than — at some point after a Ukrainian victory in this war — we’re going to have to reconstitute the basis of a new European security architecture,” Michael Carpenter told Defense News in an exclusive interview.

By a new architecture, he means a set of institutions that makes OSCE’s participating states more secure and war less likely, Carpenter noted. That would mean restoring conventional military deterrence and, eventually, a new regime of transparency and confidence building, including through arms control.

“Needless to say, a new European security order will take a long time to build given how badly Russia has undermined the institutions that were built up over the last two decades,” Carpenter said.

When that occurs, OSCE will be front and center in discussions about what that security architecture should look like.

The organization is positioned for that job because of its “unique membership” of 57 nations, which includes all members of NATO and the European Union as well as every post-Soviet state, he argued.

“It is the right place in which to build a new European security architecture,” he said.

The organization is focused on countering Russian narratives regarding its invasion of Ukraine, while also supporting Kyiv diplomatically and on the ground.

While Ukraine’s backers across the globe are coordinating military support via the regularly held Ukraine Defense Contact Group — also known as the Ramstein Group, as the inaugural meeting was held at Ramstein Air Base in Germany — OSCE is trying to counter Russian disinformation and documenting its war crimes, which will diplomatically “isolate” Moscow, Carpenter said.

“At the moment, there is not a single other participating state in the OSCE that supports Russia’s war,” Carpenter added. “By exposing Russia’s actions each and every week, we … provide a historical record for future accountability efforts.”

Russia has remained the only participating state to defend its invasion of Ukraine to the rest of the members since February 2022, the organization confirmed in an Aug. 11 email. Belarus, another participating state, continues to aid Russia with active logistical support and by hosting training sites for Russian forces.

However, at OSCE, Belarus refrains from speaking in support of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, a spokesperson said.

The organization was already on “a downward slope” with Russia for many years, which was “not living up to the letter or spirit” of OSCE’s Vienna Document, said Carpenter, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia and conventional arms control from 2015 to 2017.

In the Vienna Document, OSCE’s participating states commit to sharing detailed information on their armed forces and major weapon systems on an annual basis, along with data about their military budgets, defense and armed forces planning, and scheduled maneuvers.

Moscow announced in 2007 that it was suspending its participation from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. The government of President Vladimir Putin also positioned troops in the Transnistria region of Moldova, in Georgia, and in Ukraine — moves that each respective government has declared illegitimate.

In recent years, Russia also withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty; the United States also withdrew from those under former President Donald Trump.

While the U.S. has not itself announced any transfers of F-16 fighter aircraft to Ukraine to date, it supports other allies’ intent to deliver those aircraft to Kyiv, said Stan Brown, the department’s principal deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

Reports began swirling in May that the Netherlands was considering giving a portion of its F-16 fleet to Ukraine, and wanted to begin training pilots as soon as possible. But the transfer of such aircraft to Ukraine has to be a “holistic” approach, to include training both pilots and maintainers, Brown told reporters Monday at the biennial Paris Air Show outside the city. One of the first steps in a potential transfer of F-16 aircraft will be the license to train those airmen, before the license to transfer the aircraft even occurs.

Then, the aircraft themselves need to be identified – whether they’ll be delivered via a third-party transfer or another mechanism – before developing a plan for the Ukrainian military to use the aircraft, Brown continued.

The State Department is already working to complete the paperwork for third-party transfer requests coming from nations like the Netherlands so that pilot training can begin, he said. But he declined to provide a specific timeline for that completion.

The shadow of Russia’s war in Ukraine has prompted an overhaul of the State Department’s foreign military sales processes to both ensure Ukraine is receiving the military aid it needs quickly and efficiently and to streamline sales processes for other U.S. allies.

Last month, the department released a “retooling” document for FMS sales, detailing a 10-point plan to streamline the process and improve efficiency in providing capabilities to allies. The points include strategic goals such as developing regional approaches to arms transfers and promoting FMS cases based on the goals described in the National Security Strategy. But they also acknowledge a need to improve security cooperation officer training and modernize the notification process to Congress to avoid duplication of efforts while ensuring transparency.

The U.S. government has provided about $40 billion in military aid to Ukraine to date and “used pretty much every tool in our security cooperation toolkit to get things done,” Brown told reporters on the show floor here. That aid has come in many forms: presidential drawdown authorities, direct transfers from Defense Department stocks, excess defense articles, third-party transfers and direct commercial sale re-exports, as well as foreign military sales and grant assistance, and licensed direct commercial sales, he noted.

“The bottom line [is] that the scale of what we’re doing there is historic,” Brown said. “Things that used to take months and weeks to get through the approval process across the interagency [are] happening in a manner of hours.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also prompted the State Department to prioritize transitioning nations away from Soviet-made equipment, Brown said.

Multiple European nations have donated their aging Russian capabilities to Ukraine over the past year and a half. The Czech Republic, Greece, and Slovenia have sent over T-72 tanks, BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles and a slew of armored personnel carriers, with commitments from NATO member nations to replace that equipment with more modern, interoperable vehicles.

The State Department’s goal now is to help incentivize such nations to continue donating equipment to Ukraine that will be useful in Kyiv’s defense against Russia, as well as help to transition those countries away from Soviet-era systems in the future.

“We look first to make sure countries can help backfill Ukraine … and then we try to backfill them,” he added.

Since early March, a cohort of American service members and a rotating crew of multinational partners have set up shop in U.S. European Command headquarters to ensure equipment gets from the donor nation to Ukraine’s doorstep.

That team, known as the EUCOM Control Center-Ukraine/International Donor Coordination Centre, or ECCU/IDCC, oversees the deliveries while also ensuring Ukrainians receive proper training for the equipment.

The logistics cell grew out of two discrete teams led by the U.S. and U.K. militaries, officials told reporters Wednesday at EUCOM headquarters at U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart in southwest Germany. The command had set up the ECCU/IDCC to help coordinate partners’ military assistance going to Ukraine; its British counterparts had a similar idea. Now, the two nations lead the joint cell that includes allies and partners from around the world.

“Our aim is to support the Ukrainians to defend their sovereignty,” said Rear Adm. Duke Heinz, director of logistics at U.S. European Command. Shortly after the Russian invasion, the U.S. military saw a willingness from allies and partners to provide Ukrainians with security assistance.

“The goal was: We need to deconflict that,” Heinz said. “We don’t know how much the Ukrainians can absorb, and … we didn’t want border control crossing points that were delivering security assistance [and] munitions [at] the same border control points that independent agencies were using to deliver blankets and first aid kits.”

‘A coalition of the willing’

From a stifling hot — and air conditioning-free — secure multipurpose space known internally as “the Attic,” dozens of service members from across 26 NATO and non-NATO nations are separated into sections to work on plans, support efforts, communications, movements and operations. A row of foreign liaison officers from rotating nations are also present. A Ukrainian military representative is embedded with the team, identifying the requests coming from Kyiv that are then worked by the ECCU/IDCC team.

Officials described the process as similar to a registry, where Ukraine puts in a request for specific equipment, and participating nations identify the needs they can fill and to what extent.

The multinational team is a “coalition of the willing,” the officials said, providing any combination or amount of transportation, aid, training resources or funding.

Ever since the U.S. and U.K. groups merged in March, the cell’s functions have evolved. At the start of the war, the logistics coordination cell largely supported the delivery of small arms munitions and anti-tank equipment, said British Army Brig. Gen. Chris King, chief of the ECCU/IDCC. Then, it began helping transfer Soviet-era equipment that was more complex to move, yet familiar to Ukrainian forces, he added.

With the arrival of sophisticated equipment provided by NATO and other allies, the cell is now a “one-stop shop” that not only coordinates and tracks deliveries coming from all over the world to Ukraine, but also organizes the training of its armed forces to operate and sustain the equipment. The challenge is lining up the training schedule with equipment deliveries, Heinz noted.

That process is also multinational. King described a situation where the United Kingdom donated 105mm howitzers to Kyiv. Since New Zealand is an operator of that howitzer, the Pacific nation provided training support and parts, while the training itself was conducted in the United Kingdom. The U.S. military supplied ammunition and tactical vehicles to tow the howitzers.

The United States has trained approximately 1,500 Ukrainian troops to date, according to EUCOM. The United Kingdom has committed to providing a major training operation for Ukrainian forces, with the potential to train up to 10,000 soldiers every 120 days, a spokesperson said.

Evading challenges

Despite Russian threats to disrupt the West’s efforts to arm Ukraine, the ECCU/IDCC team has so far avoided major issues, officials said.

The cell has not yet experienced a cyberattack or other forms of disruption from Russia, King said. “But [Russia] will continue to learn, and we need to be ready for that.”

Heinz said his team hasn’t experienced mobility obstacles in getting equipment to Ukraine’s borders. “Security assistance doesn’t stack up here on the continent in a warehouse,” he explained, adding that the longest time a piece of equipment would sit in an airport or train depot would be 12-24 hours.

When a nation offers to provide military assistance, the cell coordinates the logistics to keep the assets “in flow” from the providing nation to the border of Ukraine. The door-to-door process can take 48-96 hours, Heinz said.

Three allies bordering Ukraine are allowing military assistance to be dropped off on their borders; Poland is the sole nation that EUCOM would identify.

Two of the three nations allow Ukrainians to enter the country and travel to a specific pickup point to gather the equipment. “So the Ukrainians are responsible for the movement to the border, and what border control points they will transition into the country,” Heinz said.

The third nation requested equipment be taken right up to the border and transitioned from there, he added.

Asked about whether military systems could end up on the black market, Heinz said the team has been “very upfront” with Ukraine officials about “the intent” of the use for U.S.-provided military equipment.

“We’re not serial-number tracking these once they go across the border,” he noted. “We know everything that we’ve delivered. … We have an inventory of it. But once it crosses the border, it’s in the Ukrainians’ hands.”

He added that thus far, the team is unaware of any deliveries failing to reach their final destination.

Shifting mobility modes

As of July 21, the ECCU/IDCC team had coordinated the movement of 78,000 tons of military assistance over 1.4 million kilometers (869,920 miles)of airspace and 450,000 kilometers (279,617 miles) of ground distance. A source close to the cell told Defense News the estimated value of materiel donations is difficult to quantify due to several factors, including a lack of information from providers.

More than 800 flights have transported equipment to the Ukrainian border as of that date, but officials noted that while the cadence of deliveries to Ukraine remained constant over the past few months, those methods have changed.

In March and April, it was easy to fly in small arms as well as anti-tank and anti-armor capabilities that nations initially provided, Heinz noted. Now, as the equipment list expands to include tanks and howitzers, rail and sea methods are also being employed.

“But the flow has been nonstop,” he said. Even as European parliaments begin their summer vacations and the United States preps for midterm elections in a few months, there’s no fear of a “summer lull” in deliveries, he added.

King noted that when the cell was first set up, the team was moving quickly to coordinate the rapidly incoming military assistance donations. Now, the team is planning deliveries up to two months out, he said.

The flow of Soviet-era equipment has started to dwindle, but the countries who donated those assets are now interested in replacing those aged systems with NATO-specific military assets, Heinz noted. “I think the future for the alliance looks fairly bright, from a military equipment footing perspective,” he said.

There remains one supplier of Soviet-era 152mm and 122mm mortar shells that’s providing equipment from a hot production line, Heinz said, though he declined to name the supplier.

More equipment on the horizon

On Wednesday, the U.S. Defense Department announced it would send additional M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems to Ukraine, bringing the total number committed up to 16.

As Kyiv’s military assistance registry grows and evolves over the course of the war, Heinz said he will not rule out the U.S. providing other types of high-performance equipment.

“This conflict is very different from three and a half months ago,” he noted. “If you had asked us then, ‘Hey, would you think you’re going to deliver HIMARS to the Ukrainians?’ I would have said, ‘Probably not.’ ”

“So I would be cautious to say: ‘We won’t deliver X to the Ukrainians,’ ” he added. “Based on their ability to fight and win, as they’ve shown, anything’s on the table.”

The support is crucial to protect the alliance’s own member nations, who would also suffer from contamination if Russia used a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapon against Ukraine, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday from Brussels, during a televised press conference.

“Any use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict, and would be a blatant violation of international law and have far-reaching consequences,” Stoltenberg said. “I think that’s the most important message to convey, that any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable.”

Stoltenberg did not immediately provide details on what the CBRN support would include, saying it will be one of several discussion points during Thursday’s planned summit with leaders of the 30 member nations. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will virtually address the NATO leaders during the summit in a closed session.

Members are expected to approve new cybersecurity assistance for Ukraine, plus additional support for non-NATO members Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The role of China in the Ukrainian conflict will also be discussed.

“Allies are concerned that China could provide material support for the Russian invasion,” Stoltenberg said.

Meanwhile, member nations have deployed four new NATO battle groups in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, effectively doubling the number of groups positioned along the alliance’s eastern border. France has offered to lead the group in Romania, while the Czech Republic will lead the additional troops in Slovakia. Bulgaria and Hungary will lead the battlegroups in their respective countries, a NATO spokesperson told Defense News.

NATO has existing battle groups stationed in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland, and together the eight battle groups will span NATO’s borders from the Baltic to the Black Sea, Stoltenberg said. There are now hundreds of thousands of NATO troops at high readiness alert across the alliance, to include 100,000 U.S. forces across Europe, and 40,000 forces directly under NATO command mostly in the eastern part of the alliance, he added.

Those battle groups will be in place “as long as is necessary,” and NATO is now deliberating how to position its troops for the long term.

“This invasion … will have long-term consequences for our security,” Stoltenberg said. “It’s a new normal for our security, and NATO has to respond to that new reality.”

Julianne Smith, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said military advisers would present options in the next months for fresh troop commitments in the eastern alliance countries. That’s because the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, which limits such deployments, is effectively out the window following Moscow’s war on Ukraine, she said.

“Russia is in clear violation” of the pact, Smith said Wednesday during remarks at an event sponsored by the Atlantic Council think tank.

Before making final troop-level recommendations, NATO analysts must take into account how the Ukraine war will develop, and how many forces Russia intends to leave in Belarus, she added.

Smith dampened expectations about a Polish proposal, to be discussed this week, for a NATO peace mission in Ukraine. While the idea is “not dead in the water,” she said it poses many “open questions” and would ultimately run up against a pledge by U.S. President Joe Biden and other alliance leaders to refrain from sending troops to Ukraine.

Sebastian Sprenger in Washington contributed to this report.

LONDON — L3Harris Technologies is providing robots to the U.S. Air Force to replace the service’s aging explosive ordnance disposal systems.

The award, announced by the company on Tuesday, includes a 10-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract worth $85 million to build up to 170 of its T7 robots for the Air Force. In addition to the robots, the contract includes support, maintenance and training. Initial deliveries are expected in 2022.

L3 Technologies and Harris Corporation completed their merger in July 2019. The latter first displayed the T7 robot at the Association for the U.S. Army’s annual conference in 2016 in Washington, D.C. Since then, the British military has procured 122 systems under an Army program dubbed Project STARTER, with the last robot delivered this past spring.

The U.K. and U.S. military customers are receiving the same robotic core system, but the British order included several accessories, such as explosive ordnance disposal, or EOD, disruptors as well as distinct system mounts, said Paul Bosscher, senior scientist and chief engineer for L3Harris Technologies.

“The U.K. has a couple of other unique attachments that allow them to [perform missions such as] under-vehicle attacks,” Bosscher told Defense News on Thursday at the biennial DSEI technology conference in London.

The U.S. Air Force could opt in for more accessories further down the line, he noted. “The system is very flexible. It’s designed for ease of integrating payloads,” he said.

But at the moment, the goal is to field the core system as rapidly as possible, as the global supply chain for critical subsystems like cables and connectors remains backlogged across sectors since the start of the pandemic, Bosscher added.

Like its ally across the pond, the U.S. Air Force will likely use a portion of these T7 robots for training missions as well as on its domestic and international bases. The Air Force’s initial order was placed for 50 robots, out of the potential 170, Bosscher said.

The Air Force released a solicitation for a large, commercial off-the-shelf EOD robot in October. Other competitors included FLIR, which is building its Kobra robot for the U.S. Army’s Common Robotic System-Heavy program. L3Harris also pitched the T7 for that program.

The Army’s plans for its EOD system slightly differs from those of the Air Force, Bosscher said.

“If you hold up the requirements to each other, they don’t look very similar,” he said. “So even though it’s a big robot here, it’s a big robot [there], I think what you just saw was a different set of priorities coming through.”

For Bosscher, the key upgrade in the T7 for operators is the advanced sensor system that allows users to manipulate the robotic arm almost exactly like their own.

“The big thing is, it moves how I move; I feel what it feels,” he said.

That means system operators can be easily trained to use the robot and complete tasks more quickly, he noted. “For something like explosive ordnance disposal, that could be really important,” he said. “Every second counts.”

At the DSEI conference, the T7 robot demonstrator featured prominently at L3Harris’ booth, alongside its more compact “little brother,” the brand-new T4 medium-sized robot.

The T7, which weighs about 710 pounds, is designed to tackle larger missions such as neutralizing vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. The more compact T4 includes many of the same electronic systems as the T7, but weighs about 226 pounds and can be easily transported in the back of an SUV, Bosscher said.

He declined to comment on any ongoing or future campaigns for the T7 or the T4, only mentioning there are “opportunities for both of these systems.”

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — In less than a week, the air base that runs the U.S. military’s European and African operations has transformed into an international city, hosting tens of thousands of men, women and children fleeing Afghanistan.

Officials at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, first learned Aug. 19 that evacuees escaping the Taliban would be brought to the installation for processing, medical evaluations and temporary housing before they are resettled in the United States. By the following day, the first influx of C-17 military transport aircraft arrived, filled mostly with American citizens, Afghan nationals and their families.

The base has worked around the clock to ensure evacuees have medical service, food, water and shelter while based here under Operation Allies Refuge, officials here told reporters Thursday. More than 350 tents sit across the airfield to house the thousands of people arriving on a daily basis, They receive critical supplies from the Defense Department, the Red Cross and other partners, and undergo various processing procedures before they can get on an aircraft bound for Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.

Ramstein is the headquarters of United States Air Forces in Europe and Africa, but starting last Friday it turned into “an international airport and a city, with at least three to four times our occupancy on base,” said Brig. Gen. Josh Olson, 86th Airlift Wing commander.

The teams here were dealing with a sudden surge of incoming evacuees on Thursday, and Ramstein was expected to reach its capacity by the evening, he told reporters. Ramstein Air Base can host up to 12,000 evacuees from Afghanistan at one time, while the nearby U.S. Army Garrison Rhine Ordnance Barracks is set up to accept 5,000 more. Once those two bases are at capacity, evacuees will be transported from interim points in the Middle East to U.S. bases in Sigonella, Italy, and Rota, Spain, he added. Naval Air Station Sigonella, which is also acting as an interim transfer point, received a group of 662 “qualified evacuees” on Sunday, the Navy said.

As of Thursday, Ramstein had hosted 6,500 evacuees and Rhine Ordnance Barracks hosted about 500 more. About 10,000 more passengers were expected to arrive that night, Olson said.

“Tonight, we’ll be maxed out,’ he said.

By Friday morning, more than 4,100 evacuees had departed on 18 flights headed for the United States, with more flights expected through the week. Evacuees in limbo bide their time in the temporary housing pods, while children play soccer and basketball behind fences where clothing and prayer rugs are hung out to dry. And they peer out at airmen patrolling the area.

Continuing to struggle

The number of evacuees coming into Ramstein changes on almost an hourly basis. As of Friday morning, approximately 76 aircraft had transported people to Ramstein from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul and from Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

“Right now, we’re continuing to struggle to have that outflow” of evacuees move out of Ramstein, onto commercial aircraft and onward to the United States, Olson said. On Thursday, the number of outgoing flights from the base to the United States had doubled within the past 24 hours.

When Operation Allies Refuge was launched late last week, Ramstein had a hard time finding sufficient tents and cots for the influx of evacuees, Olson said. But the base gathered resources from across its European partners, including the DoD, German government and nongovernment organizations to get enough supplies.

Servicemembers have had to adapt quickly to new developments. Together with representatives from the State Department, Ramstein set up a camp for unaccompanied minors coming through. About 15 unaccompanied children between the ages of three and 12 had been identified as of Thursday, Olson said.

The 86th Medical Group has been tasked to provide acute medical care as needed to the evacuees when they arrive. The majority of cases seen so far have been related to heat injuries sustained while packed in aircraft or in the stifling Qatari heat, or trauma wounds sustained before leaving Kabul, said Lt. Col. Simon Ritchie, who is coordinating the medical efforts at Ramstein.

The medical crew is doing its best to manage erratic flows of incoming passengers, he told reporters. While aircraft are generally coming in every hour or so, “sometimes it’s 50 passengers, sometimes it’s 400 passengers,” he said.

The uncertainty is tough to manage, he added. “We don’t know how many planes are arriving. We don’t know how many passengers are on the aircraft. And the most important thing, we don’t know what kind of injuries to expect.”

But despite the unpredictable pace, “the team’s ready, we’re ready to go,” he added.

Next stop, USA

The sense of uncertainty is also present at the evacuees’ last stop at Ramstein, a makeshift terminal in Ramstein’s Hangar 5. Here, passengers go through a final screening process before they can board commercial aircraft bound for Dulles.

About 200 people are processed per hour, depending on the size of families on each flight, said Maj. Dustin Dere, director of operations for the 721st Air Mobility Operations Group. After those passengers complete final screening, Dere’s team writes up the flight manifest at the terminal, he added.

“We don’t necessarily know who’s going on the plane” beforehand, Dere said. “We go to the lodging facilities and pull the number of people” that can go on the next flight.

Most of the commercial aircraft being used under the Civil Reserve Air Fleet are Boeing 767s, which can carry about 250 passengers, and Boeing 747s, which can carry over 400 people, he said. Boeing KC-10 Extender aircraft have also been dispatched from the United Kingdom to transport passengers from Qatar and Kuwait to Ramstein, he noted.

The pressure is also temporal. The U.S. government and its allies are rushing to evacuate as many people from Afghanistan as possible by the Aug. 31 deadline set by U.S. President Joe Biden July 8, a follow-up to the February 2020 peace agreement between his predecessor Donald Trump and the Taliban. Biden has vowed to continue evacuation flights out of Kabul, despite the terrorist attack Thursday when ISIS-K, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province, launched a suicide bomb attack and firefight outside the airport, killing 13 U.S. troops and 170 Afghan nationals.

But while Ramstein is dealing with a surge of incoming evacuees at the moment, the number of flights taking off from Kabul is expected to continue tapering off through next week, and many allies such as the German military have officially ceased their own air evacuation efforts. One military transport aircraft with medical evacuation personnel and special operations forces on board remains on standby in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, for at least the next 24 hours to help evacuate injured Americans out of Afghanistan, a spokesperson for the German Air Force told Air Force Times.

Per an agreement between the U.S. military and the German government, evacuees are only allowed to remain in country for 10 days before they have to move on to the United States. The average turnaround time from arrival in Ramstein to departure has been about four days, Olson said.

As more and more evacuees are coming in from Afghanistan, Ramstein must wait for the commercial aircraft to return from the States to pick up more passengers.

“We are seeing a tempo increase, with the inbound passengers and the lodging facilities going up,” Dere said. “We need to get more aircraft filled and out of here.”

Olson told reporters he couldn’t point to an exact reason why the number of evacuees has gone up in recent days. But the C-17s that are bringing Americans, Afghans and other nationals from Qatar and Kuwait are “definitely on an emergency capacity,” he said.

‘So happy’

Amongst the moments of chaos, excitement is palpable at the outgoing terminal in Hangar 5, where about 200 evacuees had just boarded a Boeing 767 bound for Dulles, and about 250 more were awaiting their turn on the next flight.

Rasool Ahmad Qaderi, 27, told reporters he is “so happy” to be finally heading to America after four days at Ramstein. Qaderi is traveling to Dulles with his family, about 16 people total, and hopes to eventually move to New York City.

They made it into the airport in Kabul using their identification cards, passports and a letter from his father, who lives in the United States, he said.

“Outside the airport, it was very dangerous,” he said. Once they were inside the airport, however, “we are safe.”

[Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to accurately reflect the origin of the Aug. 31 deadline.]