US considers Estonia as a possible location for armoured vehicles

The US Army Europe will soon dispatch a survey team to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria to scout locations for tanks and other military hardware as part of an effort to bolster the US military presence in the region, according to the American newspaper Stars and Stripes.

The US Army Europe will move part of its heavy equipment away from the Grafenwöhr training area in Germany and is looking to store it in nearby countries. The move concerns up to 220 armoured prepositioning vehicles.

“We are doing surveys in the next few weeks to see if there is a place where perhaps some of that equipment could be stored there,” USAREUR chief Lt Gen Ben Hodges said in an interview with Stars and Stripes. “Maybe it’s a company, maybe it’s a whole battalion, we don’t know yet until we do the survey.”

“We really want to put some in south-eastern Europe, some in the Baltics, some in Poland. Those countries want them bad – an obvious reason, they’re a deterrent aspect,” Hodges said.

He expects all the heavy armour equipment to be in place by the end of 2015.

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Cover: US Abrams tank. The photo is illustrative.