NATO prepares plan for big casualties in case of battle with Russia

NATO is developing mass evacuation and rescue plans in case of a future war with Russia, a senior general has declared.

Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank, the head of NATO’s logistics command, confirmed this week the security bloc is working to ensure it has the operational capability to extract large numbers of wounded troops from the front lines.

The German general warned that, unlike allies’ experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, an all-out war with Russia would likely see NATO incur heavy losses across a huge battlefield.

What’s more, Russia’s air force and its vaunted rocket and missile stockpiles mean that medical evacuations via aircraft would be too risky – a factor that could force NATO’s troops to operate ‘hospital trains’ to extract the wounded en masse.

‘The challenge will be to swiftly ensure high-quality care for, in the worst case, a great number of wounded,’ he said.

Sollfrank’s warning comes as the German military says it expects Russia to be able to attack a NATO country as soon as 2029. 

Sollfrank runs NATO’s Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC), tasked with coordinating the swift movement of troops and tanks across Europe as well as logistical preparations such as the storage of munitions on NATO’s eastern flank.

But since Vladimir Putin sent his troops streaming across the border with Ukraine in February 2022, relations between Russia and the West have plunged to lows not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That forced Sollfrank and JSEC to confront the possibility of a major land war in Europe, and the unit began planning its approach to medical evacuations accordingly.

Should a conflict with Russia arise, wounded troops will need to be transported over a larger distance than in other wars of recent years, Sollfrank said.

Russian air defences and jets mean medical evacuation flights would be placed under a much greater threat unlike anything they had faced before from insurgents in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Sollfrank reasoned that a massive network of rail and road evacuation vehicles would need to be deployed and said NATO forces would have to be supported by specially designed trains that can transport more casualties at the same time than aircraft.

‘Air superiority will have to be achieved in the first place. It will require time to succeed over the entire length and depth of the front line,’ Sollfrank said in an interview with Reuters.

‘For planning reasons, all options to take a great number of wounded to medical installations need to be considered, which includes trains but potentially also buses.’

Differing medical regulations between countries are another hurdle to overcome, Sollfrank said. 

A ‘military medical Schengen’, akin to the political Schengen zone that allows free movement within most of the European Union, could be a solution.

It could entail an area of free passage for sensitive medications such as narcotics or strong painkillers, which would be needed to treat wounded troops but whose cross-border transport is regulated.

But the planning for medical evacuations is just one part of a much broader drive by NATO to overhaul and boost its ability to deter and defend against any Russian assault. 

This year, the security bloc launched its greatest campaign of military drills since the Cold War. 

The Steadfast Defender 2024 suite of exercises saw some 90,000 troops from more than 30 allied and partner countries test their collective capabilities in land, air, sea, and cyber conflict theatres. 

The exercises were spread across the first six months of the year and saw the armies, navies and air forces of dozens of countries engage in war games on Europe’s southern, northern and eastern flanks. 

NATO is also said to have drawn up plans for how to deploy American troops to the frontlines of Europe in the event of an all-out conflict with Russia.

New ‘land corridors’ are being carved out to quickly funnel soldiers through central Europe without local bureaucratic impediments, allowing NATO forces to pounce in an instant should Putin‘s devastating war in Ukraine move further west.

The plans are said to include contingencies in case of Russian bombardment, letting troops sweep into the Balkans via corridors in Italy, Greece and Turkey, or towards Russia’s northern border via Scandinavia, officials told The Telegraph.

Meanwhile, many of NATO’s member states in Europe have launched rearmament campaigns in the past two years, with countries across the EU ramping up defence spending, signing major arms contracts and enacting legislation to boost their military capabilities.

Germany, for example, has committed over €100 billion to modernise its military, with top defence manufacturers like Rheinmetall and Diehl upping production to meet the demands of both Ukraine and the Bundeswehr.

Poland has also ramped its defence budget up to almost 5 per cent of GDP, and the European Defence Agency (EDA) has simplified procurement processes to facilitate the rapid delivery of military aid to Ukraine and subsequent resupply for sender states.

EU nations can supply arms to Ukraine before recouping their losses and replenishing their own stocks thanks to the European Peace Facility (EPF) fund. 

For all of Russia’s anti-Western rhetoric, many analysts believe that Moscow has no interest in fighting a major war with NATO – an observation that top Norwegian General Eirik Kristoffersen noted. 

But Kristoffersen said it is nevertheless essential to ensure the security bloc is adequately armed, trained and prepared for the worst, adding that Russia is not yet in a position to take on Europe but could build up its capacity to do so in a matter of years.

‘At one point someone said it’ll take 10 years, but I think we’re back to less than 10 years because of the industrial base that is now running in Russia,’ General Kristoffersen said in an interview in Oslo in June.

‘It will take some time, which gives us a window now for the next two to three years to rebuild our forces, to rebuild our stocks at the same times as we are supporting Ukraine,’ he added.

The former head of Britain’s army General Sir Patrick Sanders also agreed with Kristoffersen’s position, but warned that Britain’s armed forces do not currently have the capacity to maintain a lengthy armed conflict. 

While a hot war with Russia is not inevitable, he said, it is made more likely if the UK and its allies fail to ‘address the threats and gaps we have in our capability’ and significantly re-arm.

According to the general, estimates suggest that the UK has ‘somewhere between five and ten years before Russia recapitalises and is able to pose the sort of threat that it did before the Ukraine war.’ 

He told The Times that important steps need to be made ‘right now’ including modernising the armed forces and making ‘society and the UK more resilient’.