The Steadfast Defender exercise comes as part of NATO’s rapid push to transform from a crisis response to a war-fighting alliance, prompted by the Ukraine conflict.

It will start in the spring of next year and is expected to involve between 500 and 700 air combat missions, more than 50 ships, and about 41,000 troops, Nato officials said, Financial Times reported.

It is designed to model potential maneuvers against an enemy modeled on a coalition led by Russia, named Occasus for the purposes of the drill, the source added.

The exercise is also a first in terms of technical capability, using real-world geographical data to create more realistic scenarios for troops.

Sweden, whose Nato bid is yet to be ratified by Turkey and Hungary, will also be included, bringing the total number of nations involved to 32.

The drill will take place across Germany, Poland, and the Baltics in February and March and forms part of a new training strategy that will see the military alliance carry out two big exercises every year, instead of one. 

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, said in June last year that the alliance would increase its number of high-readiness forces from 40,000 to “well over 300,000”. It forms part of a historic overhaul to shift the alliance towards heavy military capabilities as opposed to the light and mobile forces deployed in the Balkans and Afghanistan.

RHM/PR