How the US Army, NATO are creating a new Eastern Flank Deterrence Line

The U.S. Army and its NATO allies are rapidly aligning resources to develop a new " Eastern Flank Deterrence Line " aimed at developing combat capabilities that can measure up to possible Russian attacks, according to service commanders in Europe.

U.S. Army Europe and Africa commander Gen. Christopher Donahue “wants to go fast on this,” Lt. Gen. Charles Costanza, the Army’s V Corps commander, told Defense News in a recent interview.

“How can you get the capabilities that are available now, get them into the hands of soldiers, to [get a] proof-of-concept and then scope and scale it so we can get what we need.”

The idea for a Eastern Flank Deterrence Line, or EFDL, which was first announced in July at the Association of the U.S. Army’s LandEuro conference in Wiesbaden, Germany, is to focus on enhancing ground-based capabilities and drive military-industrial interoperability across the alliance, Donahue explained there.

As part of the plan to counter Russian threats and enable scalable, global deterrence, the Army and its NATO allies are urgently developing standardized, data-driven systems, common launchers and cloud-based coordination, according to Gen. Donahue.

That is taking shape in the form of amassing counter-drone systems in countries along the Eastern Flank, tying together air defense and defensive fires and sharing data that enables NATO to work together, according to Costanza.

The Army’s V Corps is currently participating in a NATO exercise — called Avenger Triad — that involves five different corps from across the alliance, including Poland. This, Costanza said, will bringing to EFDL closer to reality.

“To help us fight and actually realize the Eastern Flank Deterrence Line — we’ve got a new organization called an Operational Fires Command,” he said, “which will integrate all of our lethal and non-lethal capabilities into one organization to streamline that.”

Avenger Triad is incorporating specific capabilities like Spike Non-Line-of-Sight missiles fired from AH-64 Apache helicopters, which are relatively new assets for Poland.

Also part of the effort, the Army and NATO partners are incorporating Palantir’s Maven Smart System “to use the AI capability to streamline how we use data,” Costanza said.

One of the bigger elements unfolding as part of the EFDL is how the U.S. Army and NATO forces are fielding unmanned systems to take out enemy drones along the Eastern Flank.

The chosen system — the U.S.-based startup Project Eagle’s Merod — is already being proven successful in Ukraine.

“We’re training our Polish partners how to use them,” Costanza said. “Same thing with [our] Romanian partners. We’re now expanding it to Denmark with a view of expanding this capability up and down the Eastern Flank of Europe.”

These developments come at a time when the number of incursions over Eastern Europe airspace is surging.

Taking note, the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command is prioritizing contributions to the EFDL concept, and while cruise and ballistic missiles are still a concern, focus is on the sort of one-way attack drones proliferating on Ukraine’s battlefields, according to its commander Brig. Gen. Curtis King.

The counter-drone platform helps address the cost conundrum of using expensive missiles against cheap drones, King noted.

“We’re training on that to understand how to employ capabilities that allow us to, at a lower cost, build capacity that we would need to defeat the amount of one-way attack drones we’ve seen Russia be very successful at launching on a continual basis,” he added.

Another plus is that the Army’s drones can be produced much faster than a traditional missile. Rapidly fielding systems at scale is therefore more feasible, according to King.

“We’re moving as fast as we can,” he said. “We’ve been told to get this to move out as quickly as possible.”

King added that he expects to see each country feature a similar capability within this calendar year, “if not sooner than that.”

The Army is currently assessing drone-on-drone intercept platforms produced by several different companies, to include government organizations, he noted.

The command is also looking at “passive sensors and active sensors [to see how] we enhance sensor coverage to ensure that we have the right detection capability to facilitate detecting those threats and then defeating them,” King said.

Additionally, the command is working on the data integration of all of the sensors through cloud architecture.

This approach helps “to ensure that we can get the data — not just to the normal air defense participants that we would need, but to get this data over to the intelligence organizations and to the fires organizations,” King said, “so that they can [take] action on this data and improve that.”

Focusing on these particular capabilities don’t just address the deterrence line in Europe, but extend to enabling a global deterrent, King acknowledged.

“Those capabilities are many of the same capabilities that our leaders have told us to look to develop for the Golden Dome of America,” he said, “for homeland defense activity as well.”

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

据驻欧美军指挥官称，美国陆军及其北约盟国正在迅速调集资源，以建立新的“东翼威慑线”，旨在发展能够应对俄罗斯可能发动的攻击的作战能力。

美国陆军欧洲和非洲司令克里斯托弗·多纳休将军“希望尽快推进此事”，陆军第五军司令查尔斯·科斯坦扎中将在最近接受《防务新闻》采访时表示。

“如何才能将现有能力交付给士兵，进行概念验证，然后扩大规模，以便我们能够获得所需的能力？”

多纳休在会上解释说，东翼威慑线（EFDL）的构想于7月在德国威斯巴登举行的美国陆军协会陆上欧洲会议上首次提出，其重点是增强地面作战能力，并推动联盟内部的军事工业互操作性。

据唐纳休将军称，作为应对俄罗斯威胁和实现可扩展的全球威慑计划的一部分，美国陆军及其北约盟友正在紧急开发标准化、数据驱动的系统、通用发射器和基于云的协调系统。

科斯坦扎表示，这种趋势正在形成，具体表现为在东翼各国集结反无人机系统，将防空和防御火力结合起来，并共享数据，使北约能够协同作战。

美国陆军第五军目前正在参加北约代号为“复仇者三位一体”的联合演习，该演习汇集了来自北约五个不同军级单位，其中包括波兰。科斯坦扎表示，这将使“远征远征军”（EFDL）演习更接近现实。

“为了帮助我们作战并真正实现东翼威慑线，我们成立了一个新的组织，称为作战火力指挥部，”他说，“它将把我们所有的致命和非致命能力整合到一个组织中，以简化流程。”

“复仇者三位一体”系统融合了诸如从 AH-64 阿帕奇直升机上发射的“长钉”非视距导弹等特定能力，而这些直升机对于波兰来说还是相对较新的装备。

科斯坦扎表示，作为这项工作的一部分，陆军和北约合作伙伴正在采用 Palantir 的 Maven 智能系统，“利用人工智能功能来简化我们使用数据的方式”。

作为欧洲防空部队部署计划 (EFDL) 的一部分，正在展开的一个重要方面是美国陆军和北约部队如何部署无人系统来摧毁东翼的敌方无人机。

选定的系统——美国初创公司 Project Eagle 的 Merod——已经在乌克兰取得了成功。

科斯坦扎说：“我们正在培训波兰合作伙伴如何使用这些设备。罗马尼亚合作伙伴也是如此。我们现在正将培训范围扩大到丹麦，希望将这种能力推广到整个东欧地区。”

在这些事态发展之际，东欧空域入侵事件的数量正在激增。

注意到这一点，第 10 陆军防空导弹司令部正在优先考虑对 EFDL 概念的贡献，虽然巡航导弹和弹道导弹仍然令人担忧，但据其司令柯蒂斯·金准将称，重点是乌克兰战场上不断扩散的那种单向攻击无人机。

金指出，反无人机平台有助于解决使用昂贵导弹对抗廉价无人机的成本难题。

“我们正在接受这方面的训练，以了解如何运用相关能力，从而以更低的成本建立起我们所需的作战能力，以击败俄罗斯不断成功发射的大量单向攻击无人机，”他补充道。

金表示，另一个优势是，陆军无人机的生产速度远快于传统导弹。因此，大规模快速部署这些系统更具可行性。

他说：“我们正在尽最大努力加快速度。我们接到指示，要尽快把这件事办妥。”

金补充说，他预计每个国家都将在今年内具备类似的能力，“甚至可能更早”。

他指出，陆军目前正在评估几家不同公司（包括政府机构）生产的无人机拦截平台。

金说，指挥部还在研究“被动传感器和主动传感器，以了解我们如何增强传感器覆盖范围，确保我们拥有合适的检测能力，以便检测这些威胁并最终战胜它们”。

此外，该指挥部正在通过云架构实现所有传感器的数据集成。

金说，这种方法有助于“确保我们能够获得数据——不仅是我们需要的常规防空参与者，还要将这些数据传递给情报机构和火力机构，以便他们能够根据这些数据采取行动并加以改进。”

金承认，关注这些特定能力不仅能解决欧洲的威慑问题，还能实现全球威慑。

“这些能力与我们的领导人告诉我们要为美国国家纪念碑（金顶）开发的许多能力相同，”他说，“也与国土防御活动的能力相同。”

珍·贾德森是一位屡获殊荣的记者，为《防务新闻》报道陆地战争。她也曾为《政治报》和《内幕防务》工作。她拥有波士顿大学新闻学硕士学位和凯尼恩学院文学学士学位。