The Sentinel Weekly: Professionals study logistics
Plus Russian strategy, sabotage in Poland, FCAS crisis talks and more
The EU this week made the case for massive investment in transport infrastructure to facilitate the movement of soldiers and their equipment across Europe, as well as streamlining permitting and customs procedures, to improve the continent’s response to a possible Russian invasion.
In a communication to other EU institutions on Wednesday, the European Commission identified a long list of bureaucratic and physical hurdles to moving troops across national borders. A tank transporter might have to wait up to 45 days for permission to enter a country, only to then find that it doesn’t fit under a bridge or through a tunnel.
For the bureaucratic half of that equation, the Commission proposed adopting a single set of rules for cross-border transport – a ‘military Schengen’ – to take effect by 2027. To expand the physical infrastructure, it suggested a ten-fold increase in EU military mobility funding under its next seven-year budget from 2028-2034, to €17.65 billion.
But that only accounts for a fraction of the spending to come. The Commission said €100 billion was urgently needed across some 500 projects to upgrade four “priority corridors”. Some of this might be drawn from the EU’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe (SAFE) lending facility, and national budgets are also likely to play a role: Infrastructure upgrades fall under the 1.5% of GDP that NATO members have agreed to spend on defence-adjacent projects by 2035.
Infrastructure will also need to be hardened against “ever more frequent cyber and hybrid attacks”, the Commission said. Recent events have driven the point home: Saboteurs this week blew up a Polish railway line used to supply Ukraine (see In the news below), while airports across Europe have recently been closed by cyberattacks and drone incursions.
Dispersal and reinforcement
In a hot war, logistics networks would also be directly targeted, meaning that multiple viable routes will need to be created to build redundancy into the system. Unavoidable chokepoints, such as the Suwalki Gap and the largest ports and rail hubs, will need to be heavily fortified against both conventional and hybrid attacks.
That all suggests that even the initial €100 billion will only scratch the surface of what will be required in the longer term. The Commission talks of adapting transport infrastructure for abnormal loads “by reinforcing and enlarging rail and road bridges and tunnels and by significantly increasing transport capacity, notably in ports and airports”, and even of standardising rail gauges across the bloc.
The project could eventually bring benefits to the broader economy. As anyone who has tried to take a cross-border train in Europe can attest, the continent’s infrastructure could do with some investment.
There could be disruption on the horizon, too. The Commission’s plan includes an “enhanced response system” that would, in an emergency, give the military priority access to transport infrastructure and essential services. Cancelling trains to let an ammunition shipment be hurried along the tracks would be unpopular – but might bring home to Europeans the reality of the threat we face.
Point of view: Russia will broaden the conflict
Russia’s hybrid attacks and provocations in Europe “will intensify in 2026” as President Vladimir Putin tries to drive a wedge between Ukraine and its Western backers, The Economist’s Russia editor Arkady Ostrovsky wrote last week in the magazine’s The World Ahead supplement.
Europe has witnessed an uptick over the past year in hostile but deniable activity including misinformation campaigns around elections, airspace disruption, and sabotage of critical infrastructure – with Russia seen as the most likely culprit.
Ukraine’s tenacity on the battlefield, backed by Western money and equipment, have denied Putin the knockout blow that he had hoped for, Ostrovsky writes. The economic strain within Russia – brought on by sanctions and by Ukraine’s long-range strikes against oil refineries – may limit his ability to throw forward more waves of men for incremental gains.
But neither does he want to “restore peace and stability”, as Europe hopes, since that would expose the folly of his aggression. As such, Putin “may decide his best option is to freeze the active phase of the war and turn it into a permanent struggle with occasional flare-ups”.
Putin has painted himself into a corner, Ostrovsky’s colleague Edward Carr wrote in a related piece. By invading Ukraine, “Russia has mortgaged its economy, harried Finland and Sweden into joining NATO, subordinated itself to China and scythed through a generation of young men”. The moment of real danger will come when Russians start to ask what it was all for. “Putin could accept defeat abroad and impose terror at home. Or he could escalate.”
In the news
Saboteurs blew up a Polish railway line between Warsaw and the eastern city of Lublin on Sunday. “This route is also crucially important for delivering aid to Ukraine,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. On Wednesday, Poland blamed Russia for the incident and ordered the closure of Russia’s last consulate in the country.
The FCAS consortium could continue working on a shared ‘air combat cloud’ even if plans to jointly design a sixth-generation fighter jet fall through, the FT reported. This would provide digital and AI interoperability for diversified hardware. Airbus and Indra would continue to lead for Germany and Spain respectively, while France’s Thales would replace Dassault – whose bid for more control triggered the crisis in the FCAS consortium, as The Sentinel wrote last week.
Dassault will sell up to 100 Rafale fighter jets to Ukraine over the next ten years, under an MOU signed by Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. The deal also includes a new generation of SAMP/T air-defence systems made by MBDA and Thales, and a range of other drones, interceptors and ammunition.
Several privately held European defence companies are exploring initial public offerings, including the UK’s Doncasters Group, Franco-German KNDS, and Czechoslovak Group, the FT reported. Investors are bullish on the sector and share prices have risen both for established public companies and for recent listings.
The Times has a feature on how Ukraine’s naval drones attack Russian targets in the Black Sea, with details on the Katran drones made by Military Armored Company.
The UK should accelerate its rearmament plans, since it currently has “nowhere near” the capability to defend itself and its overseas territories from military attack, Members of Parliament have found in a report.
Russian drones operating over Ukraine once again breached the airspace of Romania and Moldova. Romania and Poland scrambled jets.
Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius wants the EU to “learn from Ukrainians how to transform” the defence sector and to channel funding to innovative small and mid-sized defence companies, Euractiv reported.
And finally
There’s a new kid in town: Counteroffensive Pro, the Kyiv-based defence tech publication run by Tim Mak, is rebranding as The Arsenal and expanding with a new Europe-focused newsletter penned by Nicholas Wallace. You can read the first edition here.
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