The U.S. Army has a rapid reaction force based in Italy — the 173rd Airborne Brigade — but according to a new internal study, it’s not ready to confront a high-tech, well-equipped military force like Russia or its proxies, which is what it was designed and deployed to do.
The problem is that the force, a bulwark of the NATO alliance, is under-equipped, undermanned, and inadequately organized after being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan multiple times over the past decade. The report notes that the brigade does not possess “essential capabilities needed to accomplish its mission effectively and with decisive speed,” according to the analysis.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the 173rd’s paratroopers were the first to reach the Baltic states as a means of potentially countering any Russian or Russian-sponsored moves into any of those countries, and as a deterrent to an attack against NATO’s eastern flank.
But the new assessment lists several “capability gaps” that were seen during the unit’s recent training with Ukrainian troops that have been engaged against Russian-backed separatists who have employed low-cost drones and electronic warfare tools to pinpoint targets for artillery, even as they have destroyed Ukrainian government armored vehicles with state-of-the-art Russian antitank missiles.
The 173rd appears to be suffering from some of the same overuse/neglect that other active-duty infantry units with specific missions and skill sets are suffering: The grind of low-tech conflict in places where they were never designed to fight. The brigade is lacking air defense capabilities and electronic warfare units — capabilities it does not need or use against Islamic State militants and the Taliban, but which are vital in conventional slugfests with Russian or similar forces.
U.S. military commanders have seen first-hand the Ukrainian conflict and the capabilities fielded by Moscow. And they have seen front-line American units have their skill sets and other capabilities dulled by rag-tag police actions in a pair of long-running brush fire wars.
