NATO defense ministers are scheduled to meet Thursday in Brussels to discuss the implementation of additional measures aimed at increasing the organization's ability to deter and respond to potential Russian aggression.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and his counterparts from the other 27 NATO member countries expect to upgrade the organization's response force to make it bigger and capable of quicker response, obtain firm commitments from member states for a 5,000 land-based troop response force, secure plans to establish small command centers in the three Baltic states and expand a multinational headquarters in Poland, reported The Associated Press.
Hagel is expected to formally announce that the U.S. will send American military officers to all six of the command and control centers in the Baltic states, and will also contribute officers to the headquarters in Szczecin, Poland.
As for the land-based response force, the U.S. will contribute airlift capacity, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance rather than troops, U.S. ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute said.
NATO officials will also discuss Russian nuclear strategy, according to Reuters.
Last week, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin boasted that the U.S. is not capable of defending against Russia's nuclear weapons due to the country's development of unspecified breakthroughs in military technology, which doesn't sit too well with NATO.
"What worries us most in this strategy is the modernization of the Russian nuclear forces, the increase in the level of training of those forces and the possible combination between conventional actions and the use of nuclear forces, including possibly in the framework of a hybrid war," one NATO diplomat said, according to Reuters.
Despite an overall grim Russian economy, with most sectors facing a 10 percent cut this year, the military budget rose by 33 percent to about 3.3 trillion rubles (about $50 billion), reported The Huffington Post.
Russia's top general, Valery Gerasimov, said last week that the Russian military would obtain more than 50 new intercontinental nuclear missiles in 2015.
President Vladimir Putin endorsed the new military strategy in December when he signed a new doctrine identifying NATO as Russia's biggest threat and allowing for the use of precision weapons "as part of strategic deterrent measures," reported Al Jazeera.
