Drones, doubts as US allies look to NATO summit

As Estonia's defence minister opened a tech conference this week focused heavily on cutting-edge military equipment, he said his nation's strategy in the face of mounting Russian pressure was to turn itself into a "fly that can paralyse an elephant".

Estonia and its fellow nearby Baltic states of Latvia and Lithuania are among the first of America's allies to make good on U.S. President Donald Trump's demand that they devote at least 5% of their gross domestic product on defence.

That means a combination of conscription, drones, long-range rockets and "whole-of-society" efforts to prepare for war.

It's an approach increasingly being advocated for what might be termed a whole new generation of "frontline" governments and states from Finland and Romania to Taiwan and the Philippines.

It's also being talked of in more established Western militaries such as those of the U.S. and Britain, with speculation that upcoming reforms will put much lower emphasis on heavy equipment such as tanks and more on unmanned systems, such as drones.

But it's also an approach leaving some worried that excessive talk of technology is being used as an excuse to fail to provide the forces that may still be needed to win or deter a war.

Earlier this month, the new U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, confirmed what had been rumoured for months - that the U.S. intends to cut back troops stationed on the continent, although he said discussions on this were unlikely to start until after the NATO summit in the Dutch capital, The Hague.

"President Trump just said...this is going to happen and it's going to happen now," Whitaker told a conference in Estonia earlier this month.

"This is going to be orderly, but we are not to have any more patience for foot-dragging in this situation...We just need to work through the practical consequences."

U.S. officials have made it clear they intend to use that meeting to push every NATO member to spend at least 5% of their GDP on defence, more than twice what many of them commit to at present.

How that discussion goes may shape how many U.S. troops stay.

In multiple European nations, then, there are growing worries about what that really means.

Under former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration, the NATO alliance and U.S. European Command drew up plans to defend eastern, central and northern Europe from potential Russian incursion. But those plans relied heavily on large commitments of tanks and troops led by the United States.

Now, despite increasing U.S. defence spending overall, there is mounting speculation that some of those U.S. heavy tank brigades that might fight in Europe may simply be abolished.

At the end of April, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed the U.S. Army to become "leaner", with Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll telling reporters what the Pentagon called the "old way of doing war" was no longer sufficient.

"These are hard decisions," said Driscoll, saying that "legacy systems that have been around a long time" were likely to be cut to make the force "the most lethal they can be."

While neither mentioned any particular systems likely to be axed, they said the U.S. Army would be putting more effort into long-range strike missiles to hit both sea and shore targets particularly in the Pacific. They cited the example of recent fighting in Ukraine as showing how effective such weaponry could be. That offers little comfort to nervous European governments.

MIXED SIGNALS

This week, Hegseth met with Polish Deputy Prime Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz - who is also defence minister - at the Pentagon, calling Poland a "model ally" for spending almost 5 percent of GDP on defence and building the largest army in Europe, a force that will include hundreds of U.S.- and South Korean-built tanks.

According to the Pentagon, Poland currently hosts some 8,000-plus U.S. personnel, most of them rotating through from other bases in the U.S. or Europe.

Some U.S. forces are also forward-located in the Baltic states including HIMARS batteries in Estonia and Apache attack helicopters in Latvia. Others including airborne forces and armour pass through during the exercise season or have been deployed fast during crises.

Exactly how much of that is under question is hard to predict.

Outside the high-profile U.S. embrace of Poland, some European officials complain that their U.S. counterparts - particularly in Washington - have shown less interest in discussing such specifics.

Senior U.S. European Command personnel have continued to assert U.S. support, but are seen to be much less in the loop.

Some current administration officials are rumoured to believe that such U.S. forces in the former Baltic states are antagonising Russia and making matters worse.

But others, particularly in the U.S. military, view them as providing much-needed deterrence by making it clear any attack would drag in the United States.

What is clear is that the focus of U.S. defence spending is shifting fast, including to homeland defence.

The Trump administration's plans to do so include America's first trillion-dollar defence budget.

But it is increasingly clear that significant amounts of that will be focused on the U.S. homeland, including $175 billion for a new "Golden Dome" missile defence shield the administration says it wants ready and operational by 2029.

This week, the Pentagon announced more than 1,000 further U.S. military personnel to help secure the U.S. southern border with Mexico, joining more than 8,000 already there.

Beyond homeland defence, officials have made it clear the priority is confronting China - but that still leaves a huge amount unclear.

At worst, some worry that lack of clarity means more allied effort is now going into posturing than sensible military planning.

In the short term, that means working to ensure that next month's NATO summit avoids too much open disagreement.

That is one reason why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected to at least largely stay away, while other major decisions including getting alliance-wide agreement on the spending target might wait until later in the year

Meanwhile, Western diplomats say discussions are underway among European governments - likely including at the NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels this week - to find mathematical formulas to reclassify spending to reach the Trump administration's 5% target through reclassifying existing spending rather than finding all new money.

Suggested examples include the spending definition to include infrastructure such as bridges that can transport heavy weapons or spending on civil preparedness and cyber resilience.

U.S. TRAINERS ON TAIWAN

Those discussions will also be watched in Asia, where the Trump administration is putting similar pressure on partners including Japan and Taiwan to hit the same 5% target.

Some have suggested that Taiwan - widely believed to be under particular threat of Chinese invasion - should be spending as much as twice that to deserve U.S. protection.

That is probably politically untenable, particularly given the challenges the Taiwan government is finding in pushing existing spending through its parliament.

Speaking to a U.S. House of Representatives committee earlier this month, retired U.S. Admiral Mark Montgomery said he believed 5% was the maximum peacetime democracies could manage.

U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that they believe Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. The United States has long maintained "strategic ambiguity" over whether it would respond militarily should that happen.

Montgomery grabbed headlines in Taiwan and beyond by telling the committee the U.S. already had some 500 military trainers on the island, several times the number previously acknowledged or reported - but he said it needed to be at least a thousand.

"We absolutely have to grow the joint training team on Taiwan," he said.

Montgomery did not describe the make-up of the U.S. training, though it likely comprises a mixture of regular force personnel, contractors and potentially reservists.

Much of their focus is reportedly on ensuring Taiwan's military - including its historically ineffective conscript force - is much more prepared for high-intensity, high-tech warfare.

At the same Committee hearing, retired U.S. Army Pacific commanding General Charles Flynn warned that the decision of a previous administration to sell 100 harpoon ship missile launchers to Taiwan was largely useless if the island did not have sufficient missile crews with the proper training.

The example of Ukraine has shown that conscripted troops can fight hard for years even with only limited support but using cutting-edge technology, particularly drones.

But many in both Taiwan and the Baltic states have long believed that U.S. support remains vital to sustaining a successful fight.

In this month's "Hedgehog" drills in Estonia - named for a creature that famously defeats many larger predators, Baltic troops including conscripts and NATO soldiers worked with new drones and dug trenches intended for the current exercise but deliberately positioned to be used if Russia attacks for real.

The concept of "peace through strength" remains as valid as ever, but the current version still needs work, and it remains unclear whether next month's NATO summit will help or hinder that.