“If you think about a real war, this could be a place where German transport planes would start,” said Maj. Peter Pöhlmann, a German officer who oversaw the construction of a new refueling station for jets that could burn through as much as one million liters of fuel each day during the exercises.
Douglas Barrie, a military aerospace expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said such exercises must test whether aircraft from so many nations can communicate directly with each other.
General Gerhartz agreed that this remains a big challenge, but recounted a real-life demonstration of coordination between Germany and NATO commanders that took place just days earlier.
Over the course of a week, NATO warplanes had been scrambled 15 times to intercept Russian jets that had strayed close to Baltic states’ airspace, in what Lithuania’s Defense Ministry on Monday said was likely Moscow’s response to the exercises in Germany.
Then this past weekend, German forces tracking a plane from Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania, quickly handed off command to NATO officials, who deployed fighter jets. Hours later, a commercial airliner over Germany lost radio contact with air traffic controllers, putting General Gerhartz’s forces back in control of what was deemed a domestic alert.
The military exercises come at a turning point for Germany, which has for years fallen short of spending 2 percent of its G.D.P. on defense, the threshold NATO states are supposed to commit. Late last year, the government in Berlin said it expected to meet the 2 percent target by 2025.
But some allies of Ukraine remain skeptical, citing Germany’s lagging weapons deliveries to the country despite Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s sweeping talk of a new era following Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Mr. Scholz has committed 100 billion euros, or $113 billion, to bolster Germany’s armed forces, which have been repeatedly warned about major deficiencies in the state and readiness of its equipment and weapon systems.
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