Nato's tabletop wargame projects moving forces, supplies and casualties across Europe

Exercise Steadfast Foxtrot is underway at Wilhelmsburg Barracks in Ulm, Germany, where Nato is using a tabletop wargame to test how forces could be deployed and then sustained in a contested environment.

The exercise runs until 27 March and is being led by the Allied Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC), which is based in Ulm.

At the centre of the exercise are two main questions: how to keep forces supplied once they have moved, and how to get casualties evacuated and treated when conditions are working against them.

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The Medical Wargame

If a Nato member was under attack, any large-scale medical response would depend on the collaboration of the armed forces and civilian infrastructure.

The wargame explores how patients could be moved to safe locations, using realistic pressures such as blocked routes and bad weather. 

The exercise highlights how much that would depend on civilian support, and focuses on the challenges of linking these systems.

Sustainment Wargame

The second strand focuses on the job that keeps any force in the field going: supply.

In the Sustainment Wargame, participants from military headquarters and civilian organisations are faced with congested routes, disrupted supply chains and infrastructure under pressure as they test how decisions would be made in difficult conditions.

This part of the exercise feeds directly into the further development of Nato's Reinforcement and Sustainment Network, the system used to move forces and supplies across allied territory.

Logistics planning focuses on roads, railways and ports.

It also covers the rules, procedures and agreements needed to move troops and materiel across borders and keep them flowing.

The ROC Drill

For the first time, the annual exercise also includes a Rehearsal of Concept, or ROC, Drill.

It is a run-through of parts of Nato's plan for bringing forces into theatre and keeping them supplied once they arrive.

The drill will test three aspects of how Nato's reinforcement and sustainment network would be activated and used, focusing on some of the most difficult parts of coordinating allied and national activity from preparation through to sustainment.

In a collective defence scenario, up to one million allied troops could move across Europe.

The aim of the drill is to expose friction points in the plan and use the lessons to improve Nato's current operational plan for reinforcement and sustainment.