Light Dragoons from C Squadron (The Legion) deployed to Poland on Operation CABRIT have undertaken a reconnaissance exercise at Bemowo Piskie.
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The accompanying images of troops from The Legion and their vehicles, taken last Wednesday, were released earlier today by the US Army.
Since March 2017, when A Squadron (The Empire) of The Light Dragoons provided the initial British contingent to the US-led multinational NATO eFP (enhanced Forward Presence) Battle Group in Poland, the British Army has continually provided a fifth Recce Troop for the Stryker-borne 2nd US Second Cavalry Squadron based near Orzysz, close to the Polish border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. The mission of eFP BG POL is to provide a highly mobile deterrent presence in the area of the potentially vulnerable 100km wide Suwalki Gap along the Polish / Lithuanian border. If a military corridor were to be forged across the Suwalki Gap between Belarus, a close Russian ally, and the Kaliningrad exclave – which is not beyond the bounds of possibility when one considers what happened in Georgia in August 2008 and Crimea in February 2014 – the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia would be cut off from Poland and the rest of NATO.
Had DEFENDER-Europe 2020 not been curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this recce exercise would have dovetailed into the bigger picture involving 30,000 US troops being temporarily transported from the Continental United States to practise reinforcement of the four eFP Battle Groups in the region.
