US-Baltic Defense Partnerships: A Return on Investment
By Jacob Myers
In an era marked by evolving geopolitical challenges and the imperative for robust defense capabilities along NATO’s Eastern Flank, the strategic partnership between the United States and Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia emerges as a beacon of collaborative security and collective capabilities solutions. As the Baltic countries navigate an increasingly complex landscape, assessing their military investments and strategic partners has heightened significance. This article delves into the symbiotic relationship between the United States and the Baltics, focusing on the multifaceted benefits derived from their defense collaboration. Highlighting the region’s burgeoning defense capabilities, its operationally relevant geography, and recent defense policies, the article explores how this partnership not only strengthens the security posture of all parties but also acts as a return on investment for US defense while simultaneously fostering regional stability in the Baltic region and strengthening NATO’s defense.
As the Baltic countries navigate an increasingly complex landscape, assessing their military investments and strategic partners has heightened significance.
Across the Baltic region, investments in defense infrastructure (both physical and technical) and defense procurements in aviation, long-range fires, and integrated air and missile defense provide valuable opportunities for US forces to enhance their readiness and operational effectiveness. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have focused heavily on their defense funding strategies. For example, as of May 2024, Latvia has committed over 2.4 percent of GDP to defense spending, with plans to reach 3 percent by 2027. This spending earmarks purchases on High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and M109 Paladin upgrades to strengthen land forces’ lethality and further build credible forward-defense capabilities. These actions provide fruitful opportunities for interoperability with the United States and NATO and the ability to build readiness across formations. Some recent examples were found in the rotation of US Army Divisional Artillery headquarters and Security Force Assistant Brigades across the region since 2022. These units had the ability to test and train on allied radios, fire structures, and signal platforms alongside their own equipment. As a result, units could familiarize themselves with the operational environment and hone basic branch skills in a permissive environment. Continued deployments like this allow subject matter experts to cross-train and curve the learning on high-end systems while simultaneously improving understanding and networks with Baltic partners.
Geographic Advantage to Support Real-World Training Scenarios
Chief of Staff of the Army General Randy A. George has articulated his four focus areas for the US Army to shape the force in the new age of combat. Focus area number two, delivering ready combat formations, requires the United States to get Army units to the fight and sustain them over time. Joint exercises in the region support this goal, as they improve the US Army's understanding of the future operational environment by leveraging the Baltic defense partnership through real-world training opportunities in a unique geographic location.
Collaborative training initiatives through exercises also serve as force multipliers, enhancing the combat readiness and proficiency of both armed forces. Annual joint exercises, such as Saber Strike and Baltic Operations (BALTOPS), enable personnel from both countries to conduct realistic training scenarios across land, sea, air, and cyber domains. By exchanging best practices and lessons learned, Allied forces cultivate a shared understanding of operational concepts and tactics, enhancing interoperability and cohesion within multinational coalitions. Additionally, military-to-military exchanges and personnel rotations facilitate cultural understanding and foster enduring partnerships between the three nations and the United States, strengthening the fabric of transatlantic security cooperation.
In 2023, exercise Astral Knight, for example, resulted in US, Latvian, and Danish units at the echelon tasked to identify and focus training efforts for future exercises on command-and-control (C2) networks. This exposure helped address C2 gaps among the formations and offered US Army signal and fire personnel real-time challenges to overcome. Over time, this has attracted other regional partners to include Lithuania, Estonia, and Sweden in addressing geographic variables in C2 coordination. The exercise was successful as communication was enhanced, and the US Army’s understanding of the Baltic operating environment was refined. As these exercises continue in the region on a Division or Corps-level scale, they will create an environment to work through mission partner network discrepancies and enable greater awareness of multidomain and combat operations within this vital geographic location.
Army units in the region can continue to avail of live fire exercise opportunities on new ranges, which simultaneously builds procedural mechanisms within US and NATO units and offers challenging logistical scenarios that would be hard to replicate in national training centers in the United States. Another recent military exercise, Swift Response, which took place in 2023 in Latvia and Estonia, highlights such a vignette, as the exercise enabled US pre-positioned HIMARS to be drawn in Europe and moved into a training area used for a cross-US-Latvian and Estonian fires event. This was significant, as there are limited opportunities for the United States to draw and project this equipment for a live fire event worldwide. The opportunity empowered leaders to think through movement across Europe while working with NATO partners. To this end, Baltic partners are expanding training areas, creating the largest training area in the Baltics capable of hosting battalion maneuvers and HIMARS live fires. Access to this type of training will be of notable benefit to US Army units seeking to hone and improve fires planning and execution in an operationally relevant area in Europe. As Latvian and Estonian forces continue to host US and NATO-led initiatives in HIMARS, this exposure fosters a culture of understanding and mutual support and refines warfighter coordination during crisis response scenarios.
Furthermore, NATO’s new regional plans adopted at the Vilnius Summit in 2023, will aim to equip allies to counter threats to their security simultaneously and focus on promoting readiness across all domains. In 2024, the NATO-led exercise Steadfast Defender tested aspects of the new plans and, for the first time since the Cold War, witnessed a collection of over 90,000 troops from all NATO allies executing a series of national and multinational large-scale. Live exercises were conducted across various geographical locations. As US Army Europe-Africa command will likely continue to complement future iterations of Steadfast Defender through the US exercise Defender series, this pivotal moment in European defense can leverage the access that Latvia and Estonia afford and will help to better plan and account for US Army logistics and C2 demands.
Burden Sharing and Capability Investments
Since 2022, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have undertaken the greatest military procurements in their histories. As mentioned, HIMARS and upgrades to artillery systems are the immediate focus. In coming years, Baltic formations will receive more Norwegian (or National) Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System NASAMS and the German IRIS-T system for greater integrated air and missile defense, Latvian formations will acquire Naval Strike Missiles to support maritime domain awareness and targeting initiatives, Blackhawks to support air operations, infantry fighting vehicles for greater combat maneuverability, and upgrades to existing equipment. With these efforts to enhance defense capabilities in the region, the Baltics have quickly transformed their armed forces to, in some cases, security providers and exporters for NATO.
US forces exposure to these systems supports opportunities for cross-training and professional military education and directly enhances security cooperation initiatives for the combatant command. These purchases are also confidence-building measures for the alliance. As the region builds weapons familiarity, expands its air defense posture, and strengthens its geographic position, collectively, it reduces reliance on allied support during contingencies, thereby offering commanders flexibility to support operations in other theaters. As the US Army units continue to provide advice and assistance to the regions’ defense investments in infrastructure and high-end weapons procurements, military leaders can be assured that units are improving readiness, building credible interoperable forces, and maintaining a forward presence in the region, all while simultaneously showing commitment to NATO’s collective defense.
Furthermore, the Baltics’ targeted investments in NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence mission underscore their willingness to shoulder responsibilities in safeguarding the Alliance's eastern flank. Through joint procurement programs and information-sharing agreements, the Baltics and the United States foster synergies in addressing common security challenges, ensuring a more equitable distribution of defense burdens within the alliance. This exposure also provides unique opportunities for US formations to gain critical knowledge and lessons learned that can be used to improve the understanding of the future fight in formations back home.
Challenges Ahead
Despite the positive impacts a US-Baltic relationship has on force readiness, there are notable challenges that, if unaddressed, would act as irritants to the burgeoning relationship and slow defense objectives. The first and potentially most glaring is infrastructure and training space. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia only have a few military bases capable of supporting incoming units at a scale that the US Army has become accustomed to in places like Germany, Italy, and Poland. Starting in 2022, the Baltics witnessed an influx of allied countries to these bases with no room to expand, and life-support challenges abounded and significantly impacted how soldiers lived and executed training. In a short time, training spaces came at a premium, and units were inventive when meeting essential mission tasks. As mentioned, Latvia seeks to address this hurdle by building a new base to accommodate battalion live fires and earmarking military spending towards barracks and dining facilities to host foreign partners more adequately. However, this will take time to correct and could cause US leaders to pass on long-term training rotations in the region in the future.
Despite the positive impacts a US-Baltic relationship has on force readiness, there are notable challenges that, if unaddressed, would act as irritants to the burgeoning relationship and slow defense objectives.
Another notable defense challenge is the manning deficit across Baltic formations. Again, to review Latvia, only recently having reinstated the National Defense Service in 2023, the country finds its own readiness and retention impacted by low numbers across the ranks. Estonia and Lithuania can boast a deep reserve pool due to never-ending conscription, but with small populations at approximately 1.3 and 2.1 million, respectively, the talent pool is under stress. In all cases, this becomes troublesome not only for projecting combat forces against Russian provocations but also in terms of enhancing capabilities with US and NATO forces. All three nations are undergoing the greatest procurements in their defense history but, in various ways, lack the education and expertise necessary for sustaining capabilities. Areas where the United States would like to partner, such as HIMARS and fire support competency, find it challenging as these partners have no Fires Center of Excellence to peg professional military education. Additionally, fires experts are often dual- or triple-, hatted, covering other roles and responsibilities. As is the case, even if an expert is identified for broadening experiences at US training locations, given the manning challenges, most cannot depart or risk hindering missions at home. An argument could be made that with more Allied presence, exposure to experts speeds up learning. Ultimately, the Baltic nations will have to uncover inventive ways to retain and develop talent if newly acquired systems are to support NATO’s deterrence.
Conclusion
At a time when the fate of Ukraine and democratic values are on the line, NATO allies must “sustain [their] resolve,” as President Biden remarked in Europe, and maintain unwavering support on the continent. The US defense partnership with Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia yields tangible returns on military investment, characterized by enhanced force readiness, equitable burden sharing, and synergistic cooperation in training core competencies. Despite the challenges ahead, by leveraging the Baltic states’ strategic contributions to regional security, the United States has shown that it reinforces its commitment to collective defense and strengthens the resilience of the transatlantic alliance in an era of evolving security challenges. As all nations continue to deepen their defense cooperation, the foundation for enduring stability and prosperity in the Baltic region grows stronger, building paths for a secure and resilient Euro-Atlantic community.
MAJ Jacob Myers is a Foreign Area Officer and former Army Attaché at US Mission Riga, Latvia, from 2021 to 2024. He holds a BA from American University and an MIPP in Eurasian Affairs from George Washington University’s Elliott School. All views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army or Department of Defense.