OPINION:
The Cold War is back in Eastern Europe as NATO concludes a massive exercise meant to show the alliance it is serious about deterring Russia from retaking the Baltics, which are exposed and vulnerable to invasion from the East. Anokanda 2016 involved 30,000 NATO troops from 23 nations that mostly took place in Poland. Sabre Strike, involving 14 nations, is an annual U.S. Army exercise in the Baltics, which saw American A-10 attack aircraft landing on Estonian highways, testing the ability of the aircraft to operate away from large airfields which might very well be destroyed in the event of a Russian attack.
The landing of aircraft on remote stretches of highway was routinely practiced during the Cold War, but was last conducted by A-10s in 1984 and terminated as the Soviet Union began to fall apart. In 2015, Finnish and Swedish F/A-18 and JAS-39 Gripen multi-role fighters, landed and took off from Highway 924 in Finland during a training exercise, reported the Washington Post.
The 4 A-10s involved in this practice scenario were from the 127th Wing, Michigan Air National Guard. They were guided onto the highway landing strip in Jägala, Estonia, by a detachment of soldiers on the ground known as joint terminal attack controllers, or JTACs.
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