The numbers look daunting, but U.S. Army leaders say they know exactly what is expected of them if a full-blown war breaks out in Europe.
They describe it as preparing for “Ukraine’s worst day,” ensuring that the U.S. and its NATO allies are ready to fend off the most aggressive missile-and-drone onslaughts the Russian military can deliver. At the same time, U.S. forces would need to identify — and potentially hit — hundreds of enemy targets.
“We need to be able to intercept, defeat, up to 1,200 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and one-way attack drones every 24-hour period, while at the same time developing, maintaining custody, and processing up to 1,500 targets — all in a 24-hour period,” said Army Brig. Gen. Steven P. Carpenter is the commanding general of Multi-Domain Command Europe, the Army command tasked with synchronizing and executing long-range precision fires and other military capabilities across Europe.
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Gen. Carpenter spoke exclusively with The Washington Times’ Threat Status Podcast at the recent Association of the U.S. Army convention in downtown Washington. He explained in detail how the Army, particularly his command, is readying itself for an almost-apocalyptic scenario involving the world’s two leading nuclear powers entering direct combat.
The Army, perhaps more than any other U.S. military service, would be at the forefront of that theoretical fight in the relatively confined theater of Europe. The Army has about 80,000 personnel stationed in Europe, though the exact numbers fluctuate, and the Trump administration is reviewing America’s force posture in Europe and could move troops out of the theater.
Gen. Carpenter’s comments came just days before space analysts and national security insiders said that the Russian satellite Cosmos 2612 passed within an estimated 85 feet of the U.S.-Finnish satellite ICEYE-X36, which is believed to provide high-resolution intelligence to the Ukrainian military. It appears likely, specialists say, that Russia either intended to attack the U.S.-Finnish space asset or was conducting a dress rehearsal for eventual space warfare.
That is just one example of how Russia appears to be testing how far it can push the U.S. and NATO. Russia is pushing the envelope in other ways.
Last month, NATO jets shot down a suspected Russian drone in Lithuanian airspace. It was the latest in a string of suspected Russian drones moving into NATO’s airspace, which analysts generally believe is an attempt by the Kremlin to probe the alliance’s willingness to fight back.
At the same time, Russia’s hybrid tactics — cyberattacks, political influence operations, alleged infrastructure sabotage, and others — are accelerating and fueling what some observers view as a new, 21st-century Cold War.
That means the U.S. and its allies must be ready with long-range artillery, counter-missile and counter-drone capabilities and other tools if tensions with Russia escalate into all-out war.
Gen. Carpenter says his command is at the center of that effort.
“For us, we prepare for Ukraine’s worst day, because we know that we need to be a net contributor to the joint force as the land component, as the United States Army, but also as the land component for NATO,” he said, referring to the American role as the most powerful military force in the 32-nation alliance.
Multi-Domain Command Europe is the U.S. Army’s senior fires headquarters on the continent. It is tasked with synchronizing long-range artillery strikes, air and missile defense, and cyber, space and information capabilities.
Part of its broad mission is to disrupt enemy ground forces and prevent them from successfully employing an anti-access and area-denial, or A2/AD, strategy, an approach embedded in the military doctrines of both Russia and China. It refers to the combination of defensive systems, artillery, radar, and other tools to deny an enemy the ability to occupy or move through a specific area of land, air or sea.
Gen. Carpenter said his command would play a key role in preventing an enemy from successfully employing that strategy, specifically seeking to blunt the enemy’s momentum at the outset of a fight.
To do that, he said, Multi-Domain Command Europe would use a host of capabilities across multiple domains, including but not limited to artillery fires that can hit enemy positions at significant distances.
“We have a cyber formation that’s able to do defensive cyber operations to protect our systems,” he said. “We operate in the aerial domain as well as the land and the subterrestrial domain … We have electronic attack on our aerial and terrestrial platforms.”
Gen. Carpenter also said he agrees with the recent assessment of NATO’s top commander, U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who said earlier this month that the alliance is “ready to fight tonight” if Russia attacks. For the first time, Gen. Grynkewich publicly laid out how the alliance would win.
“If someone is foolish enough to attack us, we will fight. We will stop the attack,” the U.S. Air Force general told an audience at the Warsaw Security Forum.
The general, who took over the NATO command in July 2025, urged the European leaders in attendance at the annual defense conference to step up support for Ukraine in response to Russia’s increasingly aggressive actions against NATO members, including airspace violations, arson attacks, sabotage and cyberattacks.
“I do not assess that conflict is imminent or inevitable,” Gen. Grynkewich said. “I want to assure the 1 billion citizens of our alliance that we’ve got this,” he said.
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