Exercise Reforger

Over View
The exercise was officially intended to ensure that NATO (principally W. Germany and the USA) had the ability to quickly deploy forces to West Germany in the event of a armed conflict with the Warsaw Pact. Many Germans found it a major inconvenience and did not like some of the Anglo-American troops' drunken antics that took place afterwards.

The North German Plain and Germany's Fulda Gap were the persevered Soviet/E. German (GDR)/Czechoslovak/Hungarian/Polish targets. The USSR, GDR and Poland were seen as the backbone of such an invasion.

It's Name
Exercise Reforger is taken from- return of forces to Germany.

The exercise it's self
Exercise Reforger (from return of forces to Germany) was an annual exercise conducted, during the Cold War, by NATO. The exercise was intended to ensure that NATO had the ability to quickly deploy forces to West Germany in the event of a conflict with the Warsaw Pact.

The Reforger exercise itself was first conceived in 1967. The Johnson administration announced plans to withdraw approximately two divisions from Europe during 1968. As a demonstration of its continuing commitment to the defense of NATO and to illustrate its capability of rapid reinforcement, a large scale force deployment was planned that would deploy a division or more to West Germany in a regular annual exercise. The first such exercise was conducted beginning on 6 January 1969. These exercises continued annually past the end of the Cold War, except for the year 1989, until 1993. Reforger 1975 marked the operational presence of the United States Marine Corps in Europe for the first time since World War I when the 2nd Marine Division's 32nd Marine Amphibious Unit (32nd MAU) was deployed from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina as part of that exercise. Reforger 1988 was billed as the largest European ground maneuver since the end of World War II as 125,000 troops were deployed.[1]

Reforger was not merely a show of force—in the event of a conflict, it would be the actual plan to strengthen the NATO presence in Europe. In that instance, it would have been referred to as Operation Reforger. Important components in Reforger included the Military Airlift Command, the Military Sealift Command, and the Civil Reserve Air Fleet.

The US Army also increased its rapid-reinforcement capability by prepositioning huge stocks of equipment and supplies in Europe at POMCUS sites. The maintenance of this equipment has provided extensive on-the-job training to reserve-component support units.

Operation Bright Star, the biannual deployment of American army and air force units to Egypt, serves much the same purpose as Reforger did.

Duration
It ran from 1967 to 1993.

Participants


Principally USA and the FRG (W. Germany), with the Dutch and Belgians less so. Several other nations participated in in a minor capacity in 1992, 1988 and 1967.


 * 1) Canada- 1992,
 * 2) France- 1992,
 * 3) Luxembourg- 1992,
 * 4) Norway- 1992,
 * 5) Denmark- 1988 and 1992,
 * 6) The UK- 1992, 1988 and 1967,
 * 7) USA- Always,
 * 8) Belgium- Always,
 * 9) Netherlands- Always,
 * 10) W. Germany- Always.

Also see

 * Exercise FleetEx '83
 * Exercise Zapad-81
 * A nuclear\atomic holocaust or nuclear apocalypse
 * "Poland is 'toast'!"
 * River Elbe Line
 * Exercise Teamwork '88
 * Operation Northern Norway
 * Operation Chrome Dome
 * Operation Gladio
 * NATO command structures and HQs

Link

 * 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Reforger
 * 2) http://www.32nd-division.org/history/REFORGER/32-REFORGER(2).html