A terrifying array of weaponry arrived in the city of Gdansk on Wednesday when the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, rolled in.
The deployment is part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, a project to shore-up NATO forces in eastern Europe after Russia annexed the Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Coupled with battalions in the Baltics, the build-up has been described as NATO’s largest reinforcement in eastern Europe since the Cold War.
Master Sergeant Brent Williams told Stars and Stripes: “This will be the first time two armoured brigades transition within the European theatre sending a full complement of soldiers and equipment into Germany and Poland in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve.”
It comes over concerns that Russia may be eyeing another land grab in eastern Europe.
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In a show of power, Moscow is carrying out a range of military exercises in Belarus, the Baltic Sea and its Kalingrad enclave over the coming days.
And NATO believes the drills could involve around 100,000 troops and include nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.
Officials think the drills will simulate a conflict with the US-led alliance intended to show Russia’s ability to mass large numbers of troops at very short notice in the event of a conflict.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week during a visit to an Estonian army base where British troops have been stationed since March that the alliance remained “calm and vigilant”.
Lithuania’s Defence Minister Raimundas Karoblis has voiced concerns that Russia’s drills risk triggering an accidental conflict or could allow Moscow to leave troops in neighbouring Belarus.
He said: ”We can’t be totally calm. There is a large foreign army massed next to Lithuanian territory.”
Some Western officials including the head of the US Army in Europe, General Ben Hodges, have raised concerns that Russia might use the drills as a “Trojan horse” to make incursions into Poland and Russian-speaking regions in the Baltics.
The Kremlin has rejected the suggestions. Russia says some 13,000 troops from Russia and Belarus will be involved in the September 14 to September 20 drills, below an international threshold that requires large numbers of outside observers.
NATO will send three experts to so-called ‘visitor days’ during the exercises, but a NATO official said these were no substitute for meeting internationally-agreed norms at such exercises that include talking to soldiers and briefings.
The alliance say they have been watching Russia’s preparations for months, including the use of hundreds of rail cars to carry tanks and other heavy equipment into Belarus.
As a precaution, the US Army has moved 600 paratroopers to the Baltics and has taken over guardianship of the airspace of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which lack capable air forces and air defence systems.