NATO is building warehouses for its military equipment in Poland for a quarter of a billion dollars
NATO is launching its largest construction project in recent memory. It's a facility in Poland that will house American military equipment, according to the US defense publication Defense News, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Voice of America reports this.
NATO confirmed plans to create warehouses in Poland to house American armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition, the quantity of which will be sufficient to arm an entire brigade in case the threat of confrontation with Russia increases.
Construction plans have been in place for a long time. In 2018, the US Army Corps of Engineers issued a request for logging services for 38 hectares around the base.
Funding will come from the NATO Investment Program (NSIP). The program receives funds from contributions from 29 member countries, the amount of which is determined depending on the size of the country's economy.
The NATO Secretary General confirmed plans to build warehouses at an airbase in Powidz, Poland, west of Warsaw, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the construction of the warehouses should “underline the fact that the US presence in Poland has grown.”
Construction will cost approximately $260 million. Construction work will begin in the summer of 2019 and will take about two years. The decision was made to strengthen NATO’s presence on the eastern flank “in response to Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea and the armed confrontation in the Donbass,” notes AFP.
Plans for the depot predate a proposal Poland submitted to the United States to build “Fort Trump.” The Polish government is convincing the United States to station a contingent in the country on a permanent basis and is ready to pay $2 billion annually for this.
NATO is building a quarter-billion-dollar warehouse for its military equipment in Poland.