Thread by @JackDetsch

Finland joined NATO this week already spending 2% of GDP on defense, the alliance's target.

🇫🇮 will get F-35s in 2 yrs, and already fires 🇺🇸 standoff missiles.

🇫🇮 can surge from a standing army smaller than NYC's police force to ~280K troops in war.
foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/06/fin…

While NATO went through 8 rounds of enlargement, expanding the alliance to include 30 countries and adding nations, such as Spain & Slovenia, that punched below their weight on military $, Finland—with the energy to match the world's most caffeinated people—was getting stronger

🇫🇮 is ready to mobilize a force of up to 280,000 in wartime, owing to a national conscription model.

The call-ups aren’t a bunch of benchwarmers.

“They can mobilize pretty quickly a very professional group,” said Jim Townsend, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense.

NATO was already in the region before 🇫🇮 entry, with Norway closer to the Russian port city of Murmansk than 🇫🇮 and Narva, Estonia, nearer to St. Petersburg—with the stopping power of swamps, forests, and water in between NATO and Russian lines.

The entry of Finland will force the alliance to update its command structure and rejigger defense plans farther north, but Finnish officials see it as an opportunity to extend deterrence into the North and the Baltic seas.

Finland’s military is going to be put to NATO-standard tests right now. The Defender 23 exercise kicking off in Europe this month is the first large-scale op 🇫🇮 has conducted with NATO.

🇫🇮 pilots will conduct overflights of the North Sea in F/A-18 Hornets during the exercise

US officials are already looking at options to integrate Finland’s airfields and intel collection capabilities into NATO.

“It’s an agile combat employment,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Loh, director of U.S. Air National Guard. “They have landing strips just about anywhere."

Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine has compounded Russia’s difficulties in the west.

🇷🇺 once-feared 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, with tanks, artillery, and missile defenses, suffered heavy losses in the assault on Kharkiv.

So did the 138th Motorized Rifle Brigade.