How NATO Plans and Runs Its Major Military Exercises
Steadfast Defender 2024 put about 90,000 personnel into an Article 5 scenario. NATO used the military exercises to test new defense plans and reinforcement.
BRUSSELS, Nov. 6, 2026 — NATO described Exercise Steadfast Defender 2024 as its largest military exercise in decades when the alliance launched the drills on Jan. 24, 2024. The public announcement said about 90,000 personnel would take part in months-long maneuvers spanning the North Atlantic and Europe, and that the exercise would test NATO’s ability to defend against a near-peer adversary in an Article 5 scenario.
A U.S. Defense Department spotlight later summarized the scale in more detail. Steadfast Defender 2024 involved around 90,000 forces from 31 Allies and NATO partner Sweden, more than 50 naval assets, more than 80 air platforms and more than 1,100 combat vehicles, including 166 tanks, 533 infantry fighting vehicles and 417 armored personnel carriers. The Defense Department said the series of national and multinational exercises ran from Jan. 24, 2024, until the end of May and was based on NATO’s then-new defense plans.
What a major NATO exercise is designed to show
Allied Command Operations, writing from Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, said Steadfast Defender would demonstrate the ability to deploy forces rapidly from North America and other parts of the alliance to reinforce the defense of Europe. The command said the exercise was meant to show that NATO can conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of kilometres, from the High North to Central and Eastern Europe.
Those aims are logistical as much as tactical. Moving troops and equipment across the Atlantic, then sustaining them through a sequence of linked national drills, is the practical test behind the Article 5 language in the January 2024 launch statement. The Defense Department’s summary makes the same point in shorter form: the exercise was intended to demonstrate an ability to deploy quickly and to put new defense plans into practice.
NATO does not run one template for every exercise. Some are large, multi-month events built around collective defense. Others are smaller, regional or national drills that the alliance folds into a wider series, as the Defense Department said was the case with Steadfast Defender. The common thread is rehearsal: headquarters practice command and control, nations practice reinforcement routes, and units practice operating with partners whose equipment and procedures differ from their own.
An example of that smaller end of the scale is already on this site. Poland hosted Exercise Koalicja, a national drill that also involved Ukrainian forces and drew NATO attention as allies worked through interoperability on NATO’s eastern flank.
Major exercises are snapshots, not standing troop levels. Steadfast Defender’s 90,000-person figure described participants over several months in 2024, not a permanent reinforcement of Europe. The Defense Department and NATO presented the number as a demonstration of capacity — and of the political signal that capacity is meant to send. Exercise reporting is collected on the military exercises hub and the NATO page. See also Exercise Koalicja and NATO forces coverage.
Sources
- NATO: Steadfast Defender gets underway (Jan. 24, 2024)
- SHAPE: STEADFAST Defender 2024
- U.S. Department of Defense: Steadfast Defender 24
