At the Scene of a War-Game: How UK Would Respond if Russia Attacked Baltics
It’s easy to walk past the non-descript doorway in the middle of Charing Cross underground station in the heart of central London.
Commuters walk past it without a second thought, most not even aware of the two abandoned platforms bathed in ominous red lights, guarded by soldiers just behind the hinges.
That’s the way NATO wants it. Behind the camouflaged entrance, 20 meters underneath the oblivious tourists admiring Trafalgar Square, around 120 soldiers and personnel from across the alliance have spent days pretending the year is 2030 and Russia has just invaded NATO.
The troops are from NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC). They’d be some of the very first NATO troops deployed in a crisis, like if Russian tanks are about to cross over into one-or all-of the Baltic states.
It’s a prospect NATO’s easternmost countries believe is becoming more and more likely. While officials from NATO have long warned that Russia could take a bite out of Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania when the war in Ukraine wraps up, the timeline differs.
Estonia’s military said this month that Russia could be ready to launch a war as early as next year. Recent analysis from defense experts gave a similar deadline, a sharp departure from previous U.K. intelligence estimates, which insisted Russia wouldn’t be able to recover from the Ukraine war for 10 years.
Now, NATO countries are racing against time to build up their ammunition stockpiles, beef up their militaries and get enough air defense systems in place to intercept Russian missiles and drones before the Kremlin feels confident enough to rain them down as part of an invasion attempt.
While the public line is that NATO’s European members and Canada are stepping up, military officials and industry voices often grumble the results of huge defense spending hikes on the continent aren’t coming through fast enough to deter Russia from this scenario.
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NATO vs Russia
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Others say even NATO countries’ pledge to spend 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on their militaries by 2035 will be too little, too late, after decades of banking on the U.S.’s formidable military might to protect Europe. Russia’s military spending has ballooned to around 7.5 percent of GDP.
But this is protection the U.S. is rolling back. President Donald Trump and his administration have already said at least 5,000 U.S. troops will leave Europe to focus on more pressing American concerns elsewhere, like the Indo-Pacific.
It’s not clear whether more will follow, and in these exercises, the two most senior commanders were both American-a signal of the unity the American military wishes to protect within NATO while the U.S. administration blasts a contradictory tune.
The main fear on NATO’s eastern edge is that with the U.S. puling back, Russia may be more willing to risk an invasion.
NATO says it picked 2030 because that’s when the threat from Russia will be “most acute.” It’s also when NATO could be “realistically” ready to go toe-to-toe with Moscow-”but only with the right investment now,” said Lieutenant General Mike Elviss, the British commander of ARRC.
It remains to be seen who will win the race to be ready first-Moscow or NATO. Military chiefs are also pushing for more even money to be thrown at defense, and say without even higher budgets, the alliance’s member countries won’t be able to buy what they sorely need.
“We are at a decisive point,” NATO’s top commander in Europe, U.S. Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, said when introducing the exercises to media allowed to visit the site.
War-Gaming Invasion
Picture the scene: The year is 2030. Russia has amassed tanks and troops all along NATO’s eastern flank, looming over the three Baltic states.
It’s spend weeks carrying out military drills on the edge of its territory, observers watching closely as everything Russia would need to launch an invasion conveniently slides into position. In the background, Russian cyberattacks have sliced at the Baltic countries’ internet access, health facilities and air traffic control systems.
Grynkewich turns to ARRC. The ARRC’s soldiers are one of two pools of troops Grynkewich could call on to defend Europe, and in this wargame, they’re the ones who hurry to Estonia’s eastern edge in the hope that their presence-a NATO show of strength-persuades Russia away from the path of invasion.
But for this exercise, they fail to put off Russia. The Kremlin pushes across all three Baltic states, tanks storming over the border while missiles and drones arc overhead.
While Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania deploy their armies to stem the tide of Russian forces, ARRC plans for how to drive Russia back to their home soil and strike them where it hurts.
The disused London Underground platforms mimic any protected site NATO would use to sniff out, target and take out some of Russia’s most valuable assets. Of the more than 100 people seven stories below Trafalgar Square, around half are actively involved in hitting Russia’s air defenses, like its SA-15s, a short-range air defense system Ukraine has repeatedly targeted in their 4-plus-year-old war.
Under the scarlet lights, the soldiers hunt command centers deep into Russian territory and the anti-aircraft missile systems that shield them all the way up to Russia’s second city, St. Petersburg.
A new type of artificial intelligence, dubbed Project Asgard when it was announced last summer, would be used to find the targets and lock onto them, much quicker than humans can manage manually.
In these drills, NATO prevails. But this simulated victory doesn’t dismiss concerns among experts and military officials that the money NATO countries need to be able to convincingly stare down Russia isn’t making it to defense companies quickly enough.
The industrial side of this effort to churn out military equipment for units like ARRC is still muttering that it hasn’t seen the money promised so it can’t ramp up production.
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This story was originally published May 23, 2026 at 4:00 AM.