The head U.S. general in Europe on Tuesday warned Congress of shortfalls in “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capacity given that increasing and growing threat of Russia.”
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., asked Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, head of U.S. European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, about American capabilities to deter Russian aggression in Europe.
“I think that we’re still in a six-month period here where we’re looking at what our options are,” Scaparrotti said, according to The Washington Post. “We in fact have told our allies in NATO that we will do this planning in collaboration with them. We have begun that. So, I don’t know that we have a plan today. I know that we are working on what we think that plan might be.”
He added that the U.S. should work to establish a new treaty replacing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the Trump Administration withdrew from this year.
“From my point of view, when you have a peer competitor, and particularly a modernizing one that will be challenging you, such as Russia, we should look toward treaty capabilities in order to provide some stability, to provide signals and communications and limits that we understand and that we can work from,” the general said.