NATO allies are stepping in to replace roughly $50 billion worth of U.S. planes, ships and drones that are being removed from NATO crisis response allocations, Reuters reported, citing an anonymous military source.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced the new moves by European nations on Wednesday at a press conference in Brussels, according to NATO. The U.S. is reportedly pulling aircraft, drones and ships from NATO crisis response allocations, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing an anonymous military source.
Rutte assured reporters during the press conference that NATO allies would be able to make up most of these losses, although their combined value is worth roughly $40 billion to $50 billion, according to estimates.
“When it comes to the capabilities the United States will no longer pledge, there are largely capabilities available that other Allies already have, or will have in the near future,” Rutte said during the conference. “And we have already seen that, as the United States has adjusted its pledged contributions, other Allies have stepped up to contribute more – in some cases completely, in some cases nearly.”
NATO and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The withdrawal of U.S. forces has been a long time coming, as officials have been telegraphing the change in the U.S. stance in the European theater.
One-third of the F-15 and F-15E fighter jets, a fifth of KC-135 and KC-46 refueling aircraft and half of the MQ-4 and MQ-9 Reaper drones will be leaving the theater, along with half of the strategic bombers and aircraft carriers, Reuters reported.
Naval assets in the region will also be severely affected, with nearly half of the maritime patrol aircraft, nearly half of the destroyers and the only cruise missile-laden submarine leaving, Reuters reported.
Is This Real?
One analyst told the Daily Caller News Foundation that he was skeptical of Reuters’ reporting.
“This level of cuts is NOT going to happen,” Heritage Foundation visiting fellow and former Pentagon official Steven Bucci told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This is an alarmist report that should be taken with a ton (vs. a grain) of salt. This level of change right when Trump just said in Europe that he was now going to focus on the Russia / Ukraine war is nonsense.”
Bucci told the DCNF that the statement from Rutte is not accurate and that NATO allies are not capable of replacing these assets.
Not all analysts believed that Europe was incapable of backfilling these losses.
“European allied governments should, for the most part, be able to backfill the American reduction in commitments, meaning that NATO planning should only require addendums to the plans and not a rewrite of the plans,” Wilson Beaver, senior policy advisor for defense budgeting and NATO policy at Heritage, told the DCNF.
U.S. European Command and the Pentagon referred to a June 3 press release that explained these troop and equipment cuts are part of the new “NATO 3.0” initiative.
“NATO has overwhelming maritime superiority over Russia, and NATO’s air forces also outmatch Russia’s. The biggest concern is the threat of Russian ground troops to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania,” Beaver told the DCNF. “If the Russians were able to seize much or all of the territory of these three states before allied troops arrived in force, it would be extremely difficult to dislodge them. For this reason, The Heritage Foundation is advocating as part of NATO 3.0 that Western European states permanently station troops in all three Baltic states (Germany is already doing this in Lithuania).”
“There has been an unhealthy co-dependence in the NATO Force Model on U.S. forces,” U.S. European Command commander Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said in Brussels on May 22, according to the press release. “President Trump, Secretary Hegseth and others have been clear that this needs to change, and it will change. The potential reality of simultaneous conflict in multiple theaters demands it.”
U.S. Troop Cuts
This leaked information provided to Reuters comes after the Department of War said that the U.S. would be pulling troops and equipment from Europe in a press release on May 19. The total number of brigade combat teams was cut from four to three, according to the press release.
Each brigade combat team contains over 4,000 soldiers, artillery and numerous heavy weapons, according to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office.
One defense analyst previously told the DCNF that this move was made by President Donald Trump to lash out at European leaders.
“It sends a message that if you cross/insult President Trump, you do so at your country’s potential peril,” Brookings’ Director of Research on Foreign Policy Michael O’Hanlon previously told the DCNF. “It doesn’t make much sense except as an act of retaliation against Merz [the Chancellor of Germany]. But it shouldn’t hurt deterrence since it involves modest numbers of troops and not only the Eastern flank.”
However, shortly after the press release announced the withdrawal of a U.S. brigade combat team, Trump announced the deployment of an additional 5,000 U.S. troops to Poland in a Truth Social post.
“Based on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, who I was proud to Endorse, and our relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland. Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.
The United States remained NATO’s dominant defense spender at an estimated $980 billion in 2025, compared with $92.8 billion for the United Kingdom and $68.9 billion for France, while the smallest spenders included Montenegro at $188 million, North Macedonia at $402 million and Albania at $570 million, according to estimates from the Atlantic Council.
NATO continues to fund the Russia-Ukraine war, while the United States has committed more than $133.9 billion in defense articles and services to Ukraine from fiscal 2022 to the first quarter of 2025 under Presidential Drawdown Authority, the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and Foreign Military Financing, according to Ukraine Oversight, the U.S. government’s oversight site for the Ukraine response.
“If this level of reduction is actually made, it would be a major inflection for the US/NATO relationship,” Bucci told the DCNF. “Despite differences of late, the US/NATO relationship is still strong … There may be some reductions, and all these may be on the ‘menu’ to decide what might be reduced, but a change of this magnitude is unlikely to occur.”
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is also slated to speak in Brussels on Thursday, where he may address the change in U.S. posture.
“These cuts reflect a necessary burden shifting because these air and naval assets are critical to deterring China in the Pacific,” Beaver told the DCNF. “The United States should remain part of the NATO alliance and continue providing limited ground troops, the nuclear deterrent, and certain strategic enablers, but for the foreseeable future American military assets need to be focused on deterring the far greater threat posed by China in the Pacific.”
(DCNF)