Army Reformulating ‘V Corps’ to Bulk Up in Europe

The U.S. Army is establishing a new military headquarters to coordinate with European allies in countering potential threats from Russia, the head of the Army said Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper is expected to meet with Eastern European counterparts in Brussels at a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers on Wednesday, in part to discuss where to base the new command post, defense officials said.

The headquarters will be known as the Fifth Corps, or “V Corps,” reconstituting an Army operation first created in World War I and serving through nearly a century of conflicts until it was deactivated in 2013. The Fifth Corps at that time was based in Germany.

The new Fifth Corps headquarters will be based at Fort Knox, Ky., and will include more than 600 troops, the Army said. About 200 soldiers will take turns rotating through Europe once a site for a European command post is selected, likely this fall, officials said.

The new Army headquarters is needed to better coordinate activities including exercises, training and potential operations with its European partners, Army officials said. As the largest force among its European partners, the U.S. Army has more resources and personnel to work with allies.

“It brings the ability to synchronize Army and allies’ tactical units together,” said Gen. James McConville, chief of staff of the Army. “It gives us the ability to take advantage of the capabilities and capacities of our allies, and it really unites us.”

The Pentagon’s National Defense Strategy has called Russia and China the biggest potential threats to the U.S. Mr. Esper has sought to move troops and resources away from counterinsurgency in places like the Middle East and toward Europe and the Pacific.

Asked about the U.S. plans, officials at the Russian embassy in Washington pointed to recent comments by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and others pointing to the eastward expansion of NATO in recent years and contrasting annual Russian defense spending with the much larger U.S. defense budget.

“Russia is not a dominant military force in Europe,” Mr. Lavrov said at the Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday. “NATO has this status.”

Mr. Esper told reporters that while at NATO, he also plans to ask allies to contribute more to training Iraqi security forces, a move that could allow the U.S. to reduce its force of approximately 5,000 troops now stationed there.

Reducing the U.S. footprint in the Middle East will enable the U.S. to better focus on potential threats from Russia and China, Mr. Esper said.

“I want to implement the [National Defense Strategy], and the NDS means right-sizing our forces in every theater,” Mr. Esper said. “The NDS is about great power competition.”

President Trump has pressed longtime allies to expand their military budgets and to help pay for U.S. troop deployments in places like Japan and South Korea. Army officials didn’t say whether the administration would have such a requirement for its new command post. Poland previously has offered to host a base, help pay for it and name it Fort Trump.

The Fifth Corps will join three other functioning Army corps units, which focus on Army efforts in the Pacific, the Middle East and emerging threats world-wide.

Photo: Secretary of Defense Mark Esper speaking at a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., last month.

Photo: Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press