"The other area which has been sort of a consistent demand signal is activity in the undersea," Richardson said when asked about how the Navy will be impacted by increased US defense spending in Europe.
Last week, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter released the 2017 Pentagon budget, including a $3.4 billion request for the European Reassurance Initiative. The Initiative provides additional resources to the NATO alliance, and was created in 2014 to counter Russia’s regional influence.
The Pentagon’s 2017 budget request is approximately four times the amount the United States spent on European reassurance in 2016.
"I hesitate to commit to specifics in terms of what we will forward deploy," he stated, noting only that the United States has "been increasing our presence" in the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
Throughout 2015, NATO increased the number of military exercises, including the largest military exercise in the past two decades, Trident Juncture.
Under the ERI, NATO also began rotating troops and military equipment along the alliance’s eastern flank, bordering Russia.
