Personnel stage M1 Abrams tanks at the Powidz APS-2 Worksite on June 27, 2024, in Powidz, Poland. The Powidz site received the standard makeup of a U.S. Army armored brigade combat team. (Michael Mastrangelo/Army)
GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — The first Army tanks and vehicles that could one day supply an entire armored brigade as a bulwark against Russian aggression along NATO’s eastern flank have arrived at a new storage facility in Poland.
Fourteen M1 Abrams battle tanks and an M88 armored recovery vehicle arrived by rail Thursday at the Army Prepositioned Stocks-2 worksite in Powidz, Army spokesman Terry Welch said in an emailed statement Friday.
The site, approximately 250 miles west of the Ukrainian border, will soon host as many as 85 battle tanks, 190 armored combat vehicles, including the M2 Bradley, and 35 artillery pieces, such as the M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer and munitions.
The facility, maintained by the 405th Army Field Support Brigade, is NATO’s most significant single infrastructure endeavor in over three decades, an Army statement said Friday. It will be fully operational sometime next year.
Sarah Floyd and the production control team inspect an M1 Abrams tank after its arrival at the Powidz Army Prepositioned Stock-2 Worksite in Powidz, Poland, on June 27, 2024. The APS-2 site received the standard makeup of a U.S. Army armored brigade combat team. (Michael Mastrangelo/U.S. Army)
“This facility has a huge impact on NATO,” brigade commander Col. Ernest Lane II said in the statement. “The strategic location allows us to have multiple avenues of approach and routes of departure and embarkation.”
The Army operates pre-positioned stock sites in seven regions worldwide, with six in Europe.
The sites and their stockpiles can be tapped when a commander requires additional combat power for contingency operations, exercises or training. That reduces deployment timelines from 60 days to as little as a week.
M1 Abrams tanks wait to be moved off a rail car to the staging area at the Powidz APS-2 Worksite in Powidz, Poland, on June 27, 2024. The newly arrived vehicles and equipment will serve as pre-positioned stock for armored brigades deploying to or training in Poland. (Michael Mastrangelo/U.S. Army)
Powidz will have the ability to fully equip a deploying armored brigade arriving in Europe within 48 hours, said Lt. Col. Omar McKen, the brigade’s commander in Poland.
Work began on the more than $360 million NATO-funded Powidz site in 2020 and was recently completed. It features a 650,000-square-foot warehouse, vehicle maintenance and support facilities and a 58,000-square-foot munitions storage area.
