{"id":9156,"date":"2026-05-01T02:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T02:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/9156\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T02:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T02:04:14","slug":"some-us-troops-cite-benefits-of-germany-presence-as-trump-threatens-pullback-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/9156\/","title":{"rendered":"Some US troops cite benefits of Germany presence as Trump threatens pullback"},"content":{"rendered":"

At a U.S Army<\/a> training facility in Germany on Thursday, some senior officers highlighted the benefits of American presence in the country, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> said he was reviewing whether to reduce troop numbers in the country.<\/p>\n

The benefits of U.S. troops<\/a> here include deterring adversaries, combat training with allies on European<\/a> terrain and absorbing lessons from nearby Ukraine<\/a>, they told Reuters and a small group of other media visiting the U.S. Army\u2019s only combat training<\/a> center outside the U.S., located in Hohenfels, southern Germany.<\/p>\n

The handful of officers who spoke either did not comment on President Trump\u2019s<\/a> remarks, or declined to. <\/p>\n

Spokespeople for the U.S. Army did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on how a troop reduction would impact activities in the country.<\/p>\n

Germany is the U.S. military\u2019s largest footprint in Europe, with some 35,000 active-duty military personnel, and serves as a key training hub. <\/p>\n

That includes the Hohenfels facility, which spans some 163-square kilometers of forest. The area hosts large-scale combat training for U.S. troops as well as other NATO and partner nations.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, a U.S. armored unit was a week into a grueling 10-day long exercise, which included evading an opposing force and its arsenal of surveillance and attack drones. <\/p>\n

The brigade is at the end of a nine-month deployment in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe as part of a U.S. Army-led initiative to support NATO while building readiness and enhancing bonds between ally and partner militaries.<\/p>\n

Their presence in Europe shows potential adversaries that in the event of a conflict \u201cthat they\u2019re going to face the most ready, trained, lethal fighting force, and not just the United States, but the United States and its NATO allies,\u201d said the brigade\u2019s commander, Col. Michael Ziegelhofer. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we\u2019re out here represents, you know, really our country\u2019s support for NATO and our allies,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u2018FIGHT TOGETHER\u2019<\/p>\n

Training with other nations is \u201cincredibly important,\u201d said Ziegelhofer, standing on the edge of a small mock town. \u201cIf a crisis were to take place over here, we\u2019d be in the fight together, so training like this helps us to build the interoperability, not just with the equipment that we have, but between the people and the systems and the processes in our unit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brigade has also been learning about drones during their deployment in Europe, added Ziegelhofer. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked all the way from learning how to fly them to getting pretty sophisticated in understanding the systems and processes,\u201d he said, \u201cboth in using them ourselves and how to counter the enemy\u2019s use of those since we\u2019ve been over here.\u201d<\/p>\n

LESSONS FROM UKRAINE<\/p>\n

The evolution of drones and electronic warfare are among the lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war being incorporated into training, said Lt. Col. Michael Cryer, commander of the opposition forces permanently assigned to Hohenfels training area, known as the \u201cwarrior\u201d battalion. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a cat-and-mouse game, as you\u2019ve seen in Ukraine,\u201d he said. \u201cWhere one side develops this capability, another side develops a countermeasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the biggest challenges, according to the officer, is maintaining options for offensive maneuvers while being constantly surveilled by aerial drones. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is nearly impossible to hide,\u201d Cryer said. \u201cAcross the Army, we haven\u2019t totally come to grips with that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a U.S Army training facility in Germany on Thursday, some senior officers highlighted the benefits of American…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6642,6644,1326,6643,6640,6641,1322,5,8766,619,8765,6688,255,8080],"class_list":{"0":"post-9156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-circulated-air-force-times","9":"tag-circulated-army-times","10":"tag-circulated-defense-news","11":"tag-circulated-marine-corps-times","12":"tag-circulated-military-times","13":"tag-circulated-navy-times","14":"tag-dn-dnr","15":"tag-germany","16":"tag-hohenfels","17":"tag-military","18":"tag-military-news","19":"tag-military-times","20":"tag-trump","21":"tag-us-military"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}