NATO's 'Top Guns' on Notice Amid Fears of Putin Push

AMARI AIR BASE, Estonia NATO's newest members are nervous.

Troops are being trained up and reinforced. A new "spearhead force" is in the works. Fighter jets are scrambling. Military maneuvering is ramping up amid mounting concerns that Russian President Vladimir Putin will broaden his gaze beyond Crimea and Ukraine to the Baltic nations.

Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the European Commission, warned that Russia was redrawing the map of Europe by force. Britain's Defense Secretary Michael Fallon last week said there was a "real and present danger" Russia's president would seek to destabilize Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all small NATO members with enough legitimate issues of disenfranchisement among their Russian minorities to make them prime potential targets for any Putin push.

Lithuania moved to reintroduce the military draft this week, days after its foreign minister warned Russia was "behaving aggressively" and posed a threat to countries beyond Ukraine.

NATO insists that it is ready to confront any threat. But with its new members airing more and more anxiety over aggressive moves from Moscow, the alliance is beefing up its deterrent capabilities. Its "Top Guns" have been put on notice, part of the alliance's around-the-clock Baltic Air Policing mission.

"They're normally quite heavily armed all sorts of missiles and so on"

The importance of attention to the aerial front line has been underscored by a dramatic uptick in Russian incursions into European airspace though analysts say the moves are mostly for intimidation.

"It's essentially a way of saber rattling," said Justin Bronk, an analyst at the London-based Royal United Services Institute. "It's pointing out how quickly Russia can get inside NATO airspace in those countries with powerful military aircraft and it's also, of course, a way for Russia to test NATO readiness and response levels."

Italy's Ambassador to Lithuania, Stefano Taliani, called the Russian airspace violations "a kind of war game," telling NBC News that NATO pilots "know the rules."

Still, he warned that "in the Baltic states, we must be ready."

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NATO's 'Top Guns' on Notice Amid Fears of Putin Push