Aboard a NATO warship off the coast of Italy, U.S. allies are conducting a military exercise, simulating what might occur in the event of a possible conflict with Russia.

A CBS News crew on Thursday was flown out by helicopter with the Italian military to HMS Prince of Wales, a British aircraft carrier deployed in the Mediterranean Sea, where there are 26 American-made F-35 fighter jets.

The military exercise, Neptune Strike, brings the U.S. together with nine of its allies — including the United Kingdom, Greece, Poland and Turkey — practicing long-range strikes on NATO's eastern flank, hitting training grounds close to Russia.

The focus of the exercise is to defend critical waterways like the Mediterranean, which connects Europe with Africa and the Middle East, and carries about 30% of the world's oil traffic, according to the United Nations.

The exercise comes as Russia tests the U.S.-led alliance with frequent incursions into NATO airspace using drones and fighter jets.

"I see those activities as intended to stress the alliance," Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, head of U.S. European Command and NATO Supreme Allied commander Europe, told CBS News.

Grynkewich, a four-star general in charge of about 80,000 U.S. troops, has said that NATO needs to be prepared to fight concurrent conflicts with Russia and China by 2027.

"Of course, we don't hope for that outcome, but you want to be ready for any contingency," Grynkewich told CBS News, adding that war with one or both of the two superpowers is "absolutely not" inevitable.
"Our main goal is to deter that conflict from ever happening," Grynkewich said.

While the U.S. has taken part in previous iterations of the military exercise, this year's U.S. footprint was smaller as allied nations are pressed by the Trump administration to put more into European defense. Going back to his first term, Mr. Trump has repeatedly pushed for NATO members to boost their defense spending to at least 5% of their respective GDPs.

The Pentagon also announced last month that it was reducing the number of U.S. troops deployed in Eastern Europe.

That said, B-52s from the U.S. Air Force's Bomber Task Force were deployed for this year's exercise.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has drawn it into a military quagmire, costing hundreds of thousands of lives.

"The war in Ukraine has taught us that now, more than ever, the NATO alliance is incredibly important," said Lt. Col. Mike Carty, a British fighter pilot and squadron commander in the Royal Air Force.

Carty said NATO is watching and learning from what is happening in Ukraine.

"An element of that was designed to destabilize Europe, and destabilize NATO," Carty said of Russia's invasion.

But Carty argues that the attack "has had the opposite effect."

Grynkewich told CBS News that NATO is ready to fight a war today if it has to, but that readiness is the best deterrent for any adversary.

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