Wargame: How This 2018 NATO Exercise Fared Against Russia Sailors, soldiers, and airmen from all twenty-nine NATO member states are participating as well as Finnish and Swedish forces, 250 military aircraft and sixty-five ships. Here's What You Need to Remember: By 2020, NATO is aiming for the capacity to mobilize thirty mechanized battalions, thirty squadrons and thirty warships within thirty days. For now, though NATO planners will be satisfied if it can channel the tens of thousands of troops through the Nordic weather without major mishap On October 25, 2018, over fifty thousand military personnel braved chilly Scandinavian weather to begin Operation Trident Juncture—a massive exercise simulating a defense of Norway against land and amphibious invasion, and by some accounts the largest North Atlantic Treaty Organization exercise since the end of the Cold War.