Carbine Fortress 82 REFoRGER Show of Force against the Soviet Union REFoRGER 82 and its field training exercise Carbine Fortress were held at a time of increasing East-West tension in Europe. Since the mid-1970s, the Warsaw Pact was engaged in a large-scale build-up of its theatre forces stationed in Eastern Europe and in the western regions of the USSR. Carbine Fortress took place, therefore, against a darkening horizon, characterised by a determined and steady effort of the Warsaw Pact to develop a concept of operations and capabilities that, in a hypothetical war in Europe, would have overwhelmed NATo's forward defences.
