• The bodies of four US Army soldiers were recovered from a peat bog in a training area in Lithuania.
• They went missing during a training exercise while operating an M88A2 Hercules recovery vehicle.
• Submerged in 20 feet of water and mud, the bodies and the 70-ton vehicle were recovered this week.

The remains of four missing US Army soldiers were found in a bog in Lithuania following a weeklong recovery effort.

During a training exercise on March 25, the soldiers were reported missing while towing an immobilized tactical vehicle using an M88A2 Hercules recovery vehicle.

The training exercise involving the 70-ton vehicle aimed to prepare troops for the challenges of retrieving heavy assets, like Abrams tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and artillery getting them combat-ready again.

A 'highly complex' recovery operation

US Army and Lithuanian armed forces, as well as authorities, located the missing armored recovery vehicle the next day submerged in a bog under nearly 20 feet of water and thick layers of mud, clay, and sediment. These bogs sometimes run deep, but the depth can be easy to misjudge.

Hundreds of rescue personnel took part in the "highly complex" recovery operation, including a specialized US Navy dive crew able to navigate the murky waters.

More than 30 tons of gravel and a large-capacity pump were used to help drain the swamp-like terrain, which could not support the weight of heavy equipment like excavators and cranes needed to tow the 70-ton vehicle to the surface.

"Not only are we dealing with the terrain, a lot of mud that is over top of the vehicle, but also the fact that it's 70 tons that we're trying to recover out of a swamp or bog," Brig. Gen. John Lloyd, commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers North Atlantic Division, explained in a statement.

Battlefield recovery and maintenance

So what is the M88 that sank? The M88 recovery vehicle has been a vital asset to the US military since the Vietnam War.

The recovery vehicle's primary role is to tow, extricate, and repair damaged or immobilized tanks and fighting vehicles while under fire. It can also lift and repair damaged turrets and other heavy artillery and clear obstacles during operations on complex terrain, like the peat bog where the American soldiers were found.

After the first M88 was introduced in the early 1960s, the vehicle underwent several upgrades, including a new diesel engine, improved armor, and stronger lifting capabilities.

Introduced in 1997, the third variant, the M88A2 Hercules, is one of the largest armored recovery vehicles used by the US military.

The Hercules was designed with a stronger hoist and increased winching power, allowing it to recover heavier combat vehicles up to 70 tons, like the powerful US-made M1 Abrams tank, which was too heavy for previous M88 models to tow effectively.

Workhorse armored vehicle

Designated as a "heavy recovery vehicle," the new Hercules weighs a whopping 70 tons — about 14 tons heavier than the M88 and M88A1, which were considered "medium recovery vehicles."

The Hercules' steel hull was designed to protect personnel from mines, artillery fragments, and small arms fire. The armored recovery vehicle is also equipped with mounted 12.7 mm heavy machine guns with 1,300 rounds.

Powered by a twin-turbo diesel engine with 1,050 horsepower, the M88A2 can reach speeds of up to 30 mph on varied terrain and on uneven surfaces. Like a tank, it has a tracked chassis.

Global defense company BAE Systems manufactures the M88A2 Hercules, which stands for Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift and Evacuation System.

BAE Systems is also developing the fourth M88 variant, the M88A3 Hercules, intended to eliminate the need for two M88A2 vehicles when recovering heavier modern Abrams tanks.

With upgraded powertrain and suspension units, the modernized heavy recovery vehicle features improved cross-country mobility and maneuverability, as well as an increased towing capacity of up to 80 tons. Last year, the Army began testing the new M88A3's capabilities at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona.

Deployed to Eastern Europe

Amid rising tensions with a belligerent Russia, the US delivered M88s to NATO allies in Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states and Poland, to support real-world operations and joint exercises.

The US soldiers who died during the recent training exercise were stationed in Lithuania as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve, which is a US contingency operation that's aimed at deterring Russian aggression by strengthening NATO forces in the region.

The training area where the four soldiers went missing is located roughly six miles west of the border with Belarus, a close Russian ally.

Maintaining Ukraine's mechanized fleet

While Abrams tanks, Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, and Stryker armored vehicles significantly bolster Ukraine's ground forces, one US Army workhorse ensures these armored vehicles and heavy assets stay combat-ready: the M88 armored recovery vehicle.

In October 2022, the US sent eight M88s to Ukraine as part of its military aid package, and in February 2023, the Biden administration sent an additional six unspecified tactical recovery vehicles.

The recovery vehicles play a key role in maintaining Ukraine's mechanized force. They allowed Ukrainian troops to quickly retrieve and repair damaged assets and equipment from the battlefield, making ARVs "high-value targets" for Russian forces, according to UK defense officials.

A piece of US history

The M88s were also involved in US-led operations in the Middle East, including Operation Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, and Enduring Freedom.

The ARVs recovered Abrams and Bradleys, often navigating harsh desert conditions and rugged, mountainous terrain in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

One M88A2, now on display at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Virginia, was notably used to topple the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 2003.

• Germany is deploying troops to another country on a long-term basis for the first time since World War II.
• It's putting thousands of soldiers in Lithuania, a NATO member that borders Russia.
• It described the move as an effort to protect NATO. Germany's defense spending is also rising.

Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr, announced on Tuesday that they'd created a new brigade, the 45th Armored Brigade, to be stationed in Lithuania.

It will be the first long-term deployment of German soldiers to another country since World War II, the Associated Press reported.

Brig. Gen. Christoph Huber, the commander of the 45th Armored Brigade, said that with its creation, "we're not only moving toward operational readiness, we're taking responsibility."

"For the alliance, for Lithuania, for Europe's security," he said. "As a sign of our determination to defend peace and freedom with our partners."

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sparked a surge of defense agreements and spending among European countries.

When plans were first made for the 45th Armored Brigade in 2023, Germany described it as part of growing efforts by NATO members to boost both their own security and the security of NATO's eastern borders.

Germany's defense minister, Boris Pistorius, previously said, "With this war-ready brigade, we're taking on leadership responsibility on NATO's eastern flank."

The new brigade is made up of several battalions and will have about 5,000 soldiers and civilian staff, the Bundeswehr said this week.

It added that the brigade's command facility was already fully operational and that the aim was to have it at full wartime readiness by 2027.

Lithuania — which borders the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and the close Russian ally Belarus — is one of the countries that has sounded the alarm the loudest that Russia could move beyond Ukraine to attack elsewhere in Europe.

It's also one of NATO's biggest defense spenders by proportion of GDP and one of Ukraine's biggest allies, describing Ukrainian troops as the ones who are protecting all of Europe.

There are already NATO troops in Lithuania, on a rotating basis, with a multinational battle group led by Germany. NATO countries have also deployed assets such as fighter jets and air defenses there.

US troops are among those stationed in Lithuania, though their long-term future is less clear, with President Donald Trump critical of US allies, of NATO, and of assistance to Ukraine.

Dovilė Šakalienė, Lithuania's defense minister, told Business Insider in February that her country wanted US troops to stay and that she expected the US could see "eye to eye" with countries who pay their part when it comes to defense.

"We do our part," she said, adding that she expected the US to do its part, too.

Lithuania has also been strengthening its border with Russia.

Germany's new brigade is the latest in a series of measures introduced by the country since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It spent 1.51% of its GDP on defense in 2022, which jumped to an estimated 2.12% in 2024, according to NATO.

The rise in defense purchases by Germany, and Europe more broadly, has been a boon for the continent's defense industries.

The German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall said in March that it expected sales this year to rise by 25% to 30%.

Germany's defense spending has increased less than some of its allies: It ranked 15th out of 31 NATO members for defense spending as a proportion of GDP in 2024, according to NATO estimates.

But it has vowed to do more.

After grappling with its World War I and World War II legacies, which led to an avoidance of heavy militarism, Germany has committed to major military moves.

Lawmakers this month voted to alter the German constitution in a way that would unlock billions of dollars that could be used for defense spending.

Šakalienė, Lithuania's defense minister, told BI in February that Europe "needs to up our defense spending very fast and very significantly."

She said Europe needed to be able to match the US and to match Russia, which was escalating its own defense production: "We need to catch up to the speed of Russia," she said.

Europe is waking up to the need to invest in defense, and so are European VCs. But with a painful history of Soviet occupations, Lithuania didn’t wait for the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to reach its third anniversary to commit 5% to 6% of its GDP to military spending — and fund […]

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• The West has long focused on producing expensive, powerful military equipment.
• But defense ministers warn that Russia has shown why more of the cheaper weaponry is needed.
• Denmark's defense minister told BI it was "one of the lessons learned coming out from Ukraine."

The Ukraine war has shown that fighting major, protracted conflicts demands more than exquisite weapons. It demands cheap weaponry in bulk.

The West has long prioritized developing and fielding the most expensive, sophisticated weaponry, but to confront near-peer rivals like Russia or China, it also needs cheap, throwaway weapons it can rapidly build a lot of, current and former NATO officials said.

Gabrielius Landsbergis, who until late last year was the foreign minister of Lithuania, a NATO ally next to Russia, described the war in Ukraine as one of "high quantities." And there are important lessons in that.

He told Business Insider that while the West has focused on new weapons that are expensive and time-consuming to manufacture, the Russians are "building something that's cheap, that's expendable, that's fast."

Pål Jonson, Sweden's defense minister, told BI that the US and Europe "are grappling with" the cost. He said that part of the problem is decades of underinvestment in weapons.

Insufficient and inconsistent demand often results in inefficient production, straining defense industries and triggering cost increases. Over time, industrial capacity is hollowed out, causing backlogs and shortages.

By ordering more, "we also expect a per unit price to fall," Jonson said.

There's a balance to all of this, as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte suggested last month. He said that "speed is of the essence, not perfection." Rutte said it's about "getting speed and enough quality done in the right conjunction."

High-intensity conflicts chew up men and matériel, demanding quantity, not just quality, from armies. Cheaper weaponry has played a big role in Ukraine, where low-cost drones have destroyed pieces of weaponry worth millions. Russia has also turned to weapons like cheap drones and loitering munitions and glide bombs, reserving the more sophisticated precision-guided munitions for higher-value targets.

That's not to say there isn't value in the sophisticated systems. Ukraine has praised the American-made Patriot for its ability to stop weapons no other air-defense system can, but these weapons are few, take up to two years to make, and the interceptors cost around $4 million.

This isn't the weapon for shooting down cheap drones.

Troels Lund Poulsen, the Danish defense minister, told BI the West needs far greater quantities of inexpensive weaponry to meet the threats posed by Russia and China. He said this is "one of the lessons" from Ukraine, which can produce cost-effective weapons and even achieve capabilities comparable to expensive Western systems.

The Russian defense ministry leadership has previously bragged that "our weapons are hundreds of times cheaper than the systems deployed to be used against us."

China, likewise, has a large arsenal of cheap weaponry. A single missile barrage against the US Navy or key outposts in the Pacific could demand tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in interceptors to repel.

War experts have warned that the US could quickly exhaust its supply of essential weapons in a war, which is why the US has been exploring how to build mass with cheaper drones, but it's still a work in progress.

Lessons for the West

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has much to teach Western countries that have spent decades fighting terrorists and insurgencies about what it's like to fight a modern great-power war.

"We haven't prepared for this," Landsbergis said, adding that "we have been preparing for a different kind of war with high precision, high technology, very good aim, but also very expensive."

These conflicts were less demanding. Russia, he said, changed that, and the Ukrainians are seeing it in real time.

The war in Ukraine is a grinding, attritional fight that is tearing through ammunition and weaponry. Russia, like China, has a lot of manpower and machinery to throw into the fight, which is very different from the US and NATO's Global War on Terror.

An American military veteran who fought in Ukraine previously told BI the war is so different from other fights that some Western soldiers have been killed because they expected it to be easy and did not realize their training had not prepared them for this war.

Watching Ukraine, Western militaries are changing some of their priorities, reviving old tactics, like putting a greater emphasis on trench warfare, and exploring new ones, such as looking at the value of low-cost attritable systems like drones to augment their armed forces for future fights.

European leaders have pushed for more spending on defense as the Russians threaten to attack deeper into the continent and launch hybrid warfare attacks against NATO.

Landsbergis said Russia is "probably more dangerous than it has ever been. So if there was ever a time not to be complacent, it is now." He said Europe needs to prepare because "the most dangerous times are up ahead."

Lithuania's defense spending is among the highest in NATO as a proportion of its GDP, and it, along with Estonia, has pledged to take that figure to 5%, a figure US President Donald Trump has advocated for while proposing stepping back from European defense.

Warfare experts and strategists previously told BI that how Russia is fighting shows that Europe and the US need to invest in a higher quantity of weapons instead of focusing solely on a smaller number of high-quality weapons.

Retired Australian Army Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan, a warfare strategist, said that "we just have not been stockpiling weapons" for a major, protracted conflict like the war in Ukraine, but "to be frank, Russia and China have been.'"

European defense spending has soared, though European leaders, as well as the head of NATO, stressed at the recent Munich Security Conference that more needs to be done.

The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, warned at the conference that European production issues urgently need to be addressed, telling gathered leaders that Ukraine was able to produce weaponry "faster and cheaper" than anywhere else in Europe even though it's at war.

"We have a problem, friends, if a country at war can produce faster than the rest of us," she said.

• RSI Europe is a Lithuanian drone manufacturer that has delivered products to Kyiv.
• The company was founded in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• BI spoke to RSI's CEO about the company, its products, and Ukraine.

Lithuanian drone manufacturer RSI Europe was founded after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Tomas Milašauskas, the CEO and cofounder of RSI Europe, told Business Insider that the company was born out of fear of what a Ukrainian defeat could mean for Europe's future security.

Like its neighbor Poland, the Baltic state of Lithuania shares a border with Russia's ally Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, making it particularly wary of Moscow's threat.

"Our mission is very simple," Milašauskas said. "To produce the military equipment that helps Ukraine win."

The company initially focused on developing remote explosives initiation systems designed in close collaboration with Lithuanian military engineers.

However, the widespread use of uncrewed aerial vehicles in the Russia-Ukraine war soon saw RSI move into the world of FPV (first-person-view) drones.

FPV drones have played a major role in the conflict in Ukraine, often proving cheaper and more accurate than most artillery and still allowing operators to strike targets at a distance.

RSI's main products now include RISE-1, a remote explosives initiation system, and Shpak, an FPV quadcopter that carries a payload of up to 5 kg (around 11 pounds).

The Shpak drone is designed to carry out precision strikes on enemy targets using explosive munitions, the company says. It is optimized to carry a 2 kg (around 4.4 pounds) payload over a 20 km (roughly 12.4 miles) range, it adds.

RSI reportedly delivered its first batch of Shpak drones to Ukraine in October.

A major obstacle facing drone crews in Ukraine is the use of electronic warfare systems — the Achilles' heel of FPVs — which use the electromagnetic spectrum to disrupt GPS and video signals.

In June last year, French Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pierre Schill warned that small drones could lose their combat advantage in Ukraine as such defenses continued to be developed, saying that the "impunity" of small, simple drones on the battlefield was "a snapshot in time."

But as these countermeasures have advanced, drone makers have adapted.

While some have tapped into artificial intelligence to beat such systems, RSI's drones are fitted with fiber-optic guidance systems and can use frequency-hopping and non-standard video frequencies to help resist EW defenses.

Moving forward, the company is banking on FPVs becoming even more prominent in warfare.

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought FPV drones to prominence as a component of modern militaries and it appears that they are here to stay," Milašauskas and Liudvikas Jaškūnas, an analyst at RSI, wrote for the Atlantic Council in June.

Kyiv, too, has signaled its belief that drones are the future.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in February 2024 that Ukraine was launching a separate branch of its armed forces — the Unmanned Systems Forces — dedicated solely to drones.

Its Ministry of Defense also recently announced that the Ukrainian armed forces would receive an additional UAH 2.5 billion (around $60 million) a month to procure new drones, in a move designed to allow brigades to purchase the equipment they need directly.

Ukrainian defense minister Rustem Umerov said the move marked "another step towards building a highly flexible system to ensure the military has everything necessary for Ukraine's defense."