In a move observers say is sure to exacerbate military tensions with Russia, the Pentagon is poised to send enough tanks and heavy artillery for as many as 5,000 U.S. troops to the Eastern Bloc and Baltic States, the Polish Defense Ministry confirmed on Sunday.

Below: Soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division in Fort Hood, Texas, prepare to unload their Armor assets for war games with NATO and host nations across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in September 2014. (Photo: U.S. Army by 2LT Benton Conque, 2-8 CAV Assistant Operations Officer/cc/flickr)

Citing anonymous senior officials briefed on the Pentagon proposal, the New York Timesreports that such approval is likely to come from Defense Sectary Ashton Carter and the White House before the NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Belgium later this month.

If approved, the move “would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence,” theTimes reports.”It’s like taking NATO back to the future,” former defense official and senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security Julianne Smith told the Times. The “prepositioned” stocks would be enough to equip a brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers.

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