capabilities. we re constantly reviewing that. not that you asked this, but as a matter of fact i can let you know that you ve all been tracking the marine corps exercise cold response up in norway. so i can tell you that a command and control unit from marine air control group 28, which is based at cherry point, has now been repositioned to lithuania. that s about 200 people. so they finished the exercise. they re in lithuania now. and about 10 marine corps f-18 hornets from buford, south carolina and a couple of marine corps c-130s are now going to be repositioned to eastern europe. i don t have an exact destination right now. but they re going to be repositioned. and that s another 200 personnel. we re trying to stay flexible here. just yesterday we talked about some growlers coming out of whidbey island. it s not about a number goal.
quality bulletproof vests or some special brand helmets. joust give us missiles. give us airplanes. you cannot give us f-18 or f-19, give us the old soviet planes. get them to me. give me something to defend my country with, my state. if you want it, and i believe that the united states, the people of the united states want that, but if this process gets longer, continues to be delayed, the we can see that this the process of transferring those weapons is getting slowser, then people begin to ask the question, is it really true? maybe there is some game behind it. i don t want to believe that some partners of ours are playing games.
it about capabilities and making sure that we have the right capabilities. we re constantly reviewing that. not that you asked this, but as a matter of fact, i can let you know that you all been tracking the marine corps exercise response in norway. i can tell you a command and control unit for marine air control group 28, which is based at cherry point, has now been repositioned to lithuania. that is about 200 people. they finished the exercise in lithuania now. about 10 marine corps f-18 hornets from beaufort, south carolina and that couple of marine corps c-130s are now going to be repositioned to eastern europe. i don t have an exact destination. they re going to be repositioned. that s another 200 personnel. we re trying to stay flexible here. yesterday we talked about some
million of quality bulletproof vests or some special brand helmets. just give us missiles. give us airplanes. you cannot give us f-18 or f-19 or whatever you have. give us the old soviet planes. that s all. give them into my hands. give me something to defend my country with. today was all about evacuating civilians trapped by fighting. ukrainian officials say they evacuated more than 4,000 people from mariupol, donetsk, and houston. and after a ukrainian general sounded an alarm, officials in a tiny pro-russian section of moldova say russian troops there are not massing to conduct provocations in ukraine. also new msnbc news now confirms ukraine s military helicopters were involved in yesterday s attack on a fuel storage facility in the russian city of belgorod. so far, ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied involvement
they have been effective in the campaign and i suspect in the near future they will continue to be effective. the pentagon says 10 u.s. marine corps f-18 super hornets along with # hundred marines have landed in lithuania but they will not be flying over ukraine despite pleas for a no-fly zone. the number of u.s. troops in europe now sands over 100,000. a 20% increase from before russia s invasion five weeks ago. some republican lawmakers want to know why the u.s. did not help ukraine sooner. would it be fair to say that deterrence failed in ukraine? i can t argue with your conclusion. the first green beret elected to congress thinks if more weapons were sent earlier such as surface to air missiles to shoot down russian aircraft putin might not have invaded. if ukrainians had stingers months ago and had the opportunity to train on them and had them on day one would that have made an operational difference in their ability to fight? congressman, it could have. two u.s. nav