A NATO exercise conducted in February 2025 to evaluate allied forces’ mobility and responsiveness in a conflict scenario, ended up serving as a darkly ironic reminder of Romania’s shortcomings in military infrastructure. According to a recent report, the event highlighted Romania’s persistent failure to provide the logistical backbone needed for a serious military operation on its soil.
At the heart of this failure? A single railway bridge. Located in Negru Vodă, Constanţa County, the structure is too low for NATO military vehicles to pass beneath. This detail may seem trivial, until you learn that 730 British vehicles, which had landed at the Greek port of Alexandroupoli and made their way through Greece and Bulgaria, were unable to continue their route into Romania. Not due to enemy fire, but because they physically couldn’t fit under the bridge. The solution? Reroute the convoy through Vama Veche, an area exposed to potential threats from the Black Sea and far from ideal in a real-world conflict.
Was this an oversight? Apparently not. Authorities in Bucharest had long been aware of the bridge’s limitations. But despite that, neither the Ministry of National Defense, the Ministry of Transport, nor the National Road Infrastructure Company took action. As a result, British troops had to alter their path in a move that bordered on the absurd.
When questioned, Romanian officials responded with terms like “detour” and “multi-criteria analysis”, language more suited to urban development meetings than military readiness discussions.
And this isn’t the only infrastructure bottleneck. The Giurgiu-Ruse bridge, one of only two fixed Danube crossings into Bulgaria, has long needed a twin. The Defense Ministry has repeatedly requested another bridge in the area. European Union funds are available, feasibility studies have been drafted, but no progress has materialized. A military assessment cited in the report makes it clear: if this key bridge were taken out during a conflict, NATO troop movement would be severely hampered.
This is more than an infrastructure problem, it’s a matter of national defense. Yet, for two decades since joining NATO and the EU, Romania has largely ignored its transportation vulnerabilities. While recent years have brought some improvement, the overall picture remains bleak.
NATO allies, committed to collective defense under Article 5, are ready to support Romania if needed. But their convoys might just end up stalled at Negru Vodă—or funnelled through risky alternate routes.
General Gheorghiţă Vlad, Chief of the Romanian Army Staff, spoke candidly about this situation. In his comments he admitted that the Romanian military still lacks critical equipment for full interoperability with NATO forces. That includes missing Abrams tanks, incompatible small arms, and outdated naval gear.
Romanian troops may be well-trained, and logistics systems may exist on paper, but all of that means little if the country’s infrastructure can’t keep up.
While General Vlad insists that solutions for crossing the Danube must be found urgently, the response from the National Road Infrastructure Company was tone-deaf. Spokesman Alin Şerbănescu stated that “multi-criteria analysis” is required both in peace and war, weighing costs and traffic figures. If an investment isn’t deemed worthwhile, it doesn’t get greenlit.
That kind of thinking seems out of touch, especially given the war raging in neighbouring Ukraine and the real-world consequences of military vehicles being stuck because of a 3.5-meter bridge clearance.
On paper, Romania is a key strategic player on NATO’s eastern flank. In reality, it’s a patchwork of potholes and delays. While countries like Poland are constructing military highways and strategic mobility corridors, Romania remains bogged down in red tape and unfinished projects.
Poland, for instance, has poured over €4 billion in recent years into dual-use infrastructure that connects NATO facilities to its eastern border. Meanwhile, in Romania, international military convoys are forced to improvise routes in real time, blocked by inadequate roads and indifferent leadership.
Germany, without even sharing a border with a conflict zone, is actively modernizing its infrastructure through a European-funded military mobility program. Every key route is being audited and upgraded.
Thankfully, no war has reached Romania yet. So for now, Transport Ministry officials can keep fiddling with feasibility studies and detour maps. But NATO planners in Brussels are left scrambling to adjust military mobility plans around Romania’s infrastructural weaknesses, and asking themselves how a frontline member state could be so unprepared to receive reinforcements.
Maybe, for the next NATO drill, Romania should just provide a “wartime road guide” and a Waze route that marks every logistical hazard, labelled, of course, “multi-criteria.”
Because right now, Romania doesn’t just seem unprepared for conflict, it seems unwilling to prepare at all.
