NATO to ask allies for 30% capability boost, top commander says
PARIS — NATO will ask alliance members to raise their military capability targets by 30% as the organization seeks to boost its force posture, according to the commander in charge of defense planning at the 32-nation alliance.
The proposed capability targets have been accepted by 80% of the allies, with a goal of full consensus before a NATO summit in The Hague; Netherlands, in June, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation Adm. Pierre Vandier said in a March 12 press briefing at the Paris Defence and Strategy Forum here. He said the biggest NATO members are signed on, 'even those who didn't usually accept,' without naming countries.
The capability targets refer to the pool of forces and capabilities NATO considers necessary to fulfill its missions. Vandier said NATO asks allies to provide capabilities such as a localized brigade or an air and naval group rather than numbers of troops or equipment, with the details for national governments to fill in, and with no time constraints on when countries meet the targets.
Allies are already 30% behind in delivering on existing capability targets, so the proposed increase means 'there's a huge hole,' Vandier said. 'We're at a moment in time where everything is important, we're lacking everything, and so we have to be quite astute.'
U.S. President Donald Trump has said European NATO allies need to pay more for defense, threatening to deny security guarantees to those who don't spend enough. The alliance is expected to agree on higher budget targets ahead of the June summit, even as a third of its members in Europe last year failed to meet the current goal of spending 2% of GDP on defense.
Mind the gaps: Europe's to-do list for defense without the US
Vandier said any discussion about U.S. disengagement from the alliance is 'highly speculative,' with the Trump administration saying NATO is important, should be stronger and more lethal, and that the Europeans are going to pay. He noted the U.S. has accepted the 2025 capability targets, and hasn't said they won't contribute.
'What is certain is that today, the Americans have not said they are disengaging, what we can in fact imagine is that there will be a probable capacity rebalancing,' Vandier said. 'The issue is not NATO, the issue is the weight of the U.S. in Europe.'
The budget of United States European Command is estimated at $60 billion to $70 billion, which includes the cost of some 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in Europe and the U.S. Sixth Fleet, according to Vandier.
Allied Command Transformation is pushing for NATO members to rebuild an arsenal of offensive weapons as a priority in order to ensure deterrence, Vandier said. The U.S. currently provides the bulk of offensive tools such as rocket artillery, so reinvesting in battlefield ballistics 'is extremely important.'
Europeans need to be more aware that NATO seeks both to defend and to deter, according to Vandier. He said a shield without offensive capabilities deters no one, even encourages adversaries to try to pierce the shield, whereas conventional deterrents create strategic and tactical dilemmas for an adversary that make an attack more costly or complex.
'If we want to avoid war, the offensive tools must be sufficiently dissuasive,' Vandier said. 'Defensive strategies are systematically losing strategies.' He called the European Long-range Strike Approach project for long-range, ground-based conventional missiles 'a very, very good initiative that recreates deterrence tools.'
Offensive electronic warfare and weapons to destroy enemy air defenses are two other 'extremely important' areas for investment, according to the commander.
NATO members also need to build up overall force strength, as both 'the shield and the sword are too small,' Vandier said during a round table at the forum. That translates into more battalions, tanks, ships, artillery and other equipment – 'This is a big shopping list.'
NATO asks for 'capabilities, not objects' to achieve the effects requested by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Vandier said. If an ally's mechanized brigade would consist of 20% drones and be twice as lethal as a result, that would allow that country to achieve its capacity targets faster than by adding 'soldiers with machetes and bayonets,' he said.
European NATO stepping up may mean the continent handling its conventional defense and critical infrastructure, while the U.S. remains in charge of air or space as well as nuclear deterrence, said Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chair of the NATO Military Committee.
Dragone said Europe may need a 'multi-speed approach' to avoid slowing down its defense buildup, where nations that have strong military capability could lead operations and power projection, while others provide cyber, supply and enablers. Rebalancing of defense means some nations will be less dependent on or even independent from the U.S., he said.
European armed forces need to invest in critical enablers, now mostly provided by the U.S., Vandier said. That means bolstering logistics, air-to-air refueling, command-and-control tools, ISR, electronic warfare, suppression of enemy air defense and deep fires.
Some enablers will be easy to build up, others will take 'complicated, long-term investments and a long-term commitment,' Vandier said.
'There are countries that are more eager to have a form of strategic autonomy, to use the French term, and others that are not at all interested in this matter,' Vandier said. 'What is certain is that especially with regards to command tools, we can clearly see that we have a real issue.'
Another priority is new capabilities, including drones, artificial-intelligence tools, space-based imagery and robotics, according to Vandier. The advantage for Europe is that many of those new areas rely on dual-use technologies, allowing the military to tap into civilian capabilities, he said.
The same satellite sensors that measure carbon emissions from space or detect forest fires can detect an aircraft taking off from a military base, while automotive-industry knowledge on robotics can be applied to military production, Vandier said.
Space is the subject of 'rampant militarization,' including threats such as space-based lasers that can disable friendly satellites or hostile assets that can de-orbit them, according to Vandier. Europe can't ignore the Russian and Chinese military capabilities in space, and needs to think about the tools complementary to those of the U.S. to allow for maneuvers in space, he said.
NATO is lacking in integrated air-missile defense, and 'we can't even say today that we are protecting our deployed soldiers satisfactorily,' while on critical capabilities to protect logistics and ammunition depots and command centers 'we are really struggling.'
'There is a considerable effort to be made, and I think NATO will be satisfied with any initiatives to fill the considerable gaps,' Vandier said.
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