NATO targets faster delivery from defence industry as leaders pledge to “deliver, deliver, deliver”.
NATO Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska has warned that the Alliance cannot afford to wait a decade for new capabilities, saying that commitments made at the 2025 NATO Summit must now translate into rapid industrial output across the transatlantic defence sector.
“We don’t want to see capabilities being scheduled for ten plus years,” she said in a conversation at the NATO Public Forum in The Hague. “Our goal today through the discussion was also, how do we make sure that this increase in the demand creates capabilities at scale in time.”
Shekerinska said NATO’s industrial dialogue had shifted from encouragement to urgency. “We will spend more, but we will need these capabilities faster. We need to spend better, spend in a more innovative way.”
NATO leaders, she said, had backed not just targets but a timeline, and that “now, according to the Secretary General, we focus on the second, equally important phase, and this is deliver, deliver, deliver.”
She confirmed that ministers had already agreed to capability targets “on average 30% higher than last ones” and that these would now be implemented as “a done deal.”
That urgency reflects operational need. “We were already talking about five times more air and missile defence. Five times. We are talking about additional warships, additional aircraft, a lot, millions of ammunition, and we are talking about drones,” she said.
Shekerinska concluded that the 2025 summit had sent a clear message to adversaries: “Whatever it takes to invest in the security of our 1 billion citizens, we are going to make it, and we are making it.”
Realistically once NATO countries get their act together they should be able to put produce anything Russia can manufacture.
The problem comes with China , Russia and North Korea combined.
Duplication is an issue within NATO as we shouldn’t have so much variation within equipment.
Ditto GUCCI kit, it doesn’t have to be gold plated just of a uniform high enough standard to outmatch Russia, China and North Korea
Outmatching N.Korea isn’t really an issue. They are only good at goose stepping and dying.
All that seems in opposition to what HMG aemre actually doing?
Where is the additional? Never mind at pace.
The 12 SSN are an exercise of grandstanding decades down the road, so at the mercy of others, and the F35A was also meant to make headlines without offering anything of real value beyond more training hours on a cheaper to procure platform, but with extra costs shoved down the road.
There is no new money till 2027, and HMG are busy looking for things to shove into the budget, the SIA joining Pensions, Ukraine money, and the big elephant in the room, Trident.
Does anyone really think we will be buying more F35A come the early to mid 2030s when GCAP will be bleeding the budget dry?
I think that depends on how you view GCAP; great white hope or white elephant?
I see GCAP as a hope, for sure, as I support the UK having sovereign capability.
That comes at a price.
I also see it as a millstone round the budgets neck, and I’ve suggested on countless occasions here the priority of HMG isn’t the military, where the defence budget is concerned, but channeling cash to industry, and jobs.
Which leaves the military as barren as before, and the MoD broke.
But the MIC are happy.
Either way, talk of purchases of F35A and Tempest beyond this paltry, politically spun 12 seem fantasy to me.
Call me a pessimist but I cannot help but see GCAP as more of a TSR2 than a Typhoon. Happy to be proved wrong though.
I personally don’t see the F-35A purchase as it stands reveals any commitment to more actual aircraft, just conveniently presented as such to the gullible. Only (long) time will determine the truth and that’s the convenience to the Govt. The fact it was the first (conveniently) major commitment after the Review just backs that up in my view, as it was so easy to disguise a transfer of orders from one type to another type without any actual indicator of that happening as we have not yet committed to a given number of the B variant so perfect territory for smoke and mirrors.
Indeed. Not a single extra jet, just a split of types.
Meanwhile, other nations announce new ships, planes, AD Batteries.
I’d say it’s too difficult to see the future. If Sir Keir has his way, like Cameron and Sunak, he would rather fiddle the numbers than put any real money in. I don’t think we’ll get GCAP at the same time as the Japanese, beyond a few prototypes. I’d expect us to buy in for the RAF in the early 2040s. Politically and geopolitically, far too much could happen for some straght-line projection to hold that long.
However, GCAP R&D will be from the innovation budget which is ring-fenced (and the Conservatives looked to ringfence it too, so it will likely remain so). That might mean there will still be some budget for the F-35s in the first half of the 2030s.
The data generated by Israeli f35i flying into Iran I presume stays with Israel. Now is LM saying uk benefit from data collected on missions bar by Isreal or does LM keep all data?? What’s the story.
Is f35 like buying an iPhone, we pay for expensive hardware but who does the software & data benefit ?