NATO supply lines at risk of collapse, think tank warns

A new Council on Geostrategy primer warns that NATO’s supply lines in the Wider North are dangerously exposed to strike and sabotage, with frontline collapse a real risk in any major conflict.

NATO can no longer assume a permissive environment for logistics operations across Europe, according to a new primer published by the Council on Geostrategy, the UK Defence Journal understands.

The paper, Sustainment under Strike and Sabotage: Contested Logistics in the Wider North, was authored by William Freer, Research Fellow in National Security at the Council on Geostrategy, and Charlotte Kleberg, Director at Wallenius Lines and an Adjunct Fellow at the organisation. It argues that failure to secure supply lines in the event of a conflict risks delays to reinforcement, heavy pre-battle attrition of critical assets, and a potential collapse in frontline combat effectiveness.

The analysis identifies four key challenges facing NATO’s logistics posture in the Wider North: geographic chokepoints, thin lift margins, limited militarily useful infrastructure, and a critical lack of dedicated defences for supply lines.

The paper is published against a backdrop of growing concern about the vulnerability of European infrastructure to sabotage, drone strikes and long-range missiles. Decades of post-Cold War underinvestment and a heavy reliance on just-in-time commercial models have left supply chains across the continent exposed in ways that were not considered a serious risk until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The primer’s examination of what could happen in an Article 5 scenario draws on declassified Cold War planning assumptions to illustrate the scale of the sustainment problem. In the 1980s, the British Army estimated that a division with four artillery battalions would consume around 35,000 155mm shells per day, meaning a deployed corps could burn through tens of thousands of rounds daily. Ukraine is currently estimated to be firing around 5,000 shells per day, a figure constrained in part by the need of its NATO allies to maintain their own stockpiles.

On the question of reinforcement, the paper notes that while NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence will soon include a brigade in Lithuania, a brigade in Latvia and a battlegroup in Estonia, there are currently no permanently forward-deployed forces in Norway, Sweden or Finland. Corps-level formations such as the ARRC in the UK could reinforce, but moving them at scale under contested conditions presents significant challenges.

The authors urge NATO to integrate commercial capacity more effectively, harden infrastructure, establish dedicated logistics defences, and embed contested logistics assumptions into exercises. The paper also calls for the establishment of mobile air defence and counter-uncrewed aerial systems forces to protect supply lines.