NATO officials have urged member nations to reassess their manpower strategies to better prepare for potential high-intensity conflicts under the alliance’s collective defence plans.
With the war in Ukraine revealing the challenges of sustaining prolonged combat, NATO is pushing for a shift from small, professional forces to a model capable of supporting long-term attrition warfare.
During a background briefing at a recent NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting, a senior NATO official told press of the need to adapt manpower models to meet the growing demands of collective defence.
“We’re coming out of an era where we had small, professional armed forces with very expensive to train, very high-quality people, but in very limited numbers,” the official said, adding that these forces would struggle to manage prolonged warfare at the current casualty rates seen in Ukraine.
“At the current casualty rate in Ukraine, that would be having a really hard time facing the second or the third month of war of potential, war of attrition.”
NATO is encouraging nations to rethink their approaches, including considerations for larger reserves and even selective conscription in some cases.
The official noted that the exact path is left to individual nations, stating, “Whether to go for conscription, selective conscription, bigger reserves… each nation’s history and political agreement will influence the choice.” However, the alliance is stressing the need for greater mass in troop numbers to meet the operational demands outlined in the regional defence plans.
The shift comes as NATO continues to prepare for potential large-scale conflicts in Europe, choosing to focus on readiness and sustained military capability. The official explained, “We are encouraging nations to change and adjust in order to be able to deliver the mass that we need to fight these plans.”
While NATO is not prescribing specific numbers or models, it is clear that the transformation of manpower strategies is necessary for nations to meet the demands of collective defence. “We give the requirements, and we want to make sure that they understand that they need to deliver against those targets,” the official concluded.
It’s one of the great benefits of having a small highly trained well equipped army backed by overwhelming logistics and AirPower that it doesn’t have to sit in a field lobbing artillery shells and taking attritional loses.
I’m sure the generals will take this as a call for expansion of the army. What we should be doing is massively expanding the reserves. The UK paying for a large standing army to guard Germanic’s boarder makes no sense.
I tend to agree, it’s the format that Finland and others excel in. Problem is how do you do that without at least a partial conscription. If recruitment is difficult now imagine the problems if a shooting war is imminent.
We could start by actually valuing the reserve forces instead of the professional army always looking at them as a burden and an easy cut. The US operates massive reserves in comparison to us despite also having a fully professional army.
The Air Force in particular could also look at reserve even operating reserve squadrons.
The US is much more comfortable with short military careers than us. Offering out apprenticeships and university scholarships can also be a way to do this.
We use to do all of this ourselves when the TA was much bigger than the army reserves today.
I wonder if our Reserve forces actually have much kit…and I mean platforms, radios, vehicles, heavy weapons?..not boots and webbing!
RNR used to have vessels but no longer, as I understand it.
RAuxAF have no aircraft.
Daniele and I once discussed whether Army Reserve infantry battalions even had a full suite of TCVs, and we doubted that they did!
well equipped army backed by overwhelming logistics and AirPower- which army are you thinkng of.
As for ours its both undermanned & under equippped.
Gen Sanders as CGS urged a scheme to a pre-train civilians as a type of militia who could be conscripted in time of General War, as I understand it.
“We give the requirements, and we want to make sure that they understand that they need to deliver against those targets,” the official concluded.
What requirements or targets does NATO currently give us, I wonder?