Rutte urges industry to ramp up arms output for NATO

The NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has called on the defence industry across the alliance to speed up production and innovation, urging firms to deliver more firepower faster as NATO works to rebuild its arsenals, the alliance has said.

Speaking on Wednesday at the Transatlantic Defense Industry Access Forum, an event at NATO headquarters organised by the United States that brought together more than 50 American companies and Belgian industry representatives, Rutte told the audience that scaling up output directly strengthened the alliance. “When you, all of you, produce more, our deterrence and defence posture is stronger, and we are all safer,” he said.

The Secretary General pointed to the commitment agreed by allied leaders at last year’s summit in The Hague to lift defence investment towards 5 per cent of GDP, and named the upcoming summit in Ankara as the moment for concrete results. “Cash is crucial,” he said, “but next month’s Summit in Ankara will not only be about cash, it has to be about the combat ready capabilities and significantly scaling up our defence industries.”

Rutte argued that investment in the defence industry was good not only for security but for economies and jobs, and stressed the importance of cooperation across the Atlantic. “The bottom line is that our defence is strongest when we combine the ideas, when we combine the assets, the industries we have across the Alliance on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said, calling it his absolute conviction.

The Secretary General’s push on capabilities over cash reflects a recurring concern within the alliance that headline spending pledges are easier to announce than the actual ammunition, missiles and equipment they are meant to buy, with the war in Ukraine having exposed how thin Western stockpiles had become and how long it takes industry to refill them. The 5 per cent target agreed at The Hague, which combines core defence spending with wider security-related investment, has set an ambitious benchmark that allied governments are now under pressure to translate into orders on factory floors.