NATO members are expected to agree to a new plan to increase defense spending—at a summit in Lithuania in July—as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown a greater need to invest in militaries.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking following a meeting of NATO defense ministers on Feb. 15 in Brussels, said new defense plans and increased readiness across the organization will require more spending.
“Our leaders will agree on a new defense investment pledge to ensure the alliance has the resources to carry out these new plans,” Austin says. “We had productive conversations about that pledge and we look forward to working with our valued allies to ensure we all do even more to invest in our shared security.”
The new investment plan will likely be budgeted at more than 2% of GDP by 2024 as outlined in a 2014 summit in Wales, and will be needed to support a strategic concept that focuses on deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and cooperative security as outlined during last summer’s meeting in Madrid.
“If it was right to commit to spend 2% in 2014, it is even more right now. Because we live in a more dangerous world ... So it is obvious that we need to spend more,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during a separate appearance on Feb. 15 in Brussels.
Instead of 2% as a ceiling, Stoltenberg says it should be the minimum to cover spending for ammunition, air defense, training and other capabilities.
A major area requiring more investment is the industrial capacity to build key munitions and replace ammunition that has been provided to Ukraine, Austin says. Critical weapons include artillery rounds, air defenses and anti-armor missiles.
“Even as we rush to support Ukraine in the critical months ahead, we must all replenish our stockpiles to strengthen our deterrence and defense for the long term,” he says.
NATO is reviewing its capability targets for munition stockpiles as allies have agreed to new multinational production plans, Stoltenberg says.
He added there is a new project for allied ammunition warehousing, under which it will be prepositioned and stockpiled, along with a project dedicated to ground-based air defense.
“What we see is an enormous expenditure of ammunition, and we have seen that for several months,” Stoltenberg says. “And that’s also the reason why we actually started to address that last fall. We convened meetings with the defense industry. We addressed this issue in different NATO capitals, and now we see that things are actually moving in the right direction.”
The upcoming NATO summit could be the first to include Finland and Sweden as member states, if all NATO members approve their membership. Austin says the two nations are ready to join now and can bring a lot of value to the military alliance.
“We’ve trained with them in the past. They’ve invested a lot in modernization, and so they’ll bring a lot to the table,” he says.
