New NRF

Media coverage of NATO's 4-5 September Wales summit made it sound as if the alliance was setting up a new rapid response force but the true story is more complicated than that.

NATO photo

The decision to create the NATO Response Force (NRF) was in fact taken by NATO's 2002 Prague summit and the force reached its initial operational capability nearly 10 years ago. As originally conceived, the NRF consisted of a brigade-size land component, a naval task force composed of a carrier battle group, amphibious task group and surface action group, an air component capable of 200 combat sorties a day, and a special forces component.

NATO member states assign forces on a six-month rotational basis and the NRF is deployable within five days, led by a deployable joint task force generated for the purpose.

To make the NRF even more rapidly deployable, the NATO summit approved the creation of a very high readiness joint task force (VJTF). Combined with the prepositioning of equipment, logistics and command and control in eastern Europe, the VJTF will increase the NRF's response time to 48 hours.

The aim is to reassure NATO's eastern allies worried about Russia because of the events in Ukraine. And this is the other major difference between the old NRF focused on out-of-area operations and the new one being prepared to bolster the collective security guarantee NATO was originally created for.

A spearhead force is being created over the coming months. The Belgian news agency Belga reported yesterday that in 2016 Belgium would provide a light infantry battalion, an intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance battalion, special forces, six F-16s and two NH90 helicopters.