NATO plans to ask European allies and Canada to increase their stocks of weaponry and equipment by about 30% in the next few years, according to a senior alliance official, Report informs via Bloomberg.
New targets for the military capabilities of NATO allies, which would update ones set before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are currently being discussed with the aim of adopting them by early June, when the alliance’s defense ministers gather in Brussels.
The capability targets refer to the pool of forces and capabilities NATO considers necessary to fulfill its missions. Vandier said NATO asks allies to provide capabilities such as a localized brigade or an air and naval group rather than numbers of troops or equipment, with the details for national governments to fill in, and with no time constraints on when countries meet the targets.
Allies are already 30% behind in delivering on existing capability targets, so the proposed increase means “there’s a huge hole,” Vandier said. “We’re at a moment in time where everything is important, we’re lacking everything, and so we have to be quite astute.”