NATO is planning to boost the size of its high-readiness force to 300,000 — effectively a sevenfold increase — in what the military alliance says amounts to one of the biggest changes to its defense planning in decades.
Leaders from the alliance’s 30 members will gather in Madrid this week, where they’ll sign off on a major overhaul of NATO’s long-term defense plans to better deter threats from Russia in the wake of its in invasion of Ukraine.
Under its so-called new force model, NATO will pre-position more equipment, boost air defenses and earmark specific forces to defend specific allies and maintain those forces at a certain level of readiness. While countries like Germany have already announced some details of its plans in Lithuania, the U.S. and U.K. are due to unveil their proposals at the summit.
“Together, this constitutes the biggest overhaul of our collective deterrence and defense since the Cold War,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at a news conference Monday.
Under NATO’s current response force, it maintains around 40,000 troops at less than 15 days readiness, along with a large pool of reserves. The new force model will effectively transform the response force with new elements, such as the pre-assigned forces, to provide over 300,000 troops at high readiness when the transition is completed in 2023, a NATO official said.
Some allies are set to draw inspiration from a recent proposal by Germany in Lithuania, which includes a combination of boosting troops on the ground, pre-positioning equipment and identifying units at home that train regularly in Lithuania.
