NATO Weighs New Weapons, Equipment Targets for Member Countries

(Bloomberg) — NATO plans to assign new concrete targets for how many more tanks, planes and other weapon systems member countries need to produce, which may require raising the alliance’s defense spending goal to as much as 3% of gross domestic product, according to officials familiar with the matter. 

Under the plan, governments would face these higher capability targets, including for ammunition, as soon as next year, said the officials, who asked not to be identified given the talks are private. 

Priorities will be boosting air defenses, offensive weapon systems and nuclear deterrent capabilities, according to one official. 

While the aim is to have the targets agreed among NATO foreign and defense ministers in time for the leaders summit in The Hague in June, that deadline could be challenging to meet, the officials said. One official said defense ministers will address the topic at their February meeting.

NATO members have committed to more spending to counter a perceived threat to Europe from Russian President Vladimir Putin, and amid demands by incoming US President Donald Trump, who has pushed the alliance’s members take on a greater share of defense responsibilities. 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization currently asks allies to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense. The new capability targets could boost that goal to as much as 3% of GDP, the officials said.

NATO declined to comment, referring questions to remarks Secretary General Mark Rutte made this month that 2% “is simply not enough” to sustain deterrence levels in the long-run.

Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister who took office in October, has been vocal about the need for the alliance to increase spending to match the growing threat from Putin, who invaded Ukraine in 2022 and insists he’s in an existential conflict with the West. 

Rutte has also repeatedly stressed the need for more investment in the alliance’s European military industrial base, arguing that reliance on the US is unsustainable. That takes on particular urgency given the isolationist tilt under Trump, who has threatened to pull out of NATO if members don’t spend more and has also floated a 3% target.

“There are capability gaps we need to fill to be able to defend Europe from Russia without the US,” including military mobility and intelligence needs, said Armida van Rij, a senior research fellow at Chatham House. 

The EU’s new defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, last week proposed a joint borrowing mechanism for military expenditures, to be secured against European NATO members’ spending toward the alliance’s target. That’s part of the bloc’s plan to seek some €500 billion ($524 billion) for security over the next decade. 

“We have seen a tremendous resurgence in spending and I’d expect that overall it will continue,” said Olga Oliker, director for Europe and Central Asia at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. “What that money buys depends on the member states.”

There have been wide discrepancies between NATO members’ defense spending. Poland committed a record 186.6 billion zloty ($46 billion) on defense this year, or 4.7% of GDP, while Germany, the EU’s biggest provider of military aid to Ukraine, will spend 2.1% this year, or €72 billion, according to its defense ministry.

–With assistance from Alberto Nardelli.

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