The White House on Wednesday, during Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s state visit at the White House, floated Japan’s entry into the second pillar of the pact in a joint statement. While the first pillar would see the U.S. and Britain help Australia develop its own nuclear-powered submarine fleet, the second aims to jumpstart cooperation on emerging defense technologies.

During a joint address to Congress on Thursday, Kishida highlighted U.S.-Japanese cooperation on some of the key technologies the agreement seeks to enhance.

“Just yesterday, President [Joe] Biden and I demonstrated our commitment to leading the world on the development of the next generation of emerging technologies, such as AI, quantum, semiconductors, biotechnology and clean energy,” he told U.S. lawmakers.

Biden and Kishida announced a slew of new defense cooperation agreements between their two countries in a joint statement Wednesday. And while the statement opens up a door for Japan to join AUKUS Pillar II, Kishida did not formally commit to joining.

“For Japan, to have a direct cooperation with AUKUS, nothing has been decided at this moment,” Kishida said at a press conference with Biden at the White House.

Australian Minister for Defense Industry Patrick Conroy and British Vice Adm. Martin Connell, the U.K. Royal Navy Second Sea Lord, both spoke favorably about Japan possibly joining the agreement during the Sea Air Space defense conference in Washington on Monday.

Vice Adm. Rob Gaucher, who command U.S. submarine forces in the Atlantic, said during the conference “we already share a ton of technology with Japan and they’re a great partner in the Pacific,” pointing to Tokyo’s unmanned capabilities.

‘Getting the basics of AUKUS right’

AUKUS is still in its nascent stages, and the three participating countries are seeking consensus on overhauling their export control regimes, which critics say inhibit the information and technology sharing crucial to deepening collaboration among their respective defense industries.

“The Biden administration has to get the basics of AUKUS right before it expands the pact to other partners,” Sen. James Risch, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in statement Wednesday, noting the State Department still needs to submit a certification to give Australia and Britain broad exemptions to U.S. export control laws.

“Without this certification, cooperation on advanced technologies under AUKUS — the very types of military capabilities needed to counter China — will remain stymied by regulations and bureaucracy,” he added. “Rather than take credit for things it has not yet done, the Biden administration should certify our two closest allies and deliver tangible defense capabilities now. Adding more partners delays capabilities and fails to deter China.”

The fiscal 2024 defense policy bill, which Congress passed in December, would give Australia and Britain a carveout in Washington’s International Traffic in Arms Regulation, or ITAR. Canada is currently the only country to enjoy a blanket ITAR exemption.

But to receive this, the State Department must certify Canberra and London have passed comparable export control laws of their own so U.S. technology does not fall into the hands of adversaries like China.

Australia’s parliament is considering legislation to enhance its export control laws, but some Australian defense firms fear stricter regulations will inhibit their ability to do business with non-AUKUS countries, like Japan.

For his part, Kishida did not directly mention AUKUS in his address to Congress, which largely centered on urging lawmakers to continue supporting Ukraine and playing a leading role in the Indo-Pacific.

“As we meet here today, I detect an undercurrent of self-doubt among some Americans about what your role in the world should be,” said Kishida. “As I often say, Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow.”

The investments by state-owned Eurenco over the next two years will double propellant production, Macron said during his visit, timed to the kickoff of new production capacity construction. The company will also resume production of the explosive powder used to make propellant charges, after France shut down powder production in 2007 and switched to imports.

The site of the shuttered powder production had become a wasteland. The investment in Bergerac “is, for me, the image of this industrial reconquest and military sovereignty that we want for ourselves and for Europe,” Macron said. The site started production of artillery powder during the First World War.

The target is for the Bergerac site to produce 1,200 metric tons of explosive powder a year, equivalent to 500,000 modular propellant charges, the Armed Forces Ministry said in February.

France has concluded that if it wants to accelerate artillery shell production and secure supply, it needs to control the entire process, including powder, the president said. Currently, French shell production relies on powder manufactured in Sweden.

Eurenco will increase the workforce in Bergerac to 450 in the next 18 to 24 months, after already growing the number of employees to 250 from 200 previously, according to Macron.

The company was awarded about €76 million in subsidies as part of the European Commission’s Act in Support of Ammunition Production to increase production capacity in France and Sweden. Eurenco says it will boost powder production tenfold, double production capacity for modular charges by 2026, and double its ammunition and explosives loading production by 2025.

France needs to increase propellant production both to aid Ukraine as well as for its own defense, Macron said. He said the Caesar 155mm howitzers supplied to Ukraine by France and Denmark rely on propellant to be effective.

Macron added that the world has changed with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and said that won’t end even if the war ends tomorrow.

“There’s been a massive rearmament in Russia in recent times, and because you can see military spending and orders increasing all over Europe, and geopolitics changing all over the world,” Macron said. “We’ve set off for a long-term geopolitical and geostrategic shift, in which the defense industry will play a growing role.”

The Charles de Gaulle, with an escort including a French air-defense frigate, a multimission frigate and a nuclear attack submarine, will start a deployment in the Mediterranean on April 22, according to Rear Adm. Jacques Mallard, commander of the French carrier strike group. Vessels from the United States, Spain, Greece, Italy and Portugal will complete the escort.

While French aircraft and individual vessels have previously operated under NATO direction, the carrier strike group has until now remained under national command, according to Mallard.

Sailing under alliance command for part of the envisioned tour is meant to “show that we’re an ally who’s doing what everyone else is doing, but also to understand how the chain of command works,” Mallard said in a press briefing on April 11. “It’s a first, but it’s a logical continuation of what’s been going on until now.”

The goal is to “reinforce the defensive and deterrent posture of the alliance” as well as support operations that favor regional stability, with a focus on the central and eastern Mediterranean, according to a presentation by Mallard. The entire deployment might last around six weeks, according to the Armed Forces Ministry.

The admiral said cooperation with allies has been “fundamental” over the past 10 years, as the French carrier strike group integrated around 30 different ships from 12 nations during operations, with NATO procedures and exercises key to creating interoperability.

The Charles de Gaulle will carry some 18 Rafale jets during the upcoming mission, about two-thirds of its maximum contingent, as well as two E-2C Hawkeye airborne early-warning aircraft and two Dauphin helicopters. The French escort frigates will each carry a helicopter in either a surface- or submarine-warfare role.

During the mission, dubbed Akila, all ships and aircraft will report to Naval Striking and Support Forces NATO, a command located in Oeiras, Portugal, near Lisbon for a period of about two weeks, Mallard said.

The admiral declined to identify the ships that will escort the Charles de Gaulle, other than the supply ship Jacques Chevalier. He said the French Navy has started to conceal the identity of its warships, which creates a degree of confusion for adversaries.

“We’re starting to get into the habit of not revealing the names, which is why the hull numbers and names have disappeared from our ships,” Mallard said. “It’s quite effective, and it’s sown doubt on several occasions when our vessels have come across other vessels that didn’t know exactly what to call them. We try to maintain a level of ambiguity.”

The strike group may cooperate with the Standing NATO Maritime Group operating in the Mediterranean, which has been under French command since April 5, as well as participate in the NATO’s air-defense mission over Poland and defensive mission in Romania, according to the rear admiral.

The carrier group will also participate in the Mare Aperto exercise in Italy as part of one of two forces confronting each other in what Mallard called a “symmetric” scenario. The admiral declined to provide details on the deployment timetable. “The more details we give you, the more we reveal part of our intentions.”

Mallard said a deployment of the carrier strike group to the Red Sea is not on the agenda, but is among the options being studied.

He declined to confirm reports that the Charles de Gaulle might head to the Indo-Pacific following its mission in the Mediterranean. He said the strike group’s missions are prepared at “a very high level,” with an eye on being useful to French policy and regional stability.

“The Indo-Pacific is one of the many theaters where the carrier strike group could have an impact,” Mallard said. “So we’re looking at many things, in particular far-away deployments, but for the time being, nothing tangible, nor any announcement to make.”

The Charles de Gaulle has a crew of about 1,200, including around 80 staff, as well as the embarked air group. The carrier in January set off from its home port of Toulon for sea trails, after being taken out of action for maintenance in May last year for work on the carrier’s steam catapults, water-purification plant and medical facilities, among other things.

The nuclear-powered carrier replaced the conventionally-powered Clemenceau in 2001, and France expects to continue operating the vessel until 2038, when the Charles de Gaulle is set to be replaced by a future nuclear-powered carrier known for now by its French acronym PANG.

France plans to start work on the future carrier either late next year or early 2026, with Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu last year estimating the cost of the next-generation vessel at €10 billion. Sea trials are expected in 2036 or 2037, and France included an initial €5 billion for construction of the carrier in its 2024-2030 military budget law.

The announcement freezes the assets of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems held within China. It also bars the companies’ management from entering the country.

Filings show General Dynamics operates a half-dozen Gulfstream and jet aviation services operations in China, which remains heavily reliant on foreign aerospace technology even as it attempts to build its own presence in the field.

The company also helps make the Abrams tank being purchased by Taiwan to replace outdated armor intended to deter or resist an invasion from China.

General Atomics produces the Predator and Reaper drones used by the U.S. military. Chinese authorities did not go into details on the company’s alleged involvement with supplying arms to Taiwan.

Beijing has long threatened such sanctions, but has rarely issued them as its economy reels from the COVID-19 pandemic, high unemployment and a sharp decline in foreign investment.

“The continued U.S. arms sales to China’s Taiwan region seriously violate the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-U.S. joint communiqués, interfere in China’s internal affairs, and undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It insists that the mainland and the island to which Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist forces fled amid civil war in 1949 remain part of a single Chinese nation.

Sanctions were leveled under Beijing’s recently enacted Law of the People’s Republic of China on Countering Foreign Sanctions, aimed at retaliating against U.S. financial and travel restrictions on Chinese officials accused of human rights abuses in mainland China and Hong Kong.

General Dynamics’ fully owned entities are registered in Hong Kong, the southern Chinese semi-autonomous city over which Beijing has steadily been increasing its political and economic control to the point that it faces no vocal opposition and has seen its critics silenced, imprisoned or forced into exile.

The two companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

China has threatened action against foreign companies and governments that aid Taiwan’s defense and the U.S. military presence in the region, leading to commercial boycotts and diplomatic standoffs.

China banned American firms Lockheed Martin and Raytheon from the Chinese market in retaliation for the use of one of their planes and a missile to shoot down a suspected spy balloon that flew over the continental United States last year. Similar balloons have frequently been discovered floating over Taiwan and into the Pacific Ocean.

Despite their lack of formal diplomatic ties — a concession Washington made to Beijing when they established relations in 1979 — the U.S. remains Taiwan’s most important source of diplomatic support and supplier of military hardware from fighter jets to air defense systems.

Taiwan has also been investing heavily in its own defense industry, producing sophisticated missiles and submarines.

China had 14 warplanes and six naval vessels operating around Taiwan on Wednesday and Thursday, with six of the aircraft crossing into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone — a tactic to test Taiwan’s defenses, wear down its capabilities and intimidate the population.

So far, that has had little effect, with the vast majority of the island’s 23 million people opposing political unification with China.

Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion captured nearly a quarter of the country, the stakes could not be higher for Kyiv. After a string of victories in the first year of the war, fortunes have turned for the Ukrainian military, which is dug in, outgunned and outnumbered. Troops are beset by shortages in soldiers and ammunition, as well as doubts about the supply of Western aid.

Lawmakers dragged their feet for months over the new law, and it is expected to be unpopular. It comes about a week after Ukraine lowered the draft-eligible age for men from 27 to 25.

Comparing Russian, Ukrainian forces two years into war

The law will become effective a month after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signs it, though it’s unclear when he would. It took him months to sign the law reducing conscription age.

It was passed Thursday against a backdrop of an escalating Russian campaign that has devastated Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks. Authorities said Russian overnight missile and drone attacks again struck infrastructure and power facilities across several regions and completely destroyed the Trypilska thermal power plant, the largest power-generating facility in the Kyiv region.

With Russia increasingly seizing the initiative, the law came in response to a request from Ukraine’s military, which wants to mobilize up to 500,000 more troops, Zelenskyy said in December. Incumbent army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi and Zelenskyy have since revised that figure down because soldiers can be rotated from the rear. But officials haven’t said how many are needed.

The law — which was watered down from its original form — will make it easier to identify every draft-eligible man in the country, where even in war many have dodged conscription by avoiding contact with authorities.

But it’s unclear that Ukraine, with its ongoing ammunition shortages, has the ability to arm large numbers of recruits without a fresh injection of Western aid.

Earlier this month, Volodymyr Fesenko, an analyst at the Center for Applied Political Studies Penta, said the law is crucial for Ukraine’s ability to keep up the fight against Russia, even though it is painful for Ukrainian society.

“A large part of the people do not want their loved ones to go to the front, but at the same time they want Ukraine to win,” he said.

Thursday’s vote came after the parliamentary defense committee removed a key provision from the bill that would rotate out troops who served 36 months of combat — a key promise of the Ukrainian leadership. Lawmaker Oleksii Honcharenko said in a Telegram post that he was shocked by the move to remove the provision.

The committee instructed the Defence Ministry to draft a separate bill on demobilization within several months, news reports cited ministry spokesperson Dmytro Lazutkin as saying.

Exhausted soldiers, on the front lines since Russia invaded in February 2022, have no means of rotating out for rest. But considering the scale and intensity of the war against Russia, coming up with a system of rest will prove difficult to implement.

Ukraine already suffers from a lack of trained recruits capable of fighting, and demobilizing soldiers on the front lines now would deprive Ukrainian forces of their most capable fighters.

In nighttime missile and drone attacks, at least 10 of the strikes damaged energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said more than 200,000 people in the region were without power and Russia “is trying to destroy Kharkiv’s infrastructure and leave the city in darkness.”

Ukraine’s leaders have pleaded for more air defense systems — aid that has been slow in coming.

Four people were killed and five injured in an attack on the city of Mykolaiv on Thursday, the regional governor, Vitalii Kim, said. In the Odesa region, four people were killed and 14 injured in Russian missile strikes Wednesday evening, said Gov. Oleh Kiper.

Energy facilities were also hit in the Zaporizhzhia and Lviv regions.

The new servicing arrangement for the BAE Systems-built L119 guns replaces a maintenance plan for the 105mm guns that currently entails shipping them outside of the country for repairs.

Officials announced the agreement to use a Ukrainian plant during an April 9 British trade mission to Kyiv, which saw the two sides sign a new defense pact aimed at encouraging cooperation on defense and industrial issues.

The British, along with other European arms makers, are eager to boost ties with Ukraine as the war with Russia opens up possible opportunities for local production. Twenty-nine British companies joined the trade mission, the second of its kind in recent months.

BAE is cooperating with British-based company AMS Integrated Solutions in providing the in-country repair and maintenance capability for the L119.

The two companies signed a teaming agreement last December to provide maintenance, repair and overhaul services on BAE-supplied weapons from existing facilities in Ukraine.

Aside from the towed light artillery, the company has supplied other weapon types to Ukraine, including AS90 tracked 155mm howitzers and Challenger 2 main battle tanks.

Kyiv has also signed a statement of intent with Sweden to explore possible support and production of the CV90 family of armored vehicles, made by the Swedish arm of BAE and donated to Ukraine by Stockholm.

Maj. Gen. Anna-Lee Reilly, director of operations at Defence Equipment and Support, the Ministry of Defence’s procurement and support arm, said the AMS-operated facility could become a center for the support of several other weapons systems.

“The repair facility that has been secured is scalable to provide a similar capability for U.K. and other nations’ systems,” she said.

The light gun support deal could be a stepping stone to Ukraine building the L119 in the country.

During a visit by BAE CEO Charles Woodburn to Kyiv last August the company said it was setting up a local office. Exploring potential partners and how it could eventually facilitate the production of the light gun locally was one of the issues being studied, BAE said at the time.

Alexander Kamyshin, Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries, said in a statement issued during the British trade mission that the U.K. was making progress towards building local production capabilities.

“It was British defense companies that were the first to open their offices here after the start of the great war. Our partnership is developing, and today we are one step closer to British manufacturers being the first to start producing their weapons in Ukraine,” said Kamyshin.

A tender published by the Defense Acquisition Program Administration earlier this month lists a budget of 49.63 billion won (U.S. $36.56 million) for multipurpose variants of the ground robots.

The vehicles will be purchased domestically, said the notice, via a competitive tender. After contract signature, production of an unspecified quantity will proceed till December 2026.

The bid marks the first major acquisition program for Seoul’s ground troops to procure operational UGVs, Kim Jae Yeop, a senior researcher at the Sungkyun Institute for Global Strategy in Seoul, told Defense News. The vehicles are envisioned to carry out reconnaissance, transportation and lightly armed missions alongside manned ground formations.

According to Kim, there are two leading candidates for the bid: Hyundai Rotem and Hanwha Aerospace. “Both companies are important Korean defense contractors, especially for land systems, and have been proceeding with their own UGV development programs,” he said.

Hyundai Rotem confirmed to Defense News that it will participate in the tender, though it declined to specify what platform it will offer.

As for its credentials, a spokesperson noted that the company “was the sole bidder selected for a rapid demonstration acquisition project after initially proposing it to the Korean Army” in November 2020.

That $3.6 million project, a precursor to today’s procurement effort, involved battery-powered HR-Sherpa-based 6x6 UGVs. “Hyundai Rotem’s UGV is the only vehicle that has been in actual operation for more than two years in various terrains in Korea,” the company spokesperson said.

Hanwha Aerospace also has been active in the UGV field, and the company can point to overseas experience. For example, the U.S. military chose Hanwha’s Arion-SMET 6x6 UGV to participate in a Foreign Comparative Testing program that occurred in Hawaii last December. It was the first Korean UGV ever evaluated for potential adoption by the United States.

The Arion-SMET, its name standing for Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport, weighs 1.8 tons, and its batteries permit a road range of 100km. South Korea’s army tested it in 2021, and it was demonstrated to U.S. Forces Korea the following year.

In separate news, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration approved a two-year pilot project, beginning in the third quarter of this year, for a UGV-based air defense system for the Marine Corps. A prototype is to be ready by the second half of 2026.

Armed with a 40mm weapon, the vehicle is meant to automatically detect, track and destroy intruding drones. The new platform is intended to replace existing manned antiaircraft systems, thus streamlining personnel numbers.

Nearby Japan is also adopting UGVs. According to a Rheinmetall press release issued April 8, the German company will supply three Mission Master SP vehicles. Japan is slated to receive these UGVs equipped with cargo, surveillance and remote weapon station payloads in January 2025.

The so-called hunt-forward missions, conducted by CYBERCOM’s elite Cyber National Mission Force, or CNMF, totaled 22 deployments, with some happening simultaneously across the world, Air Force Gen. Timothy Haugh said in testimony submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 10.

“Enhancing the security of government, private sector and critical infrastructure systems grows ever more imperative,” said Haugh, who took the helm at CYBERCOM and NSA in February. “Foreign adversaries continuously update how they operate, and frequently work through American-owned networks and devices.”

Hunt-forward missions are executed at the invitation of a foreign government and are not always disclosed. They’re part of CYBERCOM’s persistent engagement strategy — a means of being in constant contact with adversaries and ensuring proactive, not reactive, moves are made.

Haugh’s disclosure offers a rare look at the CNMF workload, which is often nebulous, as some countries prefer to keep quiet the digital cooperation.

The mission force has in the past worked with Ukraine, ahead of Russia’s invasion; Albania, on the heels of Iranian cyberattacks; and Latvia, where malware was unearthed. Other previous deployments included Estonia, Croatia, Lithuania, Montenegro and North Macedonia.

The Defense Department sought $14.5 billion for cyber activities in fiscal 2025. The figure is about $1 billion more than the Biden administration’s previous ask. It is also up from FY23, when it sought $11.2 billion.

“We work every day against capable and determined cyber actors, many of them serving adversary military and intelligence services,” Haugh said. “Our operational experience reinforces the importance of campaigning globally in and through cyberspace across the conditions of competition, crisis and armed conflict.”

The Space Development Agency, a Pentagon space acquisition organization, already has launched 27 low Earth orbit satellites for experimentation and demonstrations in the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture program, Derek Tournear, Space Development Agency director, said Monday here at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference.

Low Earth orbit satellites orbit about 1,200 miles above the Earth, compared to medium Earth orbit satellites, which run the Global Positioning System and are placed about 12,550 miles above the Earth.

Later in 2024 the second wave of low Earth orbit satellites will go into orbit, Tournear said. By the end of 2025, the program expects to have 160 satellites in orbit, the majority covering the globe to create connectivity across regions, more than two dozen dedicated to missile warning and a handful running missile control.

Marines and other military branches have relied on satellite communications for decades. But advances in low Earth orbit satellites deliver higher bandwidth and lower latency, or delays, meaning users can send more data faster.

Space Development Agency demonstrates Link 16 connectivity

Ukraine has relied heavily on company SpaceX’s commercial satellite Internet constellation Starlink to pass battlefield data throughout its war with Russia. The military version of the system is known as Starshield.

Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, began using the Starshield system recently, according to a March release.

The system allowed Marines to maintain communications services when weather forced power outages that shut down base fiber and cloud cover interfered with other satellite communications, said Maj. Tim Wrenn, 6th Marine Regiment communications officer.

During the September 2023 Archipelago Endeavor exercise, Marines used Starshield with the Swedish marines by mounting the device on a Swedish command and control boat.

“Having high bandwidth, low latency services on a mobile maritime platform allowed U.S. and Swedish Marines to prosecute fire missions and provide reliable and relevant information throughout the battlespace,” said Capt. Quinn T. Hemler, the assistant operations officer with 2nd Marine Division’s G-6 communications.

Marine Maj. Gen. Joseph Matos, commander of Marine Forces Cyber, said that satellite communications such as the Space Development Agency program enable both the crisis response mission of the Marine Corps and its ongoing Force Design changes that aims to better position the service for distributed, long-range operations.

“(Force Design) is really talking about modernization, bringing in new technologies, such as (Proliferated Low Earth Orbit) how do we incorporate that into what we do every day and how we fight,” Matos said.

While missile tracking is crucial, most Marines using the satellites are likely to see improved communication and less down time between transmissions as they pass data in training and operations between various platforms.

The Space Development Agency had demonstrated Link 16 connectivity using its satellites, Marine Corps Times’ sister publication C4ISRNET reported in November 2023.

Link 16 is the tactical data link used by the U.S. military, NATO and other partner nations to share tactical information such as text, voice and imagery.

The Link 16 application uses the “transport layer,” which is one of the layers that the Space Development Agency is developing along with the tracking, custody, navigation, support, emerging capabilities and battle management layers.

Once deployed, the transport layer, which holds most of the program’s satellites, will provide a mesh network of communications satellites that connect to each other and other space vehicles and ground stations, according to the Space Development Agency website.

The next batch of satellites is planned for 2027 and another for 2029, by which time the network is expected to have “full global persistence” and resiliency, Tournear said.

The program seeks to create a hybrid satellite terminal for troops to use. That would allow a user’s terminal to switch between the low Earth orbit satellites transport layer or use dedicated military or commercial bandwidths such as the satellite communication Ka and Ku bands, respectively.

The same terminal could also switch to use the Ka or Ku bands on MEO or GEO satellites.

The system would work much like multiband radios can switch between frequency bands for a variety of communications options.

Matos emphasized that while the low Earth orbit satellites program will give users new ways to communicate it still is only “part of the overall architecture.” If Marines can’t access those satellites for some reason, they need backup ways to conduct operations.

“We don’t own our own space assets,” Matos said. “We use what industry provides. If that’s not there then we have to look at other means of communication, single channel radio, troposphere, those are the systems we can control at the Marine Corps level.”

Roughly 100,000 U.S. servicemembers are stationed throughout Europe today, including about 20,000 who were surged to countries like Poland and Romania in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. U.S. forces have not been involved in fighting against Russia but have trained with Ukrainian forces headed to the front lines.

Another 40,000 NATO troops are stationed in the region as well, in support of Eastern European countries’ security efforts.

NATO holds its biggest exercises in decades, involving 90K personnel

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday, Gen. Christopher Cavoli — head of U.S. European Command — said the deployments are part of “a definite shift eastward” for the NATO alliance, and said infrastructure is in place to up the troop numbers even more if needed.

“In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, NATO took the decision to establish new battlegroups on a standing basis,” he said. “By design, they can all go up to brigade size at a time of need. And a number of nations have already elected to go up to that.”

In 2022, the White House announced plans to station the V Corps Headquarters Forward Command Post, an Army garrison headquarters, and a field support battalion in Poland, the first permanent U.S. forces on NATO’s eastern flank.

Cavoli said officials are planning to continue rotating U.S. units into Poland and other Eastern European sites for the foreseeable future, in recognition of Russian aggression in the region.

But he sidestepped questions from committee members about making some of those surge bases permanent, instead saying that officials are only preparing for potential changes in deployments in the future.

“We see a Euro-Atlantic area that faces more threats and dynamic challenges than at any time in the past 30 years,” he said.

The U.S. military footprint in Europe was a key friction point in recent years between Pentagon leaders and former President Donald Trump, who had pushed for steep drawdowns in the number of troops stationed there.

But President Joe Biden has voiced increasing support for European allies instead of reducing it, and has used the war in Ukraine to underscore that need.

While several Republicans on the armed services panel expressed concern for increasing direct military aid to Ukraine, none suggested significant reductions in the U.S. military posture in the region.

The defense committees of the upper and lower houses of the Italian parliament were due last week to start evaluating a proposal by the Italian defense ministry to purchase three of the torpedo-shaped BlueWhale drones designed for intelligence gathering, anti-submarine warfare and mine countermeasures.

Equipped with sonars, including towed array sonar, the 5.5 tonne platform also boasts a raisable, satellite-linked turret offering radar and electro-optic capabilities.

The program was listed, without naming Elta, in last year’s Italian defense budget, which priced the purchase at €254 million ($273 million), with payments to be spread between 2023 and 2035, including logistic support, control stations and recovery and deployment systems for ships and submarines.

The Italian parliament’s defense committees generally approve all purchase proposals sent to them by the Italian defense ministry, marking the last formal step before a procurement goes ahead.

But last week, just before the BlueWhale purchase was due to be debated and voted on, the plan was withdrawn by the defense ministry.

Sources knowledgeable of the planned procurement said it was blocked over concerns that the technology could be entirely produced by Italian industry without the need to involve overseas firms.

The decision suggests that plans to partly involve Italian firms in work share on the 10.9 meter long BlueWhale were deemed insufficient.

Italy is raising its profile in sub-sea warfare with a new centre at La Spezia which brings together the Navy, industry and universities to develop systems.

A second reason, the sources said, was the political sensitivity involved in buying Israeli defense products amid the international outcry over Israel’s military operation in Gaza which has led to the deaths of over 33,000 Palestinians.

The Israeli operation followed the Hamas attack on Israel which killed around 1,200.

Italy’s right wing government is solidly pro-Israel, but opposition members of parliament sitting on defense committees hail from parties which have been vocal in criticizing the Israeli operation.

Two sources, who could not be named because they were not permitted to speak publicly about the program, told Defense News the decision to block it was also related to doubts raised by Italian officials over the performance of the platform, with criticism of the acoustic signal emitted by its propellor, its maneuverability and its cost.

A third source however said the BlueWhale’s performance had not been a factor.

Fluor, an engineering and construction company based in Irving, Texas, will receive about $409 million to finish the project within five years, the company announced April 10.

Tinian is part of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory north of Guam and about 1,500 miles east of the Philippines. The Air Force launched bomber raids against Japan from Tinian during World War II. Since then, the island’s jungle has grown over the finished runways.

For years, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command — the military organization responsible for the region — has wanted to rebuild them. Its goal is part of what the Air Force calls Agile Combat Employment — divvying U.S. forces into smaller groups around the region. More, smaller groups would make American positions harder to target, the argument goes.

The top military and civilian leaders in the Air Force visited the island earlier this month to survey work on the airfield. Since January, airmen have started to clear hundreds of acres of jungle so that construction work can begin.

Indo-Pacific Command sends lawmakers an annual wish list of projects it deems necessary to deter a conflict in the region. This year’s list included $4.8 billion for infrastructure, though about a fifth of these construction projects show up in the Pentagon’s budget request for fiscal 2025.

Pentagon and military leaders in the Pacific sometimes disagree on where to spend money in the region and what work is even possible in the short term. That’s particularly true when it comes to construction. Materials and workers are much more expensive on Pacific islands than in the continental United States, and projects require bureaucratic rigmarole to start.

The result is often a path paved by delays, a Republican congressional aide told Defense News in January.

“The money takes very long to show up,” the aide said. “Then simultaneously you’re dealing with horrific bureaucratic problems.”

As a U.S. territory with existing sites to build on and mostly flat land, Tinian should be one of the easier places for the Defense Department to work, the aide said.

“It’s not a complicated project.”

“I can’t say it enough. We are in demand, more in demand than we’ve ever been, and that will continue to increase,” Vice Adm. Kelly Aeschbach, leader of Naval Information Forces, said at the Sea-Air-Space conference going on this week in Maryland, just outside the nation’s capital. “My sense is, in the partnership we’ve had, we will have a persistent and growing presence within submarine crews over the coming years.”

The service in 2022 embedded information warfare specialists aboard subs to examine how their expertise aids underwater operations. A follow-up effort is now on the books, with information professional officers and cryptologic technicians joining two East Coast-based subs: the Delaware and the California.

The trials have so far proven fruitful, according to Aeschbach, who is colloquially known as “IBoss.” That said, staffing and other resources need considering before any sweeping moves are made.

“It’ll be a slow evolution, I think, as we build out that capacity,” Aeschbach said. “Part of that’s just the reality, as we’ve talked about today, of some of the choices we have to make about investment.”

Del Toro asks Navy contractors to consider taxpayers over shareholders

The Navy is also introducing information warfare systems into its live, virtual and constructive environments. The first few, focused on cryptology, meteorology and oceanography, will be uploaded in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, service officials have said. Other disciplines include communications, cryptology and electronic warfare, or the ability to use the electromagnetic spectrum to sense, defend and share data.

Tenets of information warfare — situational awareness, assured command-and-control, and the melding of intel and firepower — have enabled U.S. forces to swat down overhead threats in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. They have also assisted retaliatory strikes across the Greater Middle East.

Aeschbach cited as an example the USS Carney’s performance. The guided-missile destroyer and its crew spent the past six months intercepting attack drones and missiles launched by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“Carney had the means to put the right weapon on the target through kinetic means,” Aeschbach said. “She also had the ability to defend herself. And, in all of that, the only part that I tell people is not information warfare is the operator pressing the button to release the missile.”

And the topic of U.S. military support for Israel overshadowed a hearing with the defense secretary that same day on the Pentagon’s budget request.

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had expressed reservations about the fighter jet sale and demanded a classified briefing from the Biden administration, raising questions as to whether he will greenlight the pending deal.

“I want to know what types of weapons and what the weapons would be utilized for,” Meeks told CNN on Tuesday.

“I don’t want the kinds of weapons that Israel has to be utilized to have more deaths,” he said. “I want to make sure that humanitarian aid gets in. I don’t want people starving to death, and I want Hamas to release the hostages. And I want a two-state solution.”

Meeks was referring to the Israel-Hamas war that began after the militant group launched a fatal attack on the country in October and took people hostage. Israel has responded by waging war in the Gaza Strip, which has led to the deaths of tens of thousands, according to many estimates. The “two-state solution” calls for separate nations — one for Israelis, another for Palestinians.

The sale includes 50 Boeing-made F-15 fighter jets; Raytheon-made Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles; and Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which convert dumb bombs to precision-guided munitions. Politico and other outlets first reported on the sale last week.

Israel would not receive the fighter jets and munitions from the sale until the end of the decade.

The top Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate foreign affairs panels have the authority to block arms sales, and the State Department typically alerts them to deals before formally notifying Congress in order to avoid embarrassing allies. The top Republicans on the committees, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho and Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, signed off on the sale soon after the Biden administration submitted the informal notification on Jan. 30.

The office of Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Ben Cardin, D-Md., declined to comment as to whether he supports the F-15 sale. Cardin met with Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid on Monday.

Other House members previously supportive of U.S. military aid to Israel signed onto a letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week expressing concern over the sale. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a former House speaker, as well as Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota, the top Democratic defense appropriator, signed onto the letter alongside 38 other Democrats.

They also criticized Biden for another Israel arms transfer last week, noting in the letter that it “reportedly includes 1,800 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 500 MK-82 500-pound bombs and 25 F-35A fighter jets.”

The letter, which Meeks did not sign, called for a halt to offensive arms transfers pending Israel’s investigation into its strike last week in Gaza that killed seven humanitarian aid workers, six foreigners and one Palestinian.

It also called on Biden to “ensure that any future military assistance to Israel, including already authorized transfers, is subject to conditions to ensure it is used in compliance with U.S. and international law.”

‘2,000-pound bombs’

Meanwhile on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin fielded questions during a Senate hearing from members of the Democratic caucus who are increasingly concerned with ongoing U.S. weapons transfers to Israel amid the war.

“I was surprised that at the very week the World [Central] Kitchen attack occurred, continuing the humanitarian crisis, that the administration approved the transfer of additional munitions to Israel, particularly offensive munitions,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine. “Two-thousand-pound bombs are not defensive. They’re offensive, and they’re not very precision.”

The Israel Defense Forces have acknowledged they were responsible for an attack that killed aid workers with the humanitarian organization.

Austin also faced skepticism from Democrats and Republicans alike over the Biden administration’s plans to construct a temporary pier in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said “the pace of humanitarian aid is insufficient” and cited World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain — the widow of former Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — who had warned of imminent famine.

“There’s no reason the United States should have to build a pier in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Kaine added.

Gen. Michael Kurilla, who oversees troops in the Middle East as the leader of U.S. Central Command, told the House last month that force-protection plans for the Gaza pier remain classified. Austin said Tuesday that nongovernmental organizations would be tasked with distributing the aid coming in through the pier, though the details have yet to be worked out.

Austin said he pressed Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on the need to open humanitarian corridors into Gaza and to ensure civilian evacuation and safety before any potential Israeli offensive into Rafah, where roughly 1.5 million Palestinians have fled amid the six-month-long campaign.

Still, Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said that “U.S. security assistance to Israel must therefore continue unimpeded.”

Austin replied that the Biden administration is “doing everything we can to make sure we get them what they need as quickly as possible.”

“I would expect that as the nature of this fight begins to change, to become a more precision fight, then their requirements should change a bit,” he said. “We will stay abreast of their needs, and we will continue to provide security assistance as quickly as we can. We remain committed to helping Israel defend itself, but we expect that they would execute operations responsibly.”

Numerous protesters from the activist group Code Pink repeatedly interrupted the beginning of the hearing, shouting “stop the genocide in Gaza.” The interruptions prompted Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., to briefly recess the hearing, at which point the protesters left en masse.

Austin told senators that “we don’t have any evidence of genocide” in Gaza. The International Court of Justice in January found there was a “plausible” risk of genocide in Gaza and called on Israel to take steps to protect civilians and allow entry of humanitarian aid.

After a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Biden called for an “immediate cease-fire” in Gaza and threatened U.S. policy changes absent “a series of specific, concrete and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering and the safety of aid workers.”

A week after releasing a shipbuilding review that acknowledged several top ship programs are one to three years behind schedule, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said the service is already taking actions to recover from these delays.

Each program executive office has plans to address shortfalls within its portfolio, he told Defense News at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference, and in some cases this involves greater oversight over shipyards and subcontractors.

He said a number of delays are related to major components being delivered to prime shipyards late. The Navy is working “to get to the root cause of what’s causing these delays and how we can strengthen the industrial base to prevent them in the future,” he added.

The secretary identified multiyear procurement contracts and advanced procurement funding as ways to get materials and components to shipyards early, noting the Navy will continue to advocate for these spending and contracting tools.

But moreover, he said during his lunchtime speech, “right now we build the most capable warships in the world in shipyards that are sometimes decades behind the global technological standard. This is an inefficient approach requiring far too much time, workforce and taxpayers’ dollars.”

Noting that South Korean and Japanese shipyards build “high-quality ships, including Aegis destroyers, for a fraction of the cost that we do,” he said he is interested in understanding how the U.S. Navy can leverage the digital tools these nations’ shipyards use.

“When my team and I went to South Korea, we were floored at the level of digitization and real-time monitoring of shipbuilding progress, with readily available information down to individual pieces of stock materials. Their top executives could tell us — to the day — when ships would actually be delivered,” he said in his remarks. “I am pushing our shipbuilding industry to invest in itself to get better, to be technological leaders, and to once again deliver platforms on time and on budget.”

Del Toro told reporters after his speech that the Navy’s science and research road map, released April 9, would consider “what science and technology innovations can we bring to the table that perhaps aren’t being used here in the United States, that are being used elsewhere with our partners, for example, to help digitize our public shipyards.

A publicly released summary of the road map does not elaborate on this particular topic.

During a separate panel discussion, the program executive officer for ships, Rear Adm. Tom Anderson, said his organization had previously drawn commercial best practices from elsewhere in the U.S. but hadn’t looked outwards at foreign shipyards.

As part of Del Toro’s ongoing push to improve shipbuilding performance as well as bolster the commercial shipbuilding and ship repair industries, Anderson said Program Executive Office Ships has begun strengthening relationships with Japanese and Korean yards.

Anderson said he was particularly impressed with the volume and throughput of the Korean yards he visited, as well as their focus on creating an environment around the shipyard to support workers and their families.

That comment is in contrast to what Del Toro and other sea service leaders said this week — that it is challenging to recruit and retain workers at U.S.-based yards.

Speaking at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference here on Monday, Lt. Gen. James Bierman, deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations, laid out challenges the U.S. military faces in the Western Pacific and moves the Marines are making to address those gaps.

The three key challenges are “time, space and access,” Bierman said.

“Much as they might like to think so, the (People’s Republic of China) is not 10-feet tall,” Bierman said. “That’s not to say they’re not worthy of respect, and we do respect them, they’re working very hard, they’re building lots of capacity, but they struggle with doubt and uncertainty and we’re purposefully campaigning and posturing to maintain and magnify their doubt and unease.”

Marines build two littoral regiments to fight peer threats with a third on the way

To meet those challenges, Bierman said, the Corps has focused efforts on its units both already within the U.S. Navy fleet and those inside of the first island chain and “weapons engagement zone.”

The island chain refers to a string of islands from the Kuril Islands in the north, sweeping south through Okinawa, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, paralleling Russian, North Korean and Chinese shores.

Partner and allied nations in that same chain are training alongside Marines in new ways, focused on detecting, targeting and striking enemy naval vessels.

“They’re very much seeing the problem the same way,” Bierman said. “Which is how in distributed naval terrain do you sense and make sense; do you synchronize and coordinate in combined operations. How do you establish the right linkages for command and control?”

The Marines think they have the answer: the Marine littoral regiment.

In recent years, the Corps has developed the littoral regiment as purpose-built for littoral combat, or fighting in the shallower reaches where land, islands and archipelagos meet ocean.

The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment operates out of Hawaii. The 12th Marine Littoral Regiment was redesignated in 2023 in Okinawa, Japan, and another regiment is planned to form in Guam in 2027.

The regiments hold 2,000 Marines each, about the size of a Marine expeditionary unit, but with different capabilities. They have fewer infantry but contain their own air control and air defense units, a medium missile battery instead of conventional artillery and more advanced logistics capabilities.

Bierman said that military partners and allies in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines are either copying elements of the littoral combat concept or were working toward these moves even as the Corps began developing it.

Following the panel discussion, he told Marine Corps Times that each nation is taking its own approach, some weighting the units more toward sensing capabilities, others toward lethal strike capabilities. He declined to discuss specific equipment, platforms or capabilities by country.

The three-star stressed that success in any potential conflict will involve a combination of Marine littoral regiment assets and more traditional formations, such as the Marine expeditionary unit or other capabilities from the Marine expeditionary force.

The 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment has been participating in various exercises, chiefly with the Philippines’ armed forces, since 2022. The 12th Marine Littoral Regiment, still under construction, will primarily work with the Japanese military.

The Japanese military developed its first amphibious rapid deployment brigade in 2018. In March, it activated the 3rd Regiment within the brigade for defense of its southwest region, U.S. Naval Institute reported. It also formed and deployed an electronic warfare unit to Yonaguni Island, Japan, in March.

Bierman previously served as commanding general of III Marine Expeditionary Force, the only forward-deployed Marine expeditionary force, and lead force in the Pacific.

“Our allies and partners are all in,” Bierman said. “They are feeling the heat, they’re tired of getting pushed around in their own backyards.”

In January, the Philippines announced its Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Concept, a shift to join its army, air force and navy in an external security focus instead of its previous concentration on external security. The move has been described as a move to counter Chinese military aggression and incursion into the nation’s territorial waters.

Bierman noted an uptick in various military exercises. The large-scale, multinational naval exercise Rim of the Pacific, the U.S.-Australia annual Talisman Sabre exercise and the U.S.-Philippines exercise Balikatan have grown steadily in size and scope in recent years.

And those exercises are not simple live fires. The Marine littoral regiment is working sensing and ship targeting, passing data and conducting command and control alongside host nation partners.

Bierman emphasized the realism of the exercises and their effect on adversaries.

“The exercise the operations we’re doing, everything we walk back from an existing war plan,” Bierman said. “It is a rehearsal of an existing war plan with the actual joint partners, allies and partners we will fight with more often than not on the terrain we will operate with at the specific high risk time of year.”

Using these exercises to highlight how the U.S. and its partners are working on shared aims for another target ― deterrence.

“Everything we do in INDOPACOM is done with an eye toward cognitive impact on potential adversaries,” Bierman said. “Nothing sends a message of deterrence and unsettles our adversaries like true interoperability.”

Although many NATO member countries’ militaries need work, obsession with the 2% of GDP metric belies a fundamental misunderstanding of military capabilities and national preparedness for conflict. Spending is important, but there is much more that matters.

Rather than serving as a long-standing foundation of the NATO alliance, after years of serving as an unofficial benchmark, the metric that 2% of each member country’s GDP should be dedicated to military spending was only officially agreed upon by NATO members at a summit in 2014 – and it was a target that was to be met “within a decade,” or by 2024. At the time of the summit, in the wake of Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, NATO leaders were worried about their militaries’ readiness, and several NATO countries reported having low – even negative for Croatia and Italy – defense expenditures as a percent of GDP.

Many politicians and analysts have used continued low levels of defense spending in Europe as a cudgel against NATO “free-riders.” And while free-riding in NATO is certainly a problem for some countries, military spending as a percent of GDP is a poor metric of which countries are the free-riders. With U.S. defense spending hovering around 4% of GDP in recent years, it would appear that the U.S. is contributing more than twice as much to NATO’s defense as, say, Denmark with defense spending at 1.4% of GDP as of 2022. But this fails to account for the geographic distribution of such spending. In one analysis, about 25% of U.S. military spending goes toward Europe, with a much smaller share going toward U.S. homeland and North American security. From this perspective, there is not much daylight between the U.S. and Danish contributions to NATO as a share of their respective GDPs.

Moreover, spending does not necessarily equal capabilities. It depends on how that money is spent. Among the top defense spenders in NATO in relative terms, Greece spent 3% of its GDP on its military in 2023, and yet arguably much of that spending has been focused on countering Turkey – a NATO ally. Meanwhile, the Netherlands, with 2023 defense spending at 1.7%, has played a leading role in providing support to Ukraine as it fights back against aggression from NATO’s main adversary, Russia.

In some respects, European NATO member countries are far ahead of the U.S. in terms of contributions to national and international security, assuming we take a broader perspective than military spending alone. If we have a narrow interpretation of what type of spending contributions toward national and international security, there is much we will fail to consider, including spending that improves human capital and supports the creation of unique technological advantages. While the U.S. spends extraordinary amounts on health care, it does so inefficiently, leading to much poorer health outcomes – and thus degraded human capital – relative to several European NATO member countries like Germany. Another example involves the opportunity cost born by high-tech manufacturing company ASML in the Netherlands, which – for reasons important to NATO’s security – will not sell to China its extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment for advanced semiconductor manufacturing despite substantial Chinese demand.

This is not to give Europeans a free pass. Continent-wide, there has been a substantial underproduction of artillery shells and other munitions across Europe, whether countries have met the 2% target or not. While it is true that Poland, for example, is beginning to step up in this respect, it is doing so nearly two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine when the threat that Russia poses to Europe became blindingly obvious.

Several European militaries still need to substantially improve their readiness, including Germany. By its own defense minister’s admission, the German military “will not be able to hold its own in high-intensity combat and will also be able to fulfill its obligations to NATO to a limited extent,” projecting that the Bundeswehr will “not be sufficiently equipped with large-scale equipment in 2027.” But whether Germany or any other NATO member’s military spending is adequate must be measured by outputs – or capabilities – rather than inputs – or spending as a percentage of GDP. Otherwise, NATO’s 2% target may become a fig leaf rather than an indicator of sufficient preparation.

Collin Meisel is the associate director of geopolitical analysis at the University of Denver’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, a geopolitics and modeling expert at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, and a nonresident fellow at The Henry L. Stimson Center.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced details of the policy at a news conference on Monday during which he talked about the need to deal with an increasingly unpredictable security situation.

The update, which expands on the country’s 2017 defense policy, puts more emphasis on the country’s Arctic and northern territories.

“Climate change is rapidly reshaping Canada and reshaping our North,” Trudeau said in the televised news conference from Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Ontario.

“Our Arctic is now warming at four times the global average, making a vast and sensitive region more accessible to foreign actors who have growing capabilities and regional military ambitions,” states the policy update document titled, “Our North, Strong and Free.”

The policy will see an additional $8.1 billion Canadian dollars ($5.9 billion U.S.) for military spending which will be rolled out over the next five years. The country’s defense budget will increase from the current $30 billion to $50 billion by 2029.

Among the equipment to be acquired are specialized maritime sensors, a new tactical helicopter fleet and long-range missiles for the Canadian Army.

Canada will also acquire a new fleet of airborne early warning aircraft that will improve the country’s capability to monitor airborne threats and ensure a faster, coordinated response with the United States when required, according to the policy update.

In addition, new satellite communications systems will be acquired and cyber operations capabilities will be expanded. With a focus on the Arctic, the Canadian military will establish support hubs in the far north. A new satellite ground station will also be built in the Arctic.

The policy update talks about broad capabilities but specific dates for equipment acquisitions were not included.

The initiatives come on top of the other Canadian projects, including plans to improve radar and early warning systems of the joint U.S.-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command. In the last year Canada has announced $30 billion in new equipment purchases, including the acquisition of the Lockheed Martin F-35 and the Boeing P8-8A Poseidon. Canada is also buying a fleet of General Atomics MQ-9B Reapers as well as trucks.

In April 2023, Canada announced that it was moving forward with a new long-range radar designed to protect North American cities. That Arctic Over-the-Horizon Radar will be established in the southern portion of the province of Ontario and provide long-range detection of incoming threats approaching Alaska. The system would be part of what the Canadian government is calling a layered approach to keep watch over the northern approaches of North America.

In February 2024, Canada also announced it was spending $316 million for new air-defense and counter-drone systems as well as anti-tank missiles for its troops in Latvia as part of shoring up its NATO commitments.

Canada has been under pressure from the U.S. and NATO to boost its military spending.

Canada is the seventh-largest spender in NATO when it comes to actual dollars. But in terms of the commitment by alliance nations to spend 2% of their GDP on defense, the country has yet to reach that figure. It currently spends 1.3% of its GDP on defense.

The new funding outlined in the defense policy update will increase that rate to 1.76%. Defense Minister Bill Blair said at the news conference that the announcements outlined in the updated policy show that Canada is serious in reaching the NATO mandate.

Trudeau also indicated that more equipment projects are going to be announced in the coming years. He said the Royal Canadian Navy is now working on the acquisition of a new submarine fleet.

“We haven’t yet defined exactly what types of submarines and how they’re going to be deployed,” Trudeau said. “So we haven’t put in the money that Canada will be spending on submarines in the coming years into this calculation.”

David Cohen, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, released a statement Monday noting that the policy update articulated what he called a substantial down payment to meeting the NATO spending goal.

“The firm financial commitments in the policy update represent some of the most significant investments in defense spending in recent Canadian history,” Cohen said. “Moving from 1.33 percent to 1.76 percent by 2029- 2030 is real progress, and we are also encouraged by the assurances we have received that there will be additional investments.”

“With today’s announcement, Canada continues its long history of being a strong NATO ally and United States partner,” Cohen added.

While much of the focus in the policy update was on the Arctic and the defense of North America, there were initiatives in the document sparked by the war in Ukraine. The policy noted that Canada will invest $9.5 billion over 20 years to build a strategic reserve of ammunition and scale up the production of made-in-Canada artillery rounds.

The air-launched weapon can reach speeds up to Mach 10, which equates to about 7,700 mph.

Less than a month earlier, the U.S. had sent a Patriot air defense system to Ukraine to help it fend off the barrage of complex missiles Russia was using. But the system had never proved itself against a missile like the Kinzhal.

Even so, the Patriot system blocked the incoming missile, defusing the weapon and several others, according to U.S. officials.

Since then, the Patriot system has continued to successfully intercept a wide range of Russian weaponry. It has shot down Russian aircraft like Su-34 fighters flying nearly 100 miles away, and intercepted missiles as far as 130 miles away, according to Oleksandr Musiienko, head of the Kyiv-based nongovernmental organization the Center for Military and Legal Studies.

The success of the RTX-made Patriot system in Ukraine comes as the U.S. Army aims to replace the Patriot with an integrated air and missile defense system better able to connect with other equipment on the battlefield and equipped with a more capable radar.

But the Patriot system’s dominance in Ukraine has attracted fresh attention and potential customers from around the world. What might have looked like an aging system not long ago now appears to be a workhorse that could be used for years to come.

“Patriot has prove[d] to be a very reliable system,” said Ben Hodges, a retired three-star general who commanded U.S. Army forces in Europe following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. “The Ukrainians learned very quickly how to operate it, and even more impressively they learned very quickly how to employ it to great effect.”

“Nations are much more alive to the [air and missile defense] threat,” he added.

The successor

The Patriot system was first introduced to counter threats to the United States during the Cold War. But it faced significant battle when forces deployed the system in the Middle East during the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.

In those early years, the Patriot experienced major failures. In 1991, for example, the system failed to intercept an Iraqi Al Hussein Scud missile, which hit barracks in Saudi Arabia and killed 28 U.S. soldiers. The system was then involved in three friendly fire incidents in 2003 during the Iraq War; in one case, a Patriot shot down a British Royal Air Force Tornado jet, killing its two crew members.

Despite these failures, the U.S. Army has long relied on the system. Indeed, its Patriot units for years maintained the highest operational tempo across any units in the service with the longest deployments. Despite the incidents in Iraq, it was heavily used there and successfully countered ballistic missile threats.

And plenty of other countries also use the system, which is made up of eight truck-mounted launchers, a ground radar, a control station and a power generator. The launchers can each hold four interceptors.

According to Raytheon, an RTX company that manufactures the Patriot system, 19 countries have purchased the weapon and there are more than 250 Patriot fire units around the world. Tom Laliberty, Raytheon’s president of land and air defense systems, told Defense News in a recent interview the U.S. owns 85-90 of those, with the rest distributed among the other 18 customer countries.

“The system has just been continually improved based on feedback we get from the now 19 countries that use Patriot,” he said.

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea led to a sales burst. Eastern European countries jumped to buy Patriot systems to enhance their own defenses. Romania, Poland and Sweden signed on as new customers in the years between Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

But during the same time, the U.S. Army started making plans to replace the Patriot, seeking a capability with a more flexible command-and-control system and a radar capable of full coverage. The Patriot radar’s existing configuration creates blind spots for the system.

The Army is slated to build a new Patriot battery to replace the one sent to Ukraine and to secure one more battalion’s worth of systems. But the service will gradually replace individual elements of the Patriot system over the next several decades. Eventually, all of those upgraded elements will become a new system known as Integrated Air and Missile Defense.

The first piece to be replaced will be the Patriot’s command-and-control system, which will be swapped out with the Northrop Grumman-developed Integrated Battle Command System. IBCS, approved for full-rate production last year, will enable the system to connect with a variety of other sensors and shooters on the battlefield.

Next, the Patriot system’s radar is slated to be replaced with the Raytheon-developed Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS. The first set of prototype radars is undergoing tests with the Army; they are expected to offer 360-degree coverage.

In recent months, the sensor completed four successful live-fire demonstrations at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.

The Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense system will be designed to tie into a broader air defense architecture using IBCS. The service is also expected to be able to easily improve the technology through software updates.

Patriot heats up

But the system’s success in Ukraine has made clear there remains interest for the Patriot in its current state.

Switzerland purchased five batteries and 75 missiles in November 2022, and Romania plans to buy additional fire units. At least two other European countries are close to announcing plans to buy Patriot, according to Laliberty, who declined to identify them.

Germany announced in March it would buy more Patriot systems to augment its air defense capabilities. Raytheon won a $1.2 billion contract that buys radars, launchers, command-and-control stations, spares and support, according to a company statement.

Slovakia has publicly expressed interest in buying Patriot systems following a NATO-owned Patriot system’s deployment to the country in 2022.

Raytheon’s production lines are churning out five fire units for the contract with Switzerland, Laliberty said, and the company anticipates an additional 12 will be under contract within the next 18 months.

“Given that our capacity supports the production of 12 fire units a year, there is sufficient capacity to support current as well as future contracts as they materialize,” he noted.

Raytheon also received a contract in January to replace the U.S. Patriot battery donated to Ukraine. That was paid for with fiscal 2023 supplemental funding approved by Congress.

Now, the company is focused on boosting production of the missiles the Patriot system uses as interceptors. The PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement weapons, made by Lockheed Martin, are the most capable missile variant used by the system.

In 2018, Lockheed’s annual rate of building those missiles was 350. The company planned to increase that to 500 annually. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has put new pressure on this effort, and the U.S. Army has provided funding to get Lockheed to 550 missiles per year. In December, the firm said it reached a rate of 500 per year.

The company built an 85,000-square-foot facility equipped with automated systems to build PAC-3 MSE missiles and is now preparing to produce 650 a year by 2027.

Boeing, which supplies the seeker for the PAC-3 MSE, is also planning to accelerate production, according to Jim Bryan, the company’s director of integrated air and missile defense.

Bryan said Boeing last year added 35,000 square feet to its factory, enabling a 30% production increase.

Many of the expansion efforts by Lockheed and its suppliers preceded government funding. The companies are banking on both an increase in U.S. government spending in the coming years as well as a rise in orders from international customers.

“From a demand future, we continue to see it. We meet with customers all the time, and we think we’ll be adding new customers to the MSE line,” Brenda Davidson, Lockheed’s vice president of PAC-3 programs, told Defense News. “The areas of Asia-Pacific and the Middle East continue to be very, very important to us.”

‘Patriot has a place’

Indeed, those two regions have existing Patriot customers that continue to rely on the system. And geopolitical hot spots, such as the Taiwan Strait and the Red Sea, are driving demand for air defense more broadly — regardless of which system is available.

Increasingly savvy ballistic missiles and emerging hypersonic missiles are creating new challenges for air defense systems. The U.S. Army has named air defense one of its highest priorities, and is adjusting its funding accordingly.

In the fiscal 2025 budget released in March, the Army asked for $602 million in research and development efforts for Integrated Air and Missile Defense and $2.8 billion in procurement, which covers modernized capabilities beyond the Patriot system.

For Patriot modifications alone, the Army planned to spend $1.7 billion between FY24 and FY28, according to FY24 budget documents. Now, the Army is requesting an additional $2.29 billion across the same time period to modify and upgrade its Patriot capability, according to FY25 documents.

The head of U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, said the service has sought to reduce pressure on Patriot air defense units, but has been stymied by today’s demands.

“Prior to the recent increase in deployments, we were continuing to move along a path to regain some of that readiness,” he told Defense News in March. The “demand has limited our ability to regain a lot of that readiness back.”

He said the Army hopes international allies will help as they increasingly buy air defense capabilities.

“It’s going to be a challenge as long as we have the high demand moving forward on our soldiers. But leveraging our partners and leveraging our modernization goals are the ways that we can eventually, sometime in the future, start alleviating some of that pressure,” Gainey added.

Hodges, however, said there remains just one U.S. Patriot battalion committed to Europe.

“I have seen and heard a lot more conversation about” air and missile defense integration among allies and partners in Europe, he noted, “but I have not seen marked increases in capabilities, nor have I seen a large-scale, theaterwide, joint, multinational air [and] missile defense exercise that presents the same sort of challenge a Russian attack would bring.”

“None of us has enough capacity to defend much of what must be protected. So integration and regional approaches are necessary,” Hodges added.

For his part, Gainey said some European countries are interested in adopting the U.S. Army’s modernized capability, including the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor as well as the Integrated Battle Command System. Poland, for example, is the first country to field the latter.

“Patriot has a place,” Gainey said. “They will still operate out there hand in hand until we fully modernize the air and missile defense force.”

The Koreas each launched their first spy satellites last year — North Korea in November and South Korea in December — amid heightened animosities. They said their satellites would boost their abilities to monitor each other and enhance their own missile attack capabilities.

South Korea’s second spy satellite was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday evening local time, which was Monday morning in Seoul.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it confirmed the satellite entered orbit and communicated with an overseas ground station after separation from a rocket.

“With the success of the second military spy satellite launch, our military has acquired an additional independent surveillance ability and further bolstered our ‘kill chain’ capability,” Defense Ministry spokesperson Jeon Ha Gyu told reporters, referring to the military’s preemptive missile strike capability.

South Korea in 2022 became the world’s 10th nation to successfully launch a satellite with its own technology by using a homegrown rocket to place what it called a “performance observation satellite” in orbit.

Under a contract with SpaceX, South Korea was to launch five spy satellites by 2025. South Korea’s first spy satellite launch on Dec. 1 was made from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base.

North Korea is also eager to acquire its own space-based surveillance network to cope with what it calls military threats posed by the United States and South Korea.

After two launch failures earlier in 2023, North Korea placed its Malligyong-1 spy satellite into orbit on Nov. 21. North Korea has since said its satellite had transmitted imagery with space views of key sites in the U.S. and South Korea, including the White House and the Pentagon. But it hasn’t released any of those satellite photos, and foreign experts doubt whether the North Korean satellite can transmit militarily meaningful imagery.

On March 31, Pak Kyong Su, vice general director of the North’s National Aerospace Technology Administration, said North Korea is expected to launch several more reconnaissance satellites this year. During a key political conference in late December, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to launch three additional military spy satellites in 2024.

South Korean Defense Minister Shin Wonsik said Monday that North Korea will likely go ahead with its second spy satellite launch soon to mark the April 15 birthday of state founder Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of Kim Jong Un. Shin said it’s still possible for the North to perform the launch later due to technical reasons.

The U.N. bans North Korea from conducting a satellite launch, considering it as a disguised test of its long-range missile technology. The North’s November satellite launch deepened tensions on the Korean Peninsula, with both Koreas taking steps to breach their 2018 agreement to lessen military tensions.

In recent years, North Korea has been engaged in a provocative run of missile tests to modernize and expand its weapons arsenals, prompting the U.S. and South Korea to strengthen their military drills in response. Experts say North Korea likely believes that an enlarged weapons arsenals would increase its leverage in future diplomacy with the U.S.

The secretary is rightly focused on the need for increased investment to facilitate greater innovation and production capacity for strategic competition with China. The management teams of some large defense primes, on the other hand, buy back shares as an efficient way to return value to shareholders after considering the attractiveness of investment opportunities available to the company.

Changing this situation and spurring increased investment in the defense market requires addressing the incentive structures that guide market behavior, including stock buybacks.

Before examining market incentives, it is worth noting that the U.S. government decided many decades ago to largely privatize the defense-industrial base. While the DOD retains a modest number of government-owned arsenals, shipyards and depots, the vast majority of the systems developed and services conducted for the DOD are performed by for-profit companies. These companies have developed the innovations and capabilities that have made U.S. forces the best in the world.

This industrial base includes approximately 200,000 small, medium and large companies, the vast majority of which are privately held. Including those traded on foreign exchanges, there are only about 100 companies that are publicly traded. And only a very small fraction of those companies use share buybacks consistently as a strategic management tool.

Secretary del Toro captures the essence of the anti-buyback argument, which has been articulated by Pentagon leaders for years: “You can’t be asking the American taxpayer to make even greater public investments while you continue, in some cases, to goose your stock prices through stock buybacks, deferring promised capital investments, and other accounting maneuvers.”

Why do defense companies continue to pursue stock buybacks? It is principally the large mature defense primes such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and HII that buy back stock. These firms are profitable, generate significant cash flow, have a relatively low cost of capital and are not highly leveraged.

Lack of capital is not a problem hindering investment at the largest defense primes. The issue revolves around the capital allocation decision. If large defense primes are not making significant investments, it is because they believe that this incremental dollar is unlikely to materialize into a profitable contract in the future. For that to change, these primes need to see a better return for the earnings they intend to retain and reinvest. Those returns could come through an increased number of growth opportunities, a greater frequency and volume of competitions, or margin improvement.

In contrast to the large mature primes, smaller publicly traded companies such as AeroVironment and Kratos do not typically buy back shares. They are instead investing in growth, as they see significant opportunities in their own market segments and beyond as the DOD spends heavily in unmanned systems, advanced electronics, autonomy and other areas central to the National Defense Strategy. If similar, larger incentives existed for the larger primes, then that is where capital would be allocated.

Bigger budgets obviously help incentivize investment, but changing how the DOD buys through practices such as open architectures, multiyear contracts and multiple production lines will likewise create more contract opportunities and therefore that stronger demand signal that industry needs to invest.

The DOD is heading in that direction in several important ways, and more emphasis there would be productive. Adopting some of the recent recommendations of the congressional commission on defense planning, programming, budgeting and execution reform, for example, could substantially contribute toward improving incentive structures.

Another promising avenue the DOD can use to incentivize investment by the larger primes revolves around program performance. Secretary del Toro has justly emphasized in his recent remarks that “industry must deliver platforms and capabilities on time and on budget for the sake of our warfighters who are in harm’s way.”

How about, for example, rewarding contractors with substantial profit-margin expansion opportunities for delivering ahead of terms, and punishing them more severely for missing the mark? The beauty of a commercially viable defense industry is that its participants are responsive to incentives.

Ultimately, management at for-profit companies are stewards of others’ capital. Browbeating the financial practices of industry alienates firms large and small. Let’s work instead to change some of the incentive structures in the defense market. Addressing these will help foster the innovation and investment we need in our industrial base as well as reducing stock buybacks along the way. And it is ultimately that vibrant public-private partnership we need to confront today’s daunting national security challenges.

Jerry McGinn is the executive director of the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting at George Mason University and a former senior U.S. Defense Department acquisition official. Mikhail Grinberg is a partner at Renaissance Strategic Advisors and a member of the center’s advisory board. Lloyd Everhart is a research manager at the center.

The envisioned transformation comes after studying the lessons gleaned from Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine and Kyiv’s ensuing defensive operations, now in their third year.

“Unmanned systems allow to gain advantage at relatively low costs,” a spokesperson for the National Ministry of Defense told Defense News. “The ministry will intensify the dronization process of the Polish military in specific areas of their use: reconnaissance, combat, and support.”

That means even small formations of soldiers will have access to an arsenal of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, the official explained. “Experience with the use of drones across our eastern border [with Ukraine] indicates the validity of their use at the lowest levels of command, so that, for instance, a platoon commander could have reconnaissance UAVs at their disposal, and be able to hit close targets with UAVs or use so-called ‘kamikaze’ drones.”

Observations from the war in Ukraine also have prompted Polish plans to launch a new military component, the Drone Forces, according to Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defence.

Speaking earlier this year at a session of the National Defence Committee of the Sejm, the parliament’s lower chamber, Kosiniak-Kamysz described the envisioned organization as a “separate component at operational level.” The idea came from Gen. Wiesław Kukuła, the chief of the General Staff, he said.

Amid those plans, buying and fielding new drones is a priority for officials here, with ongoing acquisitions to be accelerated.

The Polish military has acquired various types of UAVs over the past years. These include Bayraktar TB2 drones equipped with anti-tank missiles. Warsaw ordered 24 such drones from Turkish manufacturer Baykar in 2021, and their deliveries began in 2022.

“The last of the four sets [ordered from Baykar] is currently in the process of being transferred to the armed forces,” the defense spokesperson said.

Poland is also negotiating the acquisition of MQ-9B SkyGuardian drones from General Atomics, following a period of leasing the MQ-9A Reaper model. The potential purchase of an undisclosed number of aircraft is poised to make the nation’s armed forces the first military on NATO’s eastern flank to buy the medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) UAV.

Asked by Defense News about the program, the spokesperson would only confirm that “there is a plan to purchase MQ-9B unmanned reconnaissance and strike systems.”

“Looking at the next programs, as part of the Zefir program, we intend to acquire MALE-class unmanned aerial systems,” the spokesperson said, noting that a separate effort is ongoing under the Gryf program to field a shorter-range variant. For the Polish Navy, a separate effort exists to buy rotorcraft drones under the Albatros program.

Polish privately-owned defense company WB Group has supplied two types of drones to the country’s military: FlyEye mini UAVs, which are used for reconnaissance, artillery guidance, search and rescue, but also to extend the range of battle management systems; and Warmate drones, which combine reconnaissance capacities and combat capabilities as loitering munition.

While orders placed with foreign UAV manufacturers and privately-owned Polish drone makers have allowed Poland to gain new capabilities, the troubled UAV contract the previous government awarded to state-owned PGZ in 2018 has become a model example of inefficient procurement, local observers say.

Under the deal, a consortium of state-owned defense companies was to deliver 30 short-range reconnaissance Orlik drones for about 790 million zloty ($200 million). Since then, numerous annexes were added to the contract to extend the delivery schedule.

Kosiniak-Kamysz said that he expects PGZ to immediately come through with the work. “The military has lost patience in this matter,” he said. “In 2021, those drones were to be delivered, and they have not been delivered to date,” he said said April 5.

The coming months will demonstrate how PGZ’s new management intends to tackle the problematic drone contract. Last month, Krzysztof Trofiniak was named as the company’s new chief executive. A seasoned defense industry manager, Trofiniak’s track record includes serving as the president of local defense company Huta Stalowa Wola and as vice president of PGZ. His return to the defense giant was facilitated by the October 2023 election in which a new coalition government was sworn in, ousting the right-wing Law and Justice party from power after eight years of rule.

The Labor-led government’s broad-ranging LTDP, announced at a news conference in Oslo on April 5, proposes a record-breaking increase in capital investments for national defense that project $60 billion in spending in the 12 year period up to 2036.

A critical feature in the LTDP raises spending and financial benefits across all branches of the Norwegian Defense Forces. The plan will strengthen the NDF’s manpower while significantly enhancing its air-defenses and capabilities to better defend its High North borders with Russia in collaboration with NATO forces, including Nordic neighbors, and new Alliance members, Sweden and Finland.

Higher levels of funding in the LTDP are directed at improving the NDF’s situational awareness capabilities by building its surveillance, presence, and control assets across the High North and in strategic neighborhood areas in the Nordic region. The NDF aims to achieve superior situational awareness through an integrated plan comprising the use of new specialist surveillance vessels and the expansion of satellite and drone capabilities.

“The most fundamental task this government has is to provide security for the people of Norway. We need a defense that is fit for purpose in the emerging security environment. This plan represents a historic boost in defense spending and it will entail a major strengthening of all branches of the Armed Forces,” said Støre.

If achieved, and the LTDP meets all set targets, the expectation is that Norway’s annual defense budget, measured in real terms, will double from its 2024 level of $8.75 billion to over $17 billion by 2036.

The key funding proposals in the LTDP also cover the replenishment of military stocks shipped to help Ukraine’s war efforts against Russia. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Norway has provided Ukraine with over $2 billion in military hardware and humanitarian aid. In 2023 alone, Norway provided $1 billion in military support under the Nansen Support Program, including NASAMS air defence systems.

The procurement elements in the LTDP are pivotal to Norway’s national defense strengthening goals. As a result, the acquisition of new frigates, submarines and surface vessels for the Navy is being prioritized.

Air defense

The procurement plan comprises an advanced air-defense solution to include the country’s first long-range air defense system. The NDF’s Army branch will be expanded from one to three brigades. The Home Guard, the NDF’s rapid mobilization force, will be increased from around 40,000 personnel at present to 45,000 combat-ready soldiers.

Norway aims to reconstruct its military to give it a sharper focus on dealing with active conflict prevention, said Bjørn Arild Gram, Norway’s defense minister.

“Our better resourced military must be able to deal with active conflict prevention every day and stand ready to handle conflict. Increased activity requires more personnel. In total our Armed Forces will be strengthened with over 20,000 conscripted soldiers, civilian employees and reservists,” Gram said.

For the LTDP to succeed, said Gram, the key proposals in the plan will need to be implemented simultaneously to address critical deficiencies in present day national defense structures and capabilities.

“Norway must invest in infrastructure, not just for today’s defense but also for a defense that is set for growth. We need to bolster educational capacity to meet the need for more personnel. We must also allocate sufficient funds to replenish our emergency stockpiles. This is essential to avoid ending up with an imbalanced force structure, where vessels are docked, and aircraft are parked,” Gram said.

The LTDP requires a rapid elevation in force strength across all branches of the NDF. To the end, the plan aims to increase the number of conscripts and reservists by 4,600 and 13,700 respectively. The number of support civilian personnel is projected to grow by 4,600 with a special focus on hiring talent with specialized technology skills.

The prioritized Naval strengthening program aims to deliver five to six new frigates, with onboard anti-submarine helicopters, in addition to a minimum of five new submarines. Norway is acquiring the Type 212CD submarine, which is being built under a German-Norwegian strategic partnership that will deliver the T212CDs to both navies.

Along with the procurement of surface ships, the frigate and submarine elements of the LTDP represents the largest capital investment by any Norwegian government in to the strengthening of the Royal Norwegian Navy’s ability to protect the country’s extensive territorial Arctic and sub-arctic waters against prevailing threats.

The scope in ambition of the LTDP is evidenced in Norway’s decision to procure a long-range air defense system to upgrade the NDF’s ability to defend against short-range ballistic missile threats. Moreover, Norway plans to double the quantity of the existing NASAMS air defense which is set to be updated to deliver a higher level of protection against drones and missiles.

The LTDP recognizes the importance of Nato and neighboring Nordic Alliance states Denmark, Sweden and Finland to the long-term security of Norway. Nato’s continuing presence, said Gram, is fundamental to supporting “stability and guaranteeing peace” in the Nordic and Baltic regions.

“Finland’s and Sweden’s recent membership of Nato strengthens security in our region. It also presents Norway with new obligations. We must rapidly transform from not just a receiving country of Allied reinforcements but also a transit and contributing ally to the defense and security of the entire Nordic and Baltic regions,” Gram said.

In its latest annual report, the Navy said it needed to hit a headcount of 39,000 to fulfill its ongoing missions, a massive 34% increase on its current roster of around 29,000.

The appeal echoed a speech made last week before parliament by Chief of Staff Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone in which he called on lawmakers to authorize big boosts in numbers across the board – covering the army, navy and air force.

“We are absolutely undersized,” he said. While the Italian armed forces currently have a strength of 165,564, Cavo Dragone said 170,000 was “at the limit of survival.”

His appeal was shared in a TV interview last week by Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, who said Italy’s armed forces were not “at an acceptable level.”

The irony is that Italy has been working to reduce the size of its armed forces for over a decade, before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2020, sparking a high-intensity land war on Europe’s borders and sending generals back to the drawing board.

A 2012 law envisaged the reduction of Italy’s 190,000-strong armed forces to 150,000 and the shrinking has been ongoing, albeit slowly, ever since.

After the Ukraine invasion, a decree passed late last year added 10,000 back to the target, making 160,000 the new headcount to aim for, but Cavo Dragone was not impressed.

“150,000 was unworkable, while the 160,000 now approved is still little,” he said.

The Italian Navy report said the decree would, on paper, give it a headcount of 30,500, which is slightly higher than the 29,000 sailors it has now, but still far lower than the 39,000 it wants.

Last year the Navy was using an average of 4,000 sailors every day in operations, with the peak reached on April 27, when it deployed 42 ships, four submarines, 18 aircraft and 7,324 in operations.

The Navy has factored in lower headcounts into the design of its new PPA-class vessels which feature an unusual bridge designed along the lines of an aircraft cockpit that requires a smaller crew.

That was a practical solution, but less so during a conflict, said Andrea Margelletti, the president of the CeSI think tank in Rome and an adviser to the Italian ministry of defense.

“Small crews are fine until you are shot at and have to put out fires,” he said.

Margelletti said that rather than getting politicians to authorize a rise in headcounts, the armed forces’ big challenge was ensuring that the average age of serving men and women dropped.

“You can’t ask a solider in their 40s to lug a 30kg back pack,” he said.

Alessandro Marrone, who heads the defense programme at Rome think tank IAI, said the problem of aging soldiers could only be solved if the armed forces were able to help older servicemen and women move on to non-military jobs.

“You need to find them jobs in the private sector or other branches of government, and Italy does not have the set-up to do that,” he said.

Whether the problem was old soldiers or too few soldiers, Margelletti said Italy did not have much time to fix the problem.

“Russia wants to push on in Ukraine and the front will collapse if we do not provide more arms,” he said. “Russia knows its strongest weapon is our collective fear about entering the war, while our strongest weapon would be Russia knowing we will fight. I believe it is inevitable we will enter this war sooner or later, possibly defending a line from Kyiv to Odessa, with a 90,000 strong force drawn from countries like France, the U.K., Poland, the Baltics, Romania and finally Germany. Italy will also be asked to contribute,” he said.

“And we will not be able to rely on the U.S., not only if Trump wins - even if he doesn’t, due to the rising isolationism in the U.S.,” he added.

More air defense systems is the number one priority, “no question about it,” Chief of Defence Gen. Otto Eichelsheim said in an interview with broadcaster NPO on April 4, flanked by his top generals. NATO is also counting on the Dutch to contribute tanks and more medical capability to the alliance, the commander said.

After decades of cost cuts, the next government of the European Union’s fifth-largest economy will have to boost defense spending beyond the NATO target of 2% of GDP to bring the military up to strength, according to Eichelsheim. Talks to form a new Dutch government are ongoing following elections in November, with the Cabinet of Prime Minister Mark Rutte in a caretaker role.

The Netherlands kicked off a defense budget hike in a 2022 policy paper, which allowed the armed forces to rebuild supplies and support roles that had been whittled down to such an extent that combat power couldn’t be sustained or deployed long-term, according to Eichelsheim. “So we invested in that first.”

“The next step has to be that you strengthen your combat power, while also still further building up your support capability,” Eichelsheim said. “Even with 2% we’ll still have to make choices. NATO has been asking more and more of us, the world is demanding more and more from us; 2% is just not enough.”

The Netherlands lifted its 2024 defense budget to €21.4 billion ($ 23.2 billion), or 1.95% of GDP, from €15.4 billion in 2023 and €12.9 billion in 2022. In this year’s budget, €7.9 billion is reserved for buying and maintenance of equipment.

Russia has managed to recover quickly from initial losses following the invasion of Ukraine, and has been building up its military, the Dutch commander said. “We worry a lot about the fact that they have that recovery power, and so we really have to make sure that we are fully ready for that. And we’re just not there yet.”

The top brass in a meeting around May last year concluded that “it’s going to go wrong and we don’t have much time,” according to Eichelsheim. He said Dutch military command has identified the biggest needs and put in place plans to strengthen the armed forces, also in view of NATO demands, with the current military assets “not nearly enough.”

Tanks “are very high on the wish list, but no political decision has yet been made,” Royal Netherlands Army Commander Lt. Gen. Jan Swillens said, adding that a heavy-armor capability would be important for future deployments. Long-range precision artillery and air defense, “resources that ten or fifteen years ago we thought we’d never need again,” are also high on the wish list, based on feedback from the war in Ukraine.

The Netherlands has been considering recreating its own tank battalion, having scrapped its heavy cavalry in 2011. The current defense budget doesn’t cover the costs of setting up a tank battalion, and the next government will have to decide on how much extra money will go to defense, and whether any of that will be spent on tanks.

The big concern among the Dutch top brass is that the Netherlands won’t be able to restore its military to full strength quickly enough in the face of an aggressive Russia, according to Lt Gen André Steur, head of the Royal Netherlands Air Force.

“Russia isn’t the only threat, but if you look at how quickly they are now able to recover, to get back to full war strength, as they were on February 24, 2022, we are all moving too slowly, and you actually see that throughout the alliance,” Steur said. “All of us here at the table want to prevent war. So the most important thing is that we’re able to deter war.”

The Netherlands will exercise in Poland with 4,500 troops this month, moving columns of equipment and personnel to Eastern Europe by road for the first time in years, and it no longer has enough military police to secure the columns, according to Swillens.

The Royal Marechaussee gendarmerie force, whose tasks include military police duties, is in the process of rebuilding to undo the damage of budget cuts, according to its commander Lt. Gen. Annelore Roelofs. “We really need more military police,” Roelofs said. “As the military continues to grow, and that’s going to happen, we need even more of that.”

Should the Netherlands get involved in a war on Europe’s eastern flanks, it will need gendarmerie forces to secure and protect forward-deployed units, said Eichelsheim. “We have the task, but we don’t have the people for it. So we have to fill all that back in.”

The smaller size of the Dutch armed forces makes sustaining a conflict harder, in a threat environment made more complex by Russia’s aggression but also conflict in the Middle East and terrorism, said Vice Adm. René Tas, commander of the Royal Netherlands Navy. The increased defense budget has provided breathing space, as troops can at least be provided with sufficient ammunition and new gear, he said.

The Netherlands can’t supply additional Patriot air-defense systems to Ukraine, as it is at the minimum deployment needed to protect Dutch ports, according to Eichelsheim. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is the fourth-busiest airport in Europe, while Rotterdam is the continent’s biggest maritime port. The Netherlands previously supplied two Patriot launchers to Ukraine, as well as training.

Eichelsheim said the allies supporting Ukraine will have to find a solution for the Patriot shortfall, by going though their stockpiles to see what systems can still be assembled. “We see how important that air defense is in the face of Russian Federation attacks.”