Nato set to approve new military purchases as part of a defence spending hike
The 'capability targets' lay out goals for each of the 32 nations to purchase priority equipment such as air defence systems, long-range missiles, artillery, ammunition, drones and 'strategic enablers' such as air-to-air refuelling, heavy air transport and logistics.
Each nation's plan is classified, so details are scarce.
'Today we decide on the capability targets. From there, we will assess the gaps we have, not only to be able to defend ourselves today, but also three, five, seven years from now,' Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte said.
'All these investments have to be financed,' he told reporters before chairing the meeting at Nato's Brussels headquarters.
US President Donald Trump and his Nato counterparts will meet on June 24-25 to agree to new defence investment goals.
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth said that 'to be an alliance, you've got to be more than flags. You got to be more than conferences. You need to keep combat ready capabilities'.
Spurred on by their own security concerns, European allies and Canada have already been ramping up military spending, including arms and ammunition purchases, since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
At the same time, some allies balk at US demands to invest 5% of their gross domestic product in defence – 3.5% on core military spending and 1.5% on the roads, bridges, airfields and sea ports needed to deploy armies more quickly – when they have already struggled to grow their budgets to 2% of GDP.
The new targets are assigned by Nato based on a blueprint agreed upon in 2023 – the military organisation's biggest planning shake-up since the Cold War — to defend its territory from an attack by Russia or another major adversary.
Under those plans, Nato would aim to have up to 300,000 troops ready to move to its eastern flank within 30 days, although experts suggest the allies would struggle to muster those kinds of numbers.
The member countries are assigned roles in defending Nato territory across three major zones – the high north and Atlantic area, a zone north of the Alps, and another in southern Europe.
Nato planners believe that the targets must be met within five to 10 years, given the speed at which Russia is building its armed forces now, and which would accelerate were any peace agreement reached to end its war on Ukraine.
Some fear Russia might be ready to strike at a Nato country even sooner, especially if Western sanctions are eased and Europe has not prepared.
'Are we going to gather here again and say 'OK, we failed a bit', and then maybe we start learning Russian?' Lithuanian Defence Minister Dovile Sakaliene said.
Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonson also warned that while Russia is bogged down in Ukraine right now, things could quickly change.
'We also know after an armistice or a peace agreement, of course, Russia is going to allocate more forces closer to our vicinity. Therefore, it's extremely important that the alliance use these couple of years now when Russia is still limited by its force posture in and around Ukraine,' Mr Jonson said.
If the targets are respected, the member countries will need to spend at least 3% of GDP on defence.
Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said his country calculates in the medium term that 'we should spend 3.5% at least on defence, which in the Netherlands means an additional 16 to 19 billion euro (£13-16 billion) addition to our current budget.'
The Netherlands is likely to buy more tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and long-range missile systems, including US-made Patriots that can target aircraft, cruise missiles and shorter-range ballistic missiles.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NBC News
38 minutes ago
- NBC News
Russian drones and missiles target Ukraine's eastern city of Kharkiv, killing 3, officials say
A large Russian drone-and-missile attack targeted Ukraine's eastern city of Kharkiv on Saturday, killing at least three people and injuring 21, local Ukrainian officials said. The Russian barrage — the latest in near daily widescale attacks by Moscow — included deadly aerial glide bombs that have become part of fierce Russian attacks in the three-year war. Kharkiv's mayor Ihor Terekhov said the attack also damaged 18 apartment buildings and 13 private homes. Citing preliminary data, he said Russia used 48 Shahed drones, two missiles and four aerial glide bombs in the attack. The intensity of the Russian attacks on Ukraine over the past weeks has further dampened hopes that the warring sides could reach a peace deal anytime soon days — especially after Kyiv recently embarrassed the Kremlin with a surprising drone attack on military airfields deep inside Russia. U.S. President Donald Trump said this week that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, told him Moscow would respond to Ukraine's attack on Sunday on Russian military airfields. On Friday, Russian strikes hit six Ukrainian territories, and killing at least six people and injuring about 80 others, Ukrainian officials said. Among the dead were three emergency responders in Kyiv, one person in Lutsk and two people in Chernihiv. Trump also said that it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia 'fight for a while' before pulling them apart and pursuing peace. Trump's comments were a remarkable detour from his often-stated appeals to stop the war and signaled he may be giving up on recent peace efforts.
NBC News
41 minutes ago
- NBC News
Breaking down 20 years of election data that shows how the two parties have evolved in the Trump era
President Donald Trump's second election win was different from his first in one big, important way: He won the popular vote, just the second time in the last two decades that Republicans had done so. And in the time between those two victories, from 2004 to 2024, there have been dramatic shifts in the nation's politics along geographic, racial, educational and economic lines. Trump is operating in a very different Republican Party than George W. Bush was 20 years earlier. A look at where the vote has shifted most in that time tells an eye-catching story. Over the last 20 years, the counties where Republicans have improved their presidential vote share by the largest margins are predominately centered in Appalachia and the surrounding areas. The 100 counties that saw the largest shifts include: 11 of West Virginia's 55 counties, 27 of Tennessee's 95 counties, 18 of Arkansas' 75 counties and 17 of Kentucky's 120 counties. These counties, on the whole, are much more heavily white than average, according to census data, with white residents making up at least 90% of the total population in about two-thirds of these counties. All but 12 of those counties are at least 75% white. The unemployment rate across these counties is about twice the national average. Residents are more likely to be reliant on food stamps and less likely to have moved in the last year. Residents of these counties, on average, also are significantly less likely to have a bachelor's degree or higher. While the national average in the American Community Survey's most recent five-year estimate is that 35% of Americans have a bachelor's degree or higher, the average in these counties is just 14%. In short, the shifts show how Trump has brought more white working-class voters into the GOP, causing spectacular changes in some localities. Elliott County, Kentucky, with about 7,300 people, shifted the most over this time period. While Democrat John Kerry carried the county over Bush 70%-29%, the county shifted significantly to the right by Democrat Barack Obama's 2012 re-election, when Obama narrowly outran Republican Mitt Romney 49%-47%. The county continued to shift with Trump on the ballot, ultimately with Trump winning a higher vote share in 2024 (80%) than Kerry did in 2004. It's a similar story in many of these other counties — particularly those in states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, where rural voters that once voted Democratic have been leaving the party, especially at the presidential level. In the Trump era, heavily Hispanic counties shifted right A different look — at the counties with the largest pro-Republican shifts between Trump's three elections, from 2016 to 2024 — shows some major differences in the types of places that have moved to the right specifically within the Trump era. On average, the 100 counties that shifted most toward Republicans in the Trump era are significantly more Hispanic than the national average. These counties are also wealthier and more educated compared to the counties that moved most from 2004 to 2024, although they are still below the national average. While the biggest Republican-shifting counties from 2004 to 2024 are largely concentrated around Appalachia, the counties that shifted the most to the right in the Trump era are more spread out and predominantly in the South and West. Twenty-nine Texas counties show up in the list of 100 counties that saw the greatest gain in GOP presidential vote margin between 2016 and 2024, and 12 of those are among the 20 that saw the biggest shifts. All of these Texas counties are majority-Hispanic, and some are more than 90% Hispanic, emblematic of Trump's dramatic improvement among Hispanic voters in 2024 as well as his success in heavily Hispanic areas along the border in 2020. Another heavily Hispanic county, Miami-Dade County, saw the 15th-largest shift in margin toward Republicans between 2016 and 2024 out of more than 3,000 counties nationwide. Other major population centers in New York City — including the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens — are in the top 100 too. And the 14 counties in Utah are typical of another trend: Many Republicans initially skeptical of Trump in 2016 (including Mormons, who make up a significant part of the electorate in Utah) largely fell in line eight years later. Where Democrats have made their biggest gains Democrats have seen their own shifts — the flip side of those GOP gains in a country that has remained tightly divided even as the two party coalitions have shifted significantly from 20 years ago. While the counties that saw the largest GOP gains over the last two decades were predominantly rural and small, the counties where Democrats improved the most are much larger, primarily in suburban and urban areas. The 100 counties where the GOP presidential vote margin grew most over the last two decades cast just 782,000 votes in 2024. The 100 counties that saw the most improvement in the Democratic presidential vote margin cast almost 20 million votes all together in 2024. Those Democratic-trending counties include key constituencies that have become more important to the party's coalition in recent years. On average, they are more heavily Black, more wealthy, more educated and more urban, an unsurprising mix of voters mobilized in the Obama era and those who have fled the Republican Party in the Trump era. They're also broadly more likely to have more newer residents — according to census data, those Democratic-trending counties have higher-than-average shares of residents who have recently moved to the county. Many of those major trends intersect in exurban and suburban Georgia, particularly in the Atlanta metro area. Seven Georgia counties are among the top eight that saw the most movement toward Democrats the two decades since 2004: Rockdale, Henry, Douglas, Gwinnett, Newton, Cobb and Fayette counties. All but Newton are in metro Atlanta, all are at least one-quarter Black, and most have higher incomes and education rates than the national average. Extremely wealthy and highly educated areas in northern Virginia, as well as counties like Teton County, Wyoming — home to the ritzy Jackson Hole ski resorts as well as major national parks — and Los Alamos County, New Mexico — home to the Department of Energy laboratory that helped develop the atomic bomb — are also among the counties that swung most toward Democrats over this period. Los Alamos County is particularly symbolic: It has the highest share of Ph.D.s among residents of any county in the country. Two more notable counties included in this list are Sarpy and Douglas counties in Nebraska, which make up the vast majority of the state's 2nd Congressional District — the 'blue dot' that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris carried in the last two presidential elections, securing one electoral vote even as Trump carried the state. Democrats have gained in wealthier, whiter and more educated counties in the Trump era The counties that shifted most toward Democrats between 2016 and 2024, the Trump era, are significantly whiter and slightly older than those that moved most over the last two decades. Twenty are in Colorado and nine are in Utah, but there are a handful of important counties in the Midwest too. The two counties that saw the biggest Democratic shifts in the last eight years are both in Utah: Utah and Davis counties, around Provo and Salt Lake City, respectively. There's an important caveat here: In 2016, independent candidate Evan McMullin won 21% of the vote, deflating both parties' vote shares. Looking at more competitive states, almost one-third of Colorado's counties were among the 100 with the largest Democratic shifts in the Trump era, as were 11 in Georgia. Grand Traverse County, Michigan, and Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, have also seen more recent shifts, emblematic of how some educated, suburban Republican strongholds have been moving toward Democrats with Trump on the ballot. But those gains have been more moderate, an increase of 7 percentage points in the Democratic margin between 2016 and 2024 in Ozaukee, and 8 percentage points in Grand Traverse.
NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
Just how much damage did Ukraine do in its 'Spiderweb' drone attack on Russia?
While Ukraine released what it said were recordings of drones attacking these air bases, as well as two others in the Ivanovo and Ryazan regions, satellite imagery did not show any visible signs of damage at these sites. Russia no longer manufactures these aircraft, said Thomas Withington, an electronic warfare and air defense expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London. 'You can't just go to the factory and get a new one. Once you lose one of these aircraft, broadly speaking you lose it forever,' said Withington. 'That degrades the strategic and nuclear capabilities of the Russian air force.' Whatever the total losses, few outside Russia contest that Ukraine's operation was a remarkable feat of intelligence, planning and utilizing cheap, modern warfare tools. According to the SBU, it stashed 117 small drones inside sheds on the backs of trucks, unleashing them near the perimeters of four Russian air bases. One of these air bases, Belaya, is 2,500 miles away from Ukraine's borders. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hailed it as 'a brilliant result' that took 18 months to plan and would 'undoubtedly be in history books.' Zelenskyy aide Pavlo Palisa told journalists in Washington on Wednesday that 41 Russian aircraft were hit, around half of which were 'completely destroyed' and the rest no longer able to fly. The SBU and Zelenskyy said 34% of Russia's nuclear-capable strategic bombing force had been taken out of action — at a cost of $7 billion. Palisa told reporters that two Beriev A-50s — rare and valuable early-warning radar planes, known as 'awacs' — were 'targeted.' The SBU's video only appeared to show a drone landing on top of the radar dish of one of these aircraft, however, with no explosion. When contacted by NBC News for more information on how it came to its figures, the SBU said that NATO confirmed its tally — despite the discrepancy in figures given by the alliance. Russia has a far different version of events.
