Facts: NATO’s new plans
The NATO military alliance is expected to confirm its new regional defense plans at next week’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 11-12.
The plans are geographically divided into three areas:
1) Northernmost parts and the Atlantic, led from regional headquarters in Norfolk, USA.
2) Central Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Alps, led from the regional headquarters in Brunssum in the Netherlands.
3) Southeast and Mediterranean, led from regional headquarters in Naples, Italy.
When and if Sweden gets its membership approved by all NATO countries, Sweden will be covered by the northern plan.
Source: NATO
Bauer is the head of NATO’s military committee and with a week to go until this summer’s big NATO summit in Lithuania, he talks about the work on the military alliance’s new regional defense plans at a press meeting for NATO correspondents in Brussels.
The idea is for the plans to be formally nailed down by the heads of state and government at the meeting, so that the practical work can then start immediately. The end goal is to be able to mobilize 300,000 soldiers within 30 days to face a potential conflict.
Despite the fact that Russia has lost large numbers of soldiers and equipment in the war in Ukraine, Bauer raises a finger of warning.
— We are convinced that the Russians will rebuild themselves. These plans are not based on the current status of the Russian army, but on the strength they had before the war, says Bauer.
— They will learn lessons from the war. We will continue to see them as a serious threat. They may not be three meters long, but definitely not half a meter either. We must never underestimate the Russians, says the Dutch admiral.
For NATO, the war in Ukraine also shows that you have to plan twice, not only for future new technologies, drones and artificial intelligence.
— What we see in Ukraine is that it is a very old-fashioned war, with the use of technology from the First and Second World Wars, such as artillery bombardment and trenches, observes Rob Bauer in Brussels.