NATO commander says allies must urgently rethink defence

PARIS - NATO countries urgently need to rethink how they ensure their defence, but many have yet to fully grasp the scale of the challenge, particularly when it comes to boosting weapons production, a top NATO officer said on March 25.

Since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has put its economy on a war footing and boosted its weapons production.

“Russia has changed,” Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, told a security and defence forum in Paris.

“We need to be prepared for a new enemy – if we don’t, we will experience what the Gulf experienced,” he said, referring to Iran’s retaliatory attacks on the Gulf nations after the United States and Israel attacked the Islamic republic on Feb 28.

Adm Vandier said that NATO should adapt to produce more weapons and faster, urging allies to make “the right choices”.

“It’s not a question of money. It’s a question of speed,” he said in English.

He stressed the need for NATO to respond to challenges such as Russia and Iran mass-producing drones, whose capacities were rapidly evolving.

“It’s a moment of truth for all of us,” Vandier said.

“The question for us is not to do more of the same, it is to see what we need to do to maintain our security.”

He said NATO countries were “not organised” for mass production of weapons, unlike its adversaries.

He said the military bloc was also too slow, with allies taking between two and three years to just “define what we need.”

General Fabien Mandon, France’s chief of the defence staff, has said the country must be ready in the next three or four years for a clash with Russia.

The French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), a top think-tank, warned in November that Europe could struggle to quickly produce enough weapons in case of a direct confrontation with Russia. AFP