NATO Asks European Allies to Quintuple Ground-Based Air Defence

NATO is asking European member countries to significantly increase the number of ground-based air defence forces in order to prepare for potential Russian aggression.

The Gaze reports on this with reference to Bloomberg.

Bloomberg sources say that the Alliance has set an overall goal for European members to increase their ground-based air defence forces fivefold. Individual increase levels will be determined for each country separately, and no time frame has been set for this process.

The issue of ground-based air defence is expected to be discussed at a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels on Thursday, the agency's sources added.

A senior European military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Bloomberg that NATO members urgently need to build up their ground-based air defence systems.

Over the past three decades, the Alliance has reduced the number of these systems as NATO's focus shifted from the Cold War to threats in the Middle East and North Africa, the source added.

The build-up of weapons is part of NATO's broader ambition to increase defence spending.

Under pressure from US President Donald Trump, the Alliance is expected to approve a target of 5% of GDP, of which 3.5% of GDP will be spent directly on defence and another 1.5% of GDP on defence-related spending, such as infrastructure, cyber defence and civil defence.

As The Gaze reported earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with NBC News that “for us and for everyone, NATO is the cheapest security guarantee. The cheapest for us. The cheapest for Europe. The cheapest for the United States. And the cheapest, in fact, for Russia”.