NATO Commander: Europe Must Take Risks, Spend More, Cut Red Tape to Win Arms Race

Weaknesses also include space, IT and military mobility, Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, told POLITICO.  

Europe needs to take more risks, spend more, be faster and cut red tape to win the new global arms race, Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), told POLITICO.

This is his first interview with the press since taking up his post in late September. 

Prior to joining NATO, Vandier was the French Deputy Chief of Defence Staff.

‘Europe cannot win the future battle of arms under the rules it has imposed on itself today,’ the senior NATO commander said.

According to him, the obstacles faced by European arms manufacturers and procurement agencies can be summed up as over-compliance. 

‘You have to demonstrate that everything is perfect in the [equipment] that you are going to deliver in 15 years, that not a single bolt is missing.’

The French admiral hoped that next year's NATO summit in The Hague would send a message to the EU: ‘If you want to stay in the arms race, change your rules.’

Vandier's comments come as Europe seeks to rearm in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Currently, EU countries are working to increase arms production, but still lag far behind Russia in ammunition production.

One of Vandier's main concerns is that planning military operations increasingly requires synchronisation between different environments - land, air and sea, as well as space, cyber and information. Therefore, his priority for the next few years is to ‘create the conditions for the emergence of a command system with multiple environments: it's all about IT, command and control systems, cloudification of our networks.’

Rearmament, increased production and improved military mobility are extremely expensive. That's why Vandier and others, including NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius, are calling on NATO member states to increase defence spending beyond the current target of at least 2 per cent of GDP.

‘Three per cent of GDP will be the target set for the next 18 months, and this contribution was 4 or 5 per cent of GDP during the Cold War,’ he said.