NATO will accelerate the standardization of equipment used by member countries. A major task which will begin with the essential munitions “to win wars”.
NATO committed Friday to improving the standardization of the equipment it uses, a headache for the Alliance’s military for decades. “Standards are essential to our ability to fight together, and stronger standards will help us reduce costs,” assured the new Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte to the press on Friday, after a meeting of Alliance Defense Ministers.
The standardization of equipment allows the armies of the 32 NATO countries to work together. It sets common rules, standards, both for procedures and for equipment, whether artillery, ammunition or aviation. However, the war in Ukraine has revealed the shortcomings of a process that has been underway since the origins of the Alliance 75 years ago.
The Ukrainian armed forces thus noted that the Western 155 mm shells used by its artillery could not always be used on the 155 mm guns, although they were also supplied by Alliance countries. A Dutch shell did not “fit” into a German cannon, a Ukrainian diplomat explained last year in Brussels. This problem has since been resolved, but there is still more to be done.
“There are currently nearly 200 working groups in NATO on standardization,” explained an Alliance official this week, on condition of anonymity.
Modernize the standardization procedure
In addition to the initiative taken overall by NATO, around ten allied countries, including the United States, Great Britain and Germany, signed a letter of intent on Thursday to strengthen the Alliance’s resources in this area. .
“Above all, it’s a commitment to working together and putting money behind this goal,” particularly with regard to artillery, this official explained.
The Allies will also ask Mark Rutte to make proposals to “completely modernize the standardization procedure within NATO”, he further indicated.
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NATO has around 2,000 “standards”, some of which concern procedures, such as how to drive a tank without risk of accident, which are relatively simple to implement. On the other hand, for materials, this is “where we have the most problems”, admitted this manager. Aware of the scale of the task, NATO will first focus on munitions, essential “to win wars”, he further explained. One of the challenges will be coordination with defense industrialists that NATO wants to involve from the first phases of developing new equipment, which is not currently being done, he acknowledged.
