European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, Germany & Netherlands – ECCI
NATO Quadruples Its Missile Defenses to Counter Russia
nationalinterest ـ Beneath the 5 percent defense spending pledge lies NATO’s most significant strategic pivot since the end of the Cold War: an ambitious overhaul of its air and missile defense architecture.
At first glance, this summit will be remembered for two things. For President Trump’s return to the main NATO stage and the allies’ increased commitment to defense spending. The former loomed large in every hallway and media conversation; the latter dominates the communiqué with the newly minted 5 percent (although practically more of a 3.5 percent plus pledge) defense spending pledge, framed as the main summit deliverable. That’s where the optics will stay. But that is not necessary where the fundamental transformation of these days lies.
The most consequential outcome of this summit (overlooked mainly in public debate) is not about how much to spend, but what to spend it on. And it lies in the new set of capability targets, agreed upon through the multi-year NATO Defense Planning Process (NDPP). The NDPP is NATO’s defense capability-oriented operating system: complex, technical, dense, and highly classified.
But it is here, not in political declarations, that the Alliance converts its ambition into actual potential.
This year’s update is the very first one since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and it reflects the war’s main lessons: the speed of battlefield evolution, the vulnerability of airspace, and the inadequacy of NATO’s post-Cold War posture. Of the many capability targets, one stands out both conceptually and numerically: the Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD).
What Is Integrated Air and Missile Defense?
Until recently, IAMD was a concern of the exposed eastern flank and a handful of specialist planners. That is no longer the case. IAMD is now a NATO-wide requirement. Unlike most capability areas, where we anticipate significant, yet still visible, smaller advances, this comes with a high number: a 300 to 400 percent capacity increase.
Secretary General Mark Rutte said it plainly, “NATO must quadruple (its) air defenses.”
That kind of clarity is not only a rhetorical exercise. This ambition aligns with NATO’s 2025 IAMD Policy, which underscores the critical need for resilient, interoperable, and layered defense capabilities to preserve Alliance sovereignty amid evolving challenges.
Moreover, this course correction on IAMD prioritization is rooted in the recognized negligence of past investments. Leaked NATO planning documents from 2023 revealed that only around five percent of the required IAMD assets were available to the Alliance at the time, a stark indicator of the scale of the shortfall in NATO’s defensive architecture.
The current push to scale up by 300 to 400 percent is a direct attempt to address this deficit. Yet complete coverage remains neither feasible nor necessary. Prioritisation of critical assets and regions will be unavoidable, and a degree of managed vulnerability to Russian long-range strike capabilities will persist as a structural reality.
What Will the New NATO Defense Planning Process Have?
The new NDPP cycle is likely to embed IAMD (including long-range precision strike) as a top-tier requirement across nearly all member states. The aim is to achieve layered defense, built from interoperable sensors, interceptors, and kinetic response options, spanning ground, air, sea, and increasingly, space domains.
Russia’s use of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, electronic warfare, and cyber capabilities serves as a toolbox of potential aggression and power projection, designed to exploit gaps in NATO’s defenses and test the coherence of its response. NATO’s greatest vulnerability might not be its resolve, but its incomplete capability toolset. Closing that shield is no longer a niche concern. It is a shared obligation and priority mission for member states.
Some of that urgency is already translating into concrete moves.
What Are European Nations Doing to Boost Their Defenses?
The European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), though still evolving, has been taking shape for several years. Poland is fielding Common Anti-Air Modular Missile (CAMM) systems. Germany is investing in Arrow-3. Italy and France are deploying the SAMP-T NG. Romania is expanding its Patriot footprint, while several allies are ramping up Patriot interceptor production directly on the continent.
The Baltic states are constructing layered drone defenses. Slovakia and the Czech Republic are acquiring advanced Israeli ground-based air defense (GBAD) systems. And the list is growing, with more additions sure to follow both on the defensive and offensive side of the IAMD picture.
But even today, IAMD is no longer a technical support function to NATO’s core tasks. It is the backbone of credible deterrence, the enabler of forward deployment and mobility, a prerequisite for deterrence, and potentially an important tool in managing crises.
Without it, NATO’s capability posture is incomplete and possibly vulnerable to Russia’s opportunistic aggression. This summit will be remembered for what was said about spending, specifically the input into capability development. But its real significance lies on the other side of the coin: the outputs, the capabilities that these investments will enable.
Focusing on the development of critical capabilities will make NATO more effective in deterring any challenger, provided it is done efficiently and with sufficient speed.
To that end, Allies need to procure what is already available on the market today, while also anticipating how future technologies, both at the lower end (drones) and the higher end (hypersonic weapons) of the threat spectrum, will reshape requirements going forward. System integration will be crucial, and interoperability will be no less critical.
However, before we can fully leverage the synergistic potential of our systems, we must first establish adequate capacity. Despite the many challenges NATO faces, that process now appears to be on track.
European Centre for Counterterrorism and Intelligence Studies, Germany & Netherlands – ECCI
