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NATO has introduced a Rapid Adoption Action plan to accelerate the integration of new defense technologies, as leaders at the Hague summit commit to raising defense spending and modernizing the alliance’s approach to innovation.
NATO has formally launched a plan to accelerate the adoption of new defense technologies, with world leaders gathering at the alliance’s summit in The Hague on Tuesday. The organization’s new secretary general, Mark Rutte, and many allies are prepared to sign on to a commitment to raise core defense spending to 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035.
A central focus of the summit is the Rapid Adoption Action plan, designed to enable NATO and its allies to integrate technologies from companies into use within a maximum of 24 months. “We are in what we call a tech race,” Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe, NATO assistant secretary general for innovation, hybrid, and cyber, said during a press briefing.
Ellermann-Kingombe highlighted that in Russia’s war against Ukraine, “Russia has reduced the product development cycle to as short as two to 12 weeks.” He also noted that China has “a serious integration of their defence industry and their defence forces.” In comparison, he said, “We have a defence industry that has been struggling to keep up pace. We've seen it following the war in Ukraine as we've been emptying our stocks. Production lines have had difficulties to keeping up the pace.”
Ellermann-Kingombe stated that the first step for NATO is to assess what technology has to offer. The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and drones during the war in Ukraine demonstrates that “tech today is ready and able to actually fill some of the gaps.” For example, he said, “AI has helped NATO by enabling precision strikes and reducing decision time by 90 per cent.” However, he acknowledged that the alliance needs to “adapt to working with start-ups and tech companies.”
“The new ecosystems work in a different way than we're used to,” Ellermann-Kingombe explained, referring to procurement requirements. “So if we want to exploit what that ecosystem has to offer, we also need to adapt to the way that they work,” he added.
The Rapid Adoption Action plan aims to bridge this divide by sharing market research on a voluntary basis among allies and increasing testing to lower risks from new tech. NATO also intends to provide a “badge of approval” to companies whose solutions are demonstrated to the military, either through a NATO programme or another means, as a form of recognition.
John Ridge, chief adoption officer at the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), said at the press conference: “NATO has test centres in 29 allied nations and innovators from 20 countries.” The NIF, he explained, is a deep tech venture capital fund supported by 24 of NATO’s 32 nations, focusing on “deep tech dual-use investments that support defence, security and resilience.” The fund works with NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) to accelerate dual-use innovation capacity, though Ridge clarified, “NIF does not have to invest in technologies identified by DIANA.”
DIANA innovators are currently working on a range of new tech, including “power generation on the high seas and advanced passive exoskeletons that give soldiers more strength on the battlefield and people with disabilities more mobility at home,” Ridge noted. NATO has invested in companies such as Portuguese drone company Tekever and Germany’s robotics company ARX Robotics GmbH, both of which are used in Ukraine. “NATO has looked at more than 2,000 start-ups and has invested in 12,” Ridge said.
Looking to the future, Ridge emphasized NATO’s interest in autonomy and keeping soldiers out of harm’s way: “It seems to me as if that's a sort of a direction which all militaries are going to go. The way you can remove human beings from harm’s way, why wouldn't you? So that's one of the trends that we're all ready to see, and I suspect we'll double down onto that.”
Ridge also emphasized the importance of industrial resilience: “One of the lessons we should be drawing out of Ukraine is how you're able to mobilise your industry base at time of [war] to really ramp up production,” he said. “That's not a new lesson. That's a World War One lesson. That's a World War II lesson.”
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