It is capable of performing missions worldwide across the whole spectrum of operations. These include evacuations, disaster management, counterterrorism, and acting as ‘an initial entry force’ for larger, follow-on forces.

It can number up to 25,000 troops and start to deploy after five days’ notice and sustain itself for operations lasting 30 days or longer if resupplied.

What does this mean in practice?

The force gives NATO the means to respond swiftly to various types of crises anywhere in the world. It is also a driving engine of NATO’s military transformation.

Six-month rotations

This is because the Response Force is based on a system of rotations. NATO member countries commit land, air, naval or special forces units to the NATO Response Force for a six-month period.

The standards are very high, and participation in the NRF is preceded by a six-month training programme, which includes testing the units’ capabilities in complex exercises.

Therefore, as the different forces rotating through the NRF meet these high standards, new concepts, technologies and the transformation of military capabilities spread throughout the forces of all member countries.

Operational command of the NRF alternates among NATO’s Joint Forces Command Brunssum, Naples, and Joint Headquarters Lisbon. At present, the NRF is in its seventh rotation, under the command of the Allied Joint Force Command Headquarters Brunssum.

A powerful package

One of the Response Force’s key features is that it combines land, air, sea and special forces into one package.

This includes a brigade-size land component with forced-entry capability; a naval task force including a carrier battle group, an amphibious task group and a surface action group; and an air component capable of 200 combat sorties a day.

Special forces constitute an additional component of the force, which can be called upon when necessary.

The NATO Response Force can be tailored to a specific operation. It can be smaller than envisaged during the six-month training period, the same size, or even larger. Whatever the case, it remains the NATO Response Force.

Any mission, anywhere in the world

The NATO Response Force, which is driven by the underlying principle: "first force in, first force out", is designed to be capable of carrying out a range of different missions, anywhere in the world:

• deploy as a stand-alone force for Article 5 (collective defence) or non-Article 5 crisis response operations such as evacuation operations, support disaster consequence management (including chemical biological, radiological and nuclear events), humanitarian crisis situations and counter terrorism operations;
• deploy as an initial entry force facilitating the arrival of larger follow-up forces;
• deploy as a demonstrative force to show NATO’s determination and solidarity to deter crises (quick response operations to support diplomacy as required).

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said: “ When circumstances demand that we use the NRF, we will know it. And we should not hesitate, in those circumstances, to do so. For example, if the Asian tsunami had happened closer to the NATO area, I have little doubt we would have deployed the NRF. If you look at the mandate of the NRF, it is quite a far reaching mandate.”

Elements of the NRF helped protect the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, and were deployed to support the Afghan presidential elections in September 2004.

The NRF has also been used in disaster relief. In September and October 2005, aircraft from the NATO Response Force delivered relief supplies donated by NATO member and partner countries to the US, to assist the country in dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

From October 2005 to February 2006, elements of the Response Force were used in the disaster relief effort in Pakistan, following the devastating 8 October earthquake.

Aircraft from the NRF were used in an air bridge that delivered almost 3,500 tons of urgently-needed supplies to Pakistan, while engineers and medical personnel from the Response Force were deployed to Pakistan to assist in the relief effort.

How did it evolve?

In September 2002, the US Secretary for Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, put forward a proposal to create a NATO rapid reaction force. The launching of the NATO Response Force initiative was announced several months later, at the Prague Summit in November 2002, together with the other major military transformation initiatives - the Prague Capabilities Commitment and the fundamental revision of the NATO military command structure.

In the words of General James Jones, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, "… NATO will no longer have the large, massed units that were necessary for the Cold War, but will have agile and capable forces at Graduated Readiness levels that will better prepare the Alliance to meet any threat that it is likely to face in this 21st century".

The NRF concept was approved by Ministers of Defence in June 2003 in Brussels.

From concept to reality

The NRF reached its initial operating capability only four months later. The first prototype, or rotation, of the force, numbering about 9,500 troops, was inaugurated on 15 October 2003, barely a year after the announcement of its creation.

On 13 October 2004, at an informal meeting of NATO Defence Ministers in Poiana Brasov, Romania, the NATO Secretary General and Supreme Allied Commader Europe formally announced that NRF had reached its initial operational capability of approximately 17,000 troops and was ready to take on the full range of missions.

The capabilities of the Response Force were tested in a major live exercise, Steadfast Jaguar 06, in the Cape Verde Islands in June 2006. The challenging location was specifically designed to demonstrate and prove the viability of the NRF concept.

At NATO's November 2006 Riga Summit, the Force was declared to be at full operational capability with up to 25,000 troops.

Which NATO bodies have a central role?

Political authorisation to use the NATO Response Force will be given on a case-by-case basis by the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s principal decision-making body, and will obviously be the result of a consensual decision, as is the case for all NATO decisions.