Strategic air- and sealift capabilities are vital to ensure NATO countries can deploy their forces and equipment quickly to wherever they are needed.
This is particularly important today, as NATO takes on missions and operations in distant areas such as Afghanistan, Iraq or Africa. By pooling their financial resources NATO countries have made significant financial savings and have the potential of acquiring assets collectively that would be prohibitively expensive to purchase as individual countries.
What does this mean in practice?
In terms of airlift, there are two complementary initiatives: a) a multinational consortium of 16 countries, led by Germany, is chartering Antonov An-124-100 transport aircraft, as a Strategic Airlift Interim Solution (SALIS); b) 16 countries have also agreed to launch contract negotiations for the purchase of three or four C-17 transport aircraft, in order to create a Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC).
For sealift, a multinational consortium of nine countries, led by Norway, is chartering special “roll-on/roll-off” ships.
How did it evolve?
The decision to improve the Alliance's collective strategic air- and sealift capabilities was made at the 1999 Washington Summit, as part of the Defence Capabilities Initiative launched by NATO Heads of State and Government.
NATO military authorities identified a shortfall of 19 European strategic lift aircraft and “an overall significant European shortfall” in roll-on/roll-off, multiple purpose and container ships.
Effort to address these shortfalls were stepped up when the Defence Capabilities Initiative was transformed into the more focused Prague Capabilities Commitment at the NATO Summit in the Czech capital in 2002.
This new programme sets firm and country-specific commitments to address capability shortfalls in eight key fields, including air- and sealift.
At their annual spring meeting in Brussels in June 2003, NATO Defence Ministers signed letters declaring their intent to form multinational consortia to address the air- and sealift shortfalls.
In December 2003 and at the Istanbul Summit in June 2004, these were translated into specific agreements between a number of NATO countries to pool their resources and provide the Alliance with the required air- and sealift capabilities.
Which NATO bodies have a central role?
The signatories of the three initiatives have established multinational bodies to coordinate strategic lift, allowing for cost effectiveness and to avoid duplication of effort.