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| Updated: January 2005 | NATO Publications |
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Briefing: Deploying forces faster and further than ever before 2. Extended reach
Only eight months after the violent terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001, NATO made a far-reaching declaration during the meeting of foreign ministers in Reykjavik that would usher in the beginning of a new era for the Alliance. It would conduct operations when and where necessary, as decided by the North Atlantic Council, to fight terrorism. In September 2002, the US Secretary for Defense Donald Rumsfeld put forward a proposal to create a rapid reaction force. The launching of the NATO Response Force initiative was announced 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 - and its concept was approved by defence ministers in June 2003 in Brussels. Enthusiasm for the initiative is obvious. The first prototype brought together a force of 8 500 troops and was officially inaugurated on 15 October 2003 at the headquarters of Joint Force Command in Brunssum, the Netherlands, barely a year after the announcement of its creation. Initial operational capability was announced in October 2004 during the informal meeting of defence ministers in Romania. "The NRF will be, and indeed it is already, a highly ready and technologically advanced force that the Alliance can deploy quickly wherever it is needed", NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer stated at a joint press conference with General James L. Jones. "So in a brief period of time, we have gone from what I would call preliminary design and conceptual work to the achievement of a real military capability and it’s a capability that will continue to mature as we progress to full operational capability by October 2006." In the past, NATO relied too much on large numbers of troops that had little deployability, mobility and out of area sustainability. In the words of General James Jones, speaking on NRF: "… 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". Learning by doing Four "prototype" rotations have already been activated. They have been used to test the concept and fine-tune the practices of the force. Although they are not ready for the full spectrum of operations, NRF 3 and 4 have already reached initial operational capability and will be able to conduct many of the mission types envisioned in the NRF Military Concept.
They are being trained through exercises such as Allied Response 03, organised at Doganbey in Turkey, November 2003, and exercise "Allied Action 2004" in Italy, May 2004. Doctrine, organisation, training, certification procedures and command and control functions are among the features that were assessed during this initial trial period. Allied Action 05, to be conducted in the Joint Warfare Center in Stavanger, Norway, and Allied Warrior 05 will be carried out as certification exercises for the entire NRF 5 and the NRF 6 Land Component Command respectively. Standards and procedures for certification of the NRF have been developed, some of them following ground-breaking guidance on transformational elements such as multinationality, sustainability and deployability. They develop criteria for the certification, long term sustainment, and improvement of the overall quality, capabilities and readiness of the NRF. As the different forces rotating through the NRF will apply this high standards, the transformational process will increasingly spread throughout all Allied Forces. The principle of rotation applies to the NATO Response Force. After a six-month training programme, the force is certified to the highest standards, especially with regard to capability and interoperability. It is then put "on-call" for six months. The units that constitute this joint force are either land, air or naval forces, or have some special function, such as the Multinational Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Defence Battalion, the initiative for which was also launched at Prague. These force components are then replaced by a fresh set of units that will constitute a new prototype. They follow a similar training programme and are put "on-call" for the same period of time before being replaced by other forces once they have completed the training cycle. All NATO member countries fully support this rotational system which brings major benefits for the troops involved, for instance special training experience and integration in a force that has the highest standards of readiness. For the NATO Response Force, the focus is more on quality than it is on quantity. NRF 1 was replaced by NRF 2 in January 2004, which remained under the command of AFNORTH. NRF 3 stood up during a ceremony at the Istanbul Summit under the command of Joint Force Command, Naples, Italy, and was replaced by NRF 4 in January 2005. NRF 5 and 6 will come under the command of Joint Headquarters Lisbon, Portugal. It is anticipated that command of future rotations will be shared between these three headquarters, under the overall command of SACEUR. The precise capability requirements for the NATO Response Force have been developed drawing from lessons learned during the firsts rotations. They are identified in the so called Full Operational Capability Combined Joint Statement of Requirements. Specific national forces will be identified and committed to the NRF through periodic Force Generation Conferences. Also, Force Planning will be key to the success of the NATO Response Force by ensuring that the capabilities it requires are developed and available in the medium to longer term. In parallel, the necessary strategic lift to move the forces as well as deployable communications and support systems are being identified and planned for.
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| © NATO - OTAN 2005 - | NATO Public Diplomacy Division 1110 Brussels, Belgium - E-mail: natodoc@hq.nato.int |
