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| The NATO Response Force – NRF
The NATO Response Force is a ready, agile and flexible force crucial to the health and success of our alliance in the coming years. As a key element of our NATO military culture, the NRF can enable the alliance to better meet threats to security and stability in the 21st century.
High readiness, deployability, sustainability and jointness, i.e., composed of land, maritime and air elements, are the main characteristics of this force created to conduct operations when and where necessary, as decided by the North Atlantic Council.
The NRF’s main missions are those requiring the ability to react with the most capable forces in a very short time. The missions of the NRF will mirror primarily the requirements of rapid response in the initial phase of a crisis situation deployed as a stand-alone force for crisis response. How is the NRF formed?
Its activation
It was at the Prague Summit in November 2002 when member nations made specific commitments to improve the military capabilities of the Alliance in order to find a balance between addressing its traditional missions centred in Europe and tackling new global threats. Among these commitments was the creation of the NATO Response Force. The first prototype of the force was inaugurated barely a year after the announcement of its launching and it reached the initial operational capability with approximately 17,000 troops in 2004. NATO Response Force passes its last test after the successful conduct of exercise Steadfast Jaguar 06, in the Cape Verde Islands in June 2006. At NATO's November 2006 Riga Summit, the Force was declared to be at full operational capability with up to 25,000 troops.
From its initial steps, the NRF has been acting as the engine for transforming NATO into a much stronger and more effective military organization. The NRF, as a key element of NATO’s military culture, will enable the Alliance to meet the threats to security and stability in the new world order. How did it evolve?
The launching of the NATO Response Force initiative was announced at the Prague Summit in November 2002 |
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