Close
Back
Download NATO’s broadcast-quality video content free of charge
Log in
No account?
Forgot your password?
NATO MULTIMEDIA ACCOUNT
Access NATO’s broadcast-quality video content free of charge
Create an account
Check your inbox and enter verification code
We have sent a verification code to your email address.
.
Enter the code to verify your account. This code will expire in 30 minutes.
You have successfully created your account
From now on you can download videos from our website
Subscribe to our newsletter
If you would also like to subscribe to the newsletter and receive our latest updates, click on the button below.
Reset password
Enter the email address you registered with and we will send you a code to reset your password.
Reset password
We have sent a verification code to your email address.
Enter the code to verify your account. This code will expire in 30 minutes.
Create a new password
The password must be at least 12 characters long, no spaces, include upper/lowercase letters, numbers and symbols.
Your password has been updated
Click the button to return to the page you were on and log in with your new password.
Endorsed by Allied Defence Ministers on 13 February 2025
Introduction
- Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the return of war to Europe, has challenged the strategic assumptions that shaped policies and investments in the defence industry over the past three decades. Transatlantic defence industrial cooperation is a critical part of NATO’s deterrence and defence and enables Allies to continue to provide support to Ukraine. Allies need to accelerate the growth of defence industrial capacity and production, as well as continue developing and rapidly adopting new technologies.
- The Alliance has already undertaken significant steps to strengthen defence industry across the Alliance and is committed to doing more, at a quicker pace. The Alliance’s role as a convenor, standard setter, requirements setter and aggregator, and delivery enabler, has been increasingly leveraged to expand defence industrial capacity, and recent actions taken have set a framework for Allies to better deliver against their NATO capability targets.
- At the 2023 Summit in Vilnius, NATO Heads of State and Government agreed the first Defence Production Action Plan, which consisted of three major themes: aggregating demand, understanding and addressing defence production and industrial capacity challenges, and increasing interoperability and standardization.
- At the 2024 Washington Summit, Leaders agreed the NATO Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge. The Pledge outlines the commitment to accelerate the growth of defence industrial capacity and production across the Alliance, foster a sustainable, innovative and competitive industrial base, where reciprocal cooperation and openness are the norm, shore up industrial resilience, deliver critical capabilities urgently, and increase large-scale, multinational procurement. Allies agreed to develop and share individual national plans and strategies among Allies, revise the plans regularly, and report annually based on measurable outcomes. Allies also pledged to support Ukraine and its defence industrial base by fostering and expanding defence cooperation with the Ukrainian defence industry to the fullest extent, and committed to enhancing defence industrial cooperation with NATO partners.
- This updated Plan implements the commitments within the NATO Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge, supplements the original Defence Production Action Plan’s mandate, and takes into account lessons learned over the past two years. The updated Plan supports Allies’ efforts to accelerate the growth of defence industrial capacity and production through aggregating demand, addressing defence production and industrial capacity challenges and continuing to focus on interoperability and materiel standardization.
- The updated Plan contributes to building the defence industrial capacity required across the Alliance to deliver the capabilities needed to meet Allies’ NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP) capability targets in full and on-time, meet additional national needs, and enable the modernisation and transformation of Allied forces.
- The updated Plan builds upon existing structures, bodies and mechanisms, as well as actions already endorsed by NATO Defence Ministers. With the intention of seeking to avoid unnecessary duplication, the work will be informed by and take into account, through staff-to-staff contacts, relevant policies, developments and ongoing efforts in other international organisations including, in particular, the European Union, as appropriate.
- Strengthened defence industry across Europe and North America makes the Alliance more capable and better able to deliver against the requirements of NATO's defence plans in a timely manner. Building on the Defence Production Action Plan agreed at the Vilnius Summit in 2023, Allies commit to doing more together, including to strengthen defence industry across the Alliance, act urgently to deliver the most critical capabilities, and reinforce the commitment to NATO standards.
Aggregating demand
- This pillar of the Defence Production Action Plan aims to ensure:
- Increased industrial capacity through long-term investment and aggregation of demand, and the ability to deliver the most critical capabilities required in the short term, consistent with the defence planning process, to execute NATO’s defence plans.
- Increased insight for industry of clear demand signals based on Allies’ NATO defence planning capability targets, as well as, where appropriate, long-term orders.
- Placement of an increased number of multiyear, multinational procurement contracts for prioritised capabilities, and increased use of existing multinational opportunities and arrangements.
Action Item 1: Identify new opportunities for multinational cooperation, including multiyear procurement contracts, and present options, including to expand existing efforts to aggregate demand.
- To achieve these objectives, where appropriate Allies are invited to: revise and implement national policies and practices to drive more joint and collective procurement, and make joint procurement the preferred procurement choice; serve as lead nations for multinational capability delivery efforts; and consider joining other lead-nation led capability delivery efforts and other Allies’ national framework contracts. Allies are invited to open, to the maximum extent possible, national framework contracts for participation by other Allies, and share best practices in procurement, including changes in national approaches.
- NATO will capture best practices in procurement and contracting (including modernisation efforts), and streamline and cohere NATO’s various demand aggregation and multinational procurement mechanisms.
- NATO and Allies will take forward initiatives to maintain the Alliance’s technological edge, including through the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA), the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), the Allied Command Transformation (ACT) Innovation Hub, and national mechanisms.
Defence production and industrial capacity challenges
- This pillar of the Defence Production Action Plan aims to ensure:
- Increased visibility and awareness of defence industrial production and capacity across the Alliance, including surge options, to inform defence planning, stockpiling considerations and logistics planning.
- Identification and implementation of measures to ensure a more productive and efficient defence industry, and industrial capacity in place to meet NATO capability targets, in the short, medium and long-term.
- Improved NATO engagement with both defence and technological industry in a mutually beneficial, coherent and transparent relationship, taking into account national prerogatives, national security interests and respective industries’ commercial confidentiality.
Action Item 2: Build a clearer understanding of defence production and industrial capacity in peacetime, crisis and conflict
- NATO will continue to baseline and analyse the industrial production and capacity required for the Alliance to inform recommendations for Allies, dialogue with industry and defence planning consultations, where appropriate.
- Allies and NATO will collect data related to production and industrial capacity from Allies and industry on a voluntary basis to allow assessments to be made; propose table-top exercises to improve understanding of industrial production capacity and its impact on operations, and support national industrial preparedness and resilience.
Action Item 3: Protect our defence-critical supply chains
- With the NATO Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge Allies agreed to take action to foster the responsiveness, strength, resilience and security of supply chains in order to protect industries and ensure that the Alliance develops military capabilities free from the hostile influence of potential adversaries.
- Allies and NATO will organise workshops to share expertise and identify and mitigate supply chain constraints, and establish recommendations to address access to the individual critical raw materials identified on the NATO list of 12 defence-critical raw materials, including Allied consideration of potential national plans for onshoring/friend shoring.
- NATO and Allies will identify risks related to critical manufacturing capability, supply chain capacity and bottlenecks, and key materials and components, across the Alliance and among partners, as appropriate; explore the establishment of multinational stockpiling initiatives for specific critical raw materials; and leverage the NATO innovation ecosystem (including DIANA, the NIF and the Science & Technology Organization (STO)) to enhance resilience of the supply chain for critical materials and technologies by identifying mitigating solutions, and/or suitable substitute materials for further research.
Action Item 4: Take forward the work of the Defence Industrial Production Board
- The Defence Industrial Production Board (DIPB) was established in December 2023, under the Conference of National Armaments Directors (CNAD). The Board’s work programme is regularly updated, and Industry Interface Groups from the NATO Industrial Advisory Group were established in early 2024 to complement its work. NATO and Allies are using the DIPB to implement and regularly review relevant aspects of the Defence Production Action Plan, including through focused working groups on Industrial Capacity, Supply Chain Security, and Standardisation and Interoperability. These groups are encouraged to recommend actions that Allies could take forward in a multinational framework to improve the Alliance’s industrial capacity.
- NATO and Allies continue to exchange best practices, provide advice, make recommendations on defence industrial planning and procurement issues, and foster mutually beneficial coordination in support of the delivery of Allied defence capabilities. The DIPB is delivering recommendations, including for specific industrial sectors, on how to accelerate the growth of industrial capacity required to meet Alliance needs, including risk informed analyses and assessments. It will examine the industrial capacity implications of scaling in peacetime, crisis and conflict, in the near term focusing on general munitions and air and missile defence.
- Allies in the DIPB will continue to engage with industry, in particular to understand measures taken by industry to increase production and capacity to meet demand; understand supply chain challenges and exchange best practices on mitigation measures; and understand industry challenges to production of defence/security products resulting from emerging environmental policies, including environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria, and the impact on capability delivery and readiness.
- Allies will consider what role they could play in driving industry decisions to open and sustain new production facilities, and understand and seek to address restrictions to the financing of defence industrial investments, including by proposing recommendations and by taking into account initiatives conducted in other international fora.
- NATO will continue to take mutual steps with the European Union to strengthen coherence and complementarity of respective efforts and relevant work in bolstering defence industry, and seek to enhance defence industrial cooperation through focused dialogue with engaged partners, including among others, Ukraine, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea.
Action Item 5: Take a more systemic approach to defence industrial development
- The DIPB is the forum to operationalise relevant elements of the NATO Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge, including Allies’ agreement to develop and share national plans and strategies to enhance industrial capacity and responsiveness across the Alliance.
- NATO and Allies will develop a framework to support Allies’ collectively addressing long-term defence industrial production with regard to capability requirements. This framework will contribute to capacity planning and focus on increasing production volumes in the short-term and ensuring sustainability and scalability in the long-term. It will assess the Alliance’s long-term industrial needs and shortfalls in relation to both capability and surge requirements and make recommendations, including options to undertake more co-design, co-development, co-production and co-sustainment. An annual Comprehensive Report on Defence Industrial Capacity and Production will be developed, based on Allies’ national plans and strategies and implementation of the actions outlined in the Defence Production Action Plan.
Action Item 6: Support Allied engagements with Industry
- Enhanced Allied engagement and sharing of information with industry contributes to a strong and capable defence industry across the Alliance. NATO’s relationship with industry is governed by the Framework for NATO Industry Engagement.
- Early engagement of industry in NATO capability development will help to better inform military requirements and enable targeted industrial development, both of which will increase the likelihood of delivering interoperable and sustainable capabilities on time and within budget. Furthermore, engagement with industry throughout the entire life cycle of capabilities ensures economy of scale and offers additional opportunities for multinational cooperation.
- Participation of industry in testing and trialling new solutions, including through operational experimentation, can help Allied capability requirements adjust at a faster pace, by providing mutual understanding of emerging demand and supply.
- NATO will revise and update the Framework, which will provide the foundation for the future relationship between NATO and industry. It will cover all industry relationships from prime contractors, small and medium-sized enterprises to start-ups, from both defence and non-traditional defence companies, and take into account NATO’s commitment to rapid technology adoption.
- NATO and Allies will take forward approaches to improving and increasing transparency, engagements and communication with defence industry, communicate aggregated NDPP defence planning capability requirements to industry, at the appropriate classification level, to inform industrial production and capacity planning, and consider proposals to expand operational experimentation and increase the participation of industry and academia in trials and exercises.
Action Item 7: Conduct dialogue to identify, reduce and eliminate obstacles to the transfer of capabilities and munitions between Allies, as appropriate
- The importance of reducing and eliminating obstacles to defence trade and investment among Allies was highlighted in the original Defence Production Action Plan and reiterated in the NATO Industrial Capacity Expansion Pledge.
- NATO has developed a framework to tackle the issue of barriers and obstacles, including building on findings and recommendations arising from a series of exploratory workshops. Recommendations were prepared and reviewed in the DIPB and CNAD, with actions focusing on awareness and education, processes and procedures, including legal aspects, and monitoring and implementation.
- NATO and Allies will implement actions identified to reduce and eliminate, as appropriate, obstacles or barriers to the transfer of capabilities and munitions between Allies; continue facilitating dialogue and processes to solicit, monitor, and recommend resolutions for new and ongoing obstacles/barriers; and develop an information sharing repository for Allied policies, processes and points of contact.
Interoperability and materiel standardization
- This pillar of the Defence Production Action Plan aims to ensure:
- NATO standards continue to underpin interoperability and are able to support the introduction of new and innovative military capabilities.
- Enhanced levels of interoperability and interchangeability of munitions, through the identification of key priorities where challenges exist.
- Accelerated Allied implementation of NATO standards and an improved Materiel Standards review process.
Action Item 8: Improve and streamline NATO munitions interchangeability regimes
- Allies have been invited to share the requisite data and information for the munitions interchangeability tables and cross-certification; implement NATO standards at national level in order to improve the potential for interchangeability; enforce NATO munitions standards in nations’ industry contracts; participate in multinational projects related to testing, evaluation and certification of Indirect Fire Munitions; endorse the NATO Ammunition Recognition Programme; and streamline NATO munitions interoperability. Allied Command Transformation (ACT) will finalise the establishment of the Indirect Fire Centre of Excellence.
Rapid adoption of technologies
- In order to maintain NATO’s technological edge and efficiently deliver the effects needed to execute NATO’s defence plans, Allies and NATO must adopt innovative technologies, not least to address current and near-term capability requirements, and maximise the operational effectiveness of capabilities and platforms over the long term. An innovative defence industrial base will help Allies find new and creative solutions to meet their capability targets.
- NATO will establish a set of mechanisms through a Rapid Adoption Action Plan with the objective of speeding up the Alliance’s adoption of dual-use technologies and Emerging and Disruptive Technologies (EDTs) to ensure the Alliance’s capabilities remain cutting-edge and fit-for-purpose, meeting current and future requirements.