By Gwladys Fouche and Sabine Siebold
OSLO, Sept 16 (Reuters) – A senior NATO military official warned on Saturday that the sharp rise in ammunition prices means increased defense spending by allies does not automatically translate into greater security, and advocated for a new approach to defense cooperation.
“Prices for equipment and ammunition are skyrocketing. Right now, we are paying more and more for exactly the same thing,” Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, said Saturday after a meeting of NATO Chiefs. Defense of the Alliance in Oslo.
“That means we can’t ensure that increased defense spending actually leads to greater security.”
He advocated a new approach to public-private cooperation in the defense sector to increase production capacity.
“Long-term stability must prevail over short-term benefits. As we have seen in Ukraine, war is an event that affects the entire society. Therefore, war prevention through resilience and deterrence “It should also be a society-wide event.”
NATO has been pushing for a boost in defense production to meet a demand for weapons and equipment that has skyrocketed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as allies not only rush to supply Kiev but They also accumulate their own inventories.
One of the main concerns has been the shortage of 155mm artillery shells, with kyiv firing up to 10,000 of these shells a day.
In February, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned Kiev that it was running out of shells much faster than the West could produce them.
Since then, NATO has increased the targets for national ammunition stockpiles that allies must maintain.
But even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 last year, many NATO countries were falling short of the alliance’s storage targets.
Since then, the pace of deliveries to Ukraine has depleted Western inventories and exposed gaps in the efficiency, speed and workmanship of supply chains. (Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo and Sabine Siebold in Berlin; Editing in Spanish by Manuel Farías)
Source: Ambito
