Logistics becoming less secure

By William Freer and Charlotte Kleberg*

For many years, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members have grown accustomed to secure logistics in Europe, as well as further afield. But this is an assumption which no longer holds true. (From Britain’s World.)

Attacks against free movement of shipping in the Middle East have served as a wake-up call. In Europe itself, Russia – through both kinetic and non-kinetic means – possesses the capability to interdict NATO logistics meaningfully. Put simply, the airfields, ports, means of transportation and other elements of the ‘tail’ component of NATO’s defence posture – critical military enablers – are no longer as safe as they once were.

NATO has undergone a sweeping renaissance in the last decade. New force structures have been planned and defence budgets have increased. However, one of the most important changes also highlights one of the key areas of vulnerability. In September 2019, the Joint Support and Enabling Command (JSEC) was established, giving the alliance a command dedicated to coordinating and safeguarding the movement of forces and equipment across Europe: in essence, the ‘sister headquarters’ to Joint Force Command (JFC) Norfolk, which helps to ensure Atlantic sea lanes remain safe.

Despite organisational reform and increased investment in relevant capabilities, NATO (in Europe especially) still faces critical vulnerabilities in its rear areas across domains. For example, in the maritime domain, strategic sealift capacity, merchant marine reserves and naval escort capabilities have largely atrophied.

In any potential conflict with Russia, European NATO’s supply lines would face constant attack, limiting the alliance’s ability for rapid reinforcement and sustainment of forces engaged along the front line. Unlike during the Cold War, NATO no longer maintains large forward-deployed formations; ‘enhanced forward presence’ deployments are all brigade sized or smaller.

Broadly speaking, European NATO’s logistics face four different challenges, these being limited infrastructure; limited lift capacity; geographic chokepoints; and limited defences.

Spurred on, in no small part, by the private sector focus on ‘just in time’ supply chains, and with the prospect of the Soviet threat gone, both the civil and military infrastructure which is needed to move NATO forces has concentrated over time into a smaller number of larger hubs. Mass logistics require larger vessels and deepwater ports, with few locations capable of handling the vessels in use. Airlift capacity is also a vital capability, but cannot move mass at the same scale (for example, it required 73 C-17 Globemaster loads to move a single Patriot Battalion).

This is by no means limited to port infrastructure. Across the alliance, other measures show stark reductions in the availability of militarily useful infrastructure, matched by a similarly stark drop-off in joint funding for infrastructure development. In 1981, annual joint funding was the equivalent of almost £3 billion today (between 1951 and 1981, this funded the construction of 220 airfields among myriad other projects), whereas the Security Investment Programme ceiling for 2025 is £1.4 billion – a smaller pot for a much larger alliance.

A related factor is the limited lift capacity available to European militaries. Numbers have been pared back – in the air, at sea and on land – to concerningly low levels where high-tempo operational attrition would soon become a limiting factor, let alone combat attrition. Losses while attempting to reinforce front lines would be sorely felt, and would take time to replace. The numbers of logistical vehicles which could be lost taking supplies the final few miles also needs to be considered; while armoured fighting vehicle losses steal most of the limelight, Ukraine and Russia have both lost several thousand transport vehicles.

The ‘logistics base’ should be strengthened to ensure greater depth in infrastructure, capacity and resilience, requiring close engagement with commercial partners to support robust end-to-end supply chains. For example, despite being vital, the role of national shipping in military logistics and national security is often overlooked, and lacks adequate incentives. The ability to mobilise civil platforms in a supporting role was long relied on to boost capacity in times of need, but here too, the story is one of deterioration. Between 2009 and 2023, the number of militarily useful British-flagged vessels decreased by 41% from 841 to 495. This trend is mirrored across European NATO, which has seen a steady decline in national merchant fleets and seafarers.

Of equal concern is the fact that of the vessels owned by European NATO members, many are registered elsewhere and feature multinational crews. For example, only 38% of seafarers in the European Union (EU) shipping industry are EU nationals. In the event of a conflict, many of these ships and their crews would likely be seen as a security risk, potentially making them unable to support the mammoth logistical demands faced by the alliance.

The challenge requires extensive civil-military collaboration, public-private partnerships, strategic investments and prioritisation – whether rebuilding the merchant fleet, modernising critical infrastructure or upgrading systems and platforms. In some cases, commercial bodies involved in militarily useful logistics face global competition, necessitating domestic financial and legal incentives to ensure adequate sovereign capacity (including trained personnel) can be called upon.

These incentives could include tax breaks for flagging nationally, subsidies for training and support for reserve fleets. Private sector capabilities – platforms, expertise, operational control and infrastructure – must be better leveraged to enhance and complement military logistics capability. A critical component of this is ship capacity. To guarantee access and avoid the risks and uncertainty posed by ad hoc chartering, governments should look to securestrategic contracts with commercial partners. NATO should also look beyond military logistics to consider how to safeguard critical civilian supply and flow of goods in wartime, where the majority of commercial ships would require government backing to operate in such a high-risk environment.

Compounding these issues is the geographical factor. By dint of natural and human geography, a number of chokepoints are faced by NATO while attempting to reinforce its northern and eastern flanks. The approaches across the Norwegian Sea face the prospect of Russian submarine-launched cruise missiles, and any shipping in the maritime ‘cul-de-sac’ that is the Baltic Sea is well within range of Russian weapons – as are ports, railways, bridges, airfields and other logistical nodes along the front. One final chokepoint to consider is the famed ‘Suwałki Gap’, the roughly 60 kilometre stretch of land between Kaliningrad and Belarus – the only land connection which the Baltic States have with the rest of NATO.

Russia’s sustained bombardment of Ukraine shows what kind of threats NATO will have to contend with. It is estimated that Russia can produce 90-115 ballistic and 110-140 cruise missiles each month, as well as thousands of one-way attack drones. Cashing in on the peace dividend and focused on the war on terror, European NATO divested much of its Cold War air defence. Though this is a recognised gap, much work remains to be done. Without increased – and sustained – levels of defence expenditure, plans to bolster missile defences (particularly missile production rates) will not go far enough. To help ease the pressure on missiles, and building on the success Ukraine has had with Cold War-era Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, European countries should look to expand vastly the number of gun-based drone defences available.

In addition to the defence of logistics nodes and routes, key civil sites (such as power stations) and forces deployed along the front line will require air defences. The burden will be extreme, and not every potential target can be defended. Investment in resilience where possible, such as hardened shelters at airfields, or investing in redundancy, such as expanding infrastructure across more dispersed nodes or in expanding military engineering forces (bridging units being one critical example), will play a vital role in relieving pressure. At sea, the demands on capable NATO surface combatants will be enormous. Far greater numbers of ‘good enough’ escorts, such as the Type 31, are needed to protect the flow of military logistics, as well as to keep losses of sealift ships to a minimum.

Furthermore, civil-military integrated exercises should be far more frequent. By involving civilian authorities and private sector stakeholders, coordination can be improved and experience built up. Recently, NATO Exercise SWIFT RESPONSE 25 in Narvik – supported by commercial sealift operations – took place more or less simultaneously with Exercise DYNAMIC MONGOOSE in the Wider North. This lack of coordination was a missed opportunity to align efforts on protecting ships transporting military equipment and critical supplies. The irony of an anti-submarine warfare exercise taking place hundreds of kilometres away from an exercise moving reinforcements into Norway seems to have gone mostly unnoticed.

Treating civilian infrastructure and assets as essential actors in the military logistics chain will bolster NATO’s ability to conduct logistics at the scale required in conflict. Rapid activation of logistics functions will depend on the formalising of civil-military coordination mechanisms, sharing information, integrating planning and exercises, and establishing strategic agreements with commercial operators, all of which will need to be de-conflicted and coordinated between alliance members.

For the first time in 30 years, getting units to the fight and getting supplies forward for sustaining said units faces the prospect of concerted interdiction. In its defence, as seen with the creation of JSEC, NATO is aware of the problem. Regardless, action should go further, faster and involve a much wider network of stakeholders.

*William Freer is a Research Fellow in National Security at the Council on Geostrategy. Charlotte Kleberg is an Associate Fellow at the Council on Geostrategy and an Associate Fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre.