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NATO Response Force - ready for action
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| 21 September 2006 |
By Nicholas Fiorenza JDW NATO and EU Affairs Correspondent
Brussels
By 28-29 November, the dates of NATO's Riga summit, the alliance plans to declare its response force fully operational.
The NATO Response Force (NRF) has already conducted several operations. The largest operational deployment of the NRF so far was the dispatch of elements to Pakistan to support the earthquake relief and reconstruction effort in October 2005. Joint Headquarters Lisbon, which had operational command of NRF 5, the fifth rotation of the force, sent a deployable joint task force headquarters to Islamabad. NRF 5's land component command, the Rapid Deployable Corps - Spain, led an engineering battalion comprising Italian, Polish and Spanish companies; a multinational medical unit led by the Netherlands and including personnel from the Czech Republic, Finland, Macedonia and the UK; and three water purification plants from Lithuania.
Funding question
The NRF deployment to Pakistan highlighted the issue of funding NATO operations. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has described the current "costs lie where they fall" funding arrangements, in which member countries pay their own way during operations, as "a reverse lottery". He added: "If your numbers come up, you lose money. If the NRF deploys while you happen to be in the rotation, you pay the full costs of the deployment of your forces." During the Pakistan operation, Spain's number came up because its NATO Rapid Deployable Corps provided the ground component command of the NRF, costing it EUR20 million (USD25 million).
General James Jones, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, has called for greater flexibility in how NATO funds its operations. NATO has agreed to common funding of such items as headquarters, deployable communications and Role 3 hospitals. NATO is also near agreement on covering the costs of strategic airlift during unanticipated NRF deployments with common funding for a two-year interim trial period. However, if the funding issue is not completely resolved, Gen Jones fears "we will be faced with a significant disincentive for the NATO Response Force".
Missing pieces
Whether Gen Jones can declare the NRF fully operational depends on national pledges and NATO's will to resource future rotations of the force; its training and certification; command and control structures; and the logistics support necessary for large missions at a long distance, according to the general.
"On most of those scores, I am happy to say that we've done well," he said. "I continue to have questions about the willingness of nations to contribute forces to each rotation in the amount necessary to be confident that we can meet all the mission sets that are assigned to the NATO Response Force." He added: "I think we're somewhere around 88 per cent filled for NRF 7, which is a pretty high number for NATO."
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© 2006 Jane's Information Group
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