Breedlove Outlines NATO’s Readiness Action Plan

Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, on Monday outlined the three-point “readiness action plan” agreed to by alliance members at the Wales summit last week in response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The first step is to assure nations who “felt the most threatened” by Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, he said in his address at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in National Harbor, Md. A large part of that will include the creation of a “high-speed response section” of the NATO Response Force, he said. The high-speed force will include air, land, and sea forces that “will be available in a matter of days, at the most five days,” he said. The second step, said Breedlove, will involve NATO developing a “corps-sized element” that will deal with the “Article V collective defense mission 365 days a year, seven days a week.” It will be “responsible for thinking, planning, and preparing for Article V defense actions on a day-to-day basis,” he said. For the third step, NATO members decided “there needs to be a forward element of NATO forces in nations that are the most threatened,” said Breedlove. During peacetime, these forward forces would exercise with the host nation’s forces, and prepare for and determine the proper mix of prepositioned supplies and munitions needed for a potential fight in the area, he said. “In a time of conflict, or in a time of increased tensions, these would be the units that the rapidly responding NRF elements would fall in on to quickly constitute and build that forward capability in an area if required,” said Breedlove.