The redeployment of U.S. troops from Europe will be an ongoing process for several years, even if there’s no exact timeline, Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said in a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday, following a meeting of NATO military chiefs.

“What we’re basically saying is, as the European pillar of the alliance gets stronger, this allows the U.S. to reduce its presence in Europe and limit itself to providing only those critical capabilities that allies cannot yet provide,” Grynkewich said. “So we should expect there to be a redeployment of U.S. forces over time as allies build their capacity.”

The remark comes as Polish government leaders expressed concern about the Pentagon abruptly canceling a planned rotation of an armored brigade combat team of more than 4,000 soldiers to the country on NATO’s eastern flank.

The military chiefs discussed the U.S. decision to redeploy the armored brigade combat team, which Grynkewich said doesn’t impact what he called “executability” of NATO’s regional plans. He said the U.S. is withdrawing a total of 5,000 troops from Europe, with the armored brigade combat team accounting for a large part, as well as the cancellation of a long-range fires battalion deployment.

Grynkewich said planning is ongoing to redeploy “additional minor elements” accounting for another several hundred troops.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed animosity towards European NATO members, prompting concern in European capitals about whether American commitments to the alliance still hold. The Pentagon said earlier this month it will withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, whose Chancellor Friedrich Merz has criticized Washington’s handling of the war with Iran.

The withdrawal of additional troops is a decision for U.S. political leadership, according to Grynkewich. He said the timeline will “vary broadly” across different capabilities as NATO members meet spending commitments agreed in 2025 in The Hague and as they meet their capability targets.

NATO’s top military commander said a lot has happened since 2022, as the Baltic countries, Poland and “many others have really built up their ground combat power. So there’s substantially more capability in the ground domain than there was previously.”

Grynkewich name-checked the Canada-led Multinational Brigade in Latvia, which he said is fully operational and “highly effective,” and noted Germany continues to build up a brigade in Lithuania.

“As allies build up their capability, the United States is able to pull capability back and use it for other global priorities,” Grynkewich said.

The general said he’ll continue work in his joint role as the commander of U.S. European Command and NATO’s top military commander, “to ensure we’ve got the right coverage in the right places to maintain deterrence.”

The conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown war is now shaped by “speed, mass, software, drones, electronic warfare, space and data, areas where we have a lot to do,” said Adm. Pierre Vandier, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, at the press conference.

While NATO needs more missiles, artillery shells, air defense, high-end capabilities and stockpiles, those will not be sufficient on their own, according to Vandier. He said legacy platforms are not obsolete, but “the decisive question is the force mix” of combining ships, aircraft and tanks with robots, drones, sensors, software and new effectors.

 ”More of the same is necessary, but more of the same will not be enough by far,” Vandier said. “If we want mass and speed, we need to know how we can build fast, produce at scale, adapt quickly, and still deliver real operational effect. And we need to identify which part of our industrial base can actually deliver it.”

As NATO tries to keep pace with fast-changing drone warfare, the alliance used Latvia’s Crystal Arrow exercise to test unmanned ground combat, equipping opposing forces with wheeled robots. The systems gave the red team an element of surprise over a blue team relying only on aerial drones, said Lt. Col. Andris Brūveris, the Latvian battalion commander leading the opposing side.

“They are force multipliers, and they are here to stay,” said Brūveris, who commands Latvia’s 2nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion, in a briefing with reporters at the Sēlija training area in central Latvia on Monday, during a press trip organized by NATO.

“We are a little bit behind because we’ve been using only the air drones,” he added. “I hope we will move forward with this at a quick pace.”

Ukraine reshaped aerial drone warfare, and now appears poised to do the same for unmanned ground vehicles, with plans to buy 25,000 UGVs by the end of June. For Crystal Arrow, Brūveris relied on Ukrainian veterans for training and tactics, using wheeled robots for gathering intelligence, attacking enemy positions, resupply and casualty evacuation.

At the Sēlija training range, less than 200 kilometers from the border with Russia, the opposing force engaged the blue force using UGVs and aerial drones without direct troop-to-troop contact, according to Brūveris. After two days of reconnaissance, the exercise moved into a kinetic phase on Monday, with the opposing force pushing back the flanks of the blue force.

“We specifically, deliberately employed the UGVs here with the opposing forces to allow the friendly forces to understand what the threat was, and how they would counter that,” Brig. Gen. Chris Gent, Allied Land Command’s deputy chief of staff for transformation and integration, told Defense News.

Brūveris said he made particular use of a small four-wheeled UGV from Estonia-based startup Ark Robotics, likening it to the ground-based equivalent of an aerial first-person view drone. Battle-proven in Ukraine and reminiscent of a toy radio-controlled car, Ark-1 can be used for reconnaissance or to race a 15-kilogram antitank mine into an enemy position at more than 40 kilometers per hour.

“So I can do road reconnaissance, and at the same time, if there is a valuable target, that’s a suicide drone, so I can do the kinetic effect as well,” Brūveris said. “This is really something new for me, and I implement that in my maneuvers a lot.”

In the exercise, the red team used the Ark-1 for reconnaissance up to 15 kilometers away, including when conditions were too windy to fly UAVs on Monday, according to Brūveris. The opposing force used the kinetic drone to take out a road obstacle defended by the blue forces, as well as hit enemy positions.

Ukraine has leaned on unmanned systems to compensate for Russia’s superior numbers, and ground drones are preferable to sending soldiers into unfamiliar terrain, a Ukrainian veteran with the callsign Sleb, in charge of training at Ark Robotics, told Defense News.

Brūveris said Latvian troops will now need to figure out how to fit UGVs into the military decision-making loop, after having done the same for aerial drones.

“The blue force is my sister battalion from the same brigade,” Brūveris said. “They haven’t seen the drones on the ground, I haven’t used the drones on the ground, so it’s a surprise for both of us. We’re both learning, and afterwards, we’ll have a good chat how it works out.”

NATO Allied Land Command is likewise keen to integrate the feedback as the alliance builds up its Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, and leaders including U.S. Army Gen. Chris Donahue, who commands the alliance’s Landcom as the head of United States Army Europe and Africa, made their way to Selija on Tuesday. NATO covered the cost of travel and accommodation for media attending the exercise and event, including for Defense News.

“What we are really interested in hearing is if these systems are able to provide tactical advantage, essentially, in the way that Lt. Col. Brūveris decided to employ them,” Sean Thorne, a Canadian reserve officer in charge of lessons learned and interoperability at Landcom, told Defense News.

He said Landcom is really looking for “organic, bottom-up experimentation” to understand how UGVs can be used at the tactical level.

What systems to buy and how many remains up to individual countries, with several studies underway about the “optimum force ratio” of crewed and uncrewed systems, Brig. Gen. Gent said. He said the alliance has done the math to decide on, for example, how many UGVs would equal a NATO capability target for a vehicle.

With every nation in NATO trying to shorten the procurement cycle, the next challenge becomes integrating the UGVs into doctrine, training and how troops actually use capabilities, Gent said.

Troops spent two to three days learning the systems alongside Ukrainian veterans and company representatives, according to Brūveris, who called the UGVs fairly simple to operate.

Due to its small size, some troops that received training to operate the UGVs in Crystal Arrow were initially dismissive of Ark-1, according to a Ukrainian with the callsign Backspace, who identified himself as the integration lead for Ark Robotics.

“Even guys from Latvia and Canada, on the first day of our training, they’re laughing, they’re joking that it’s just a toy,” Backspace told Defense News. “But yesterday on the operation, they were shocked. We are doing war like in a movie, because it’s really very powerful.”

Latvian troops were highly motivated, even if Ark Robotics usually takes more time to train troops in Ukraine, said trainer Sleb. A representative for Ukrainian firm UGV Laboratory who identified himself as Denys concurred, saying teaching Latvian operators was “pretty easy.”

“Our task is to learn from them and prepare ourselves, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” Brūveris said of the Ukrainian firms providing training and advice. In the exercise, he used reconnaissance drones at the platoon level, with kinetic ground robots attached to the maneuver companies.

The exercise also allowed suppliers to learn about challenges of the Baltic forest environment, as opposed to Ukraine, according to Brūveris. In addition to Ark Robotics, firms taking part within the NATO Task Force X framework were Latvia’s Natrix, Ukraine’s UGV Laboratory, Poland’s Husarion and Estonia’s Alfatec Group.

Unmanned ground systems are at the stage where FPV drones were in 2023, according to Denys at UGV Laboratory. The company supplied its four-wheeled Simba drone, which can carry a load of more than 200 kilograms. The representative said he expects 2027 to be a boom for the industry. “Because right now it is impossible to fight without these UGVs, we wouldn’t survive without it.”

The Simba is used in Ukraine as a logistics drone to supply forward positions, and while not certified to do so, troops also use it to transport wounded soldiers back on return trips, according to Denys. With the Ukrainian battlefield changing fast, the platform is updated about every three months, and the company is working on a version with a weapon turret, he said.

A first lesson from using UGVs in Latvia was the need to plan missions around terrain and network coverage, with dense and boggy local forest interfering with control signals for the Starlink-equipped ground drones, something less of a concern in more open terrain in Ukraine.

Whereas aerial drone use is easy to plan as long as the weather cooperates, relying on satellite internet to control the ground robots meant planning the axis of advance to take into account tree coverage, according to Brūveris.

Brūveris said the exercise made clear Latvia needs ground-based systems to cover all war-fighting functions, including reconnaissance and strike missions. He said proof of their effectiveness was his company commanders in the field all asking when they would get back the UGVs being used for demos on Tuesday, because the robots were needed in the fight.

“These unmanned systems are the future, because one way or the other, it’s cheaper than people’s lives.”

The air-defense interception rate has been steadily rising in recent months, according to data from Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, climbing to 89.9% in March from 85.6% in February and 80.2% in December. At the same time, Russian attacks increased to 6,600 last month from 5,345 in February, the ministry said in a social media post on Wednesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week visited Middle Eastern countries facing Iranian drone attacks, offering to share the interception expertise Ukraine has built up over four years of Russian air war. With air-defense missiles in short supply and costly, Ukraine has turned to solutions ranging from AI-assisted machine guns on pickup trucks to electronic warfare and interceptor drones.

“The frequency of attacks is increasing but air defense performance is improving,” the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said.

Russia is promoting its own air-defense successes, with TASS reporting on Tuesday that a so-called Donbass Dome is making Ukraine’s high-speed Skat drone ineffective, citing claims by the Russian Federal Security Service Directorate. The air-defense system is able to repel “virtually any drone of this type,” the state-owned news agency said.

Ukraine is building a multi-layered air defense system and stepping up production of interceptors in order to protect civilians and critical infrastructure, according to a war plan presented by Minister of Defense Mykhailo Fedorov in February. The goal is real-time detection of all aerial threats, and intercepting at least 95% of them.

The country could produce 2,000 drone interceptors a day, provided it has sufficient funding, Zelenskyy told Reuters in an interview in March. In the Kyiv region in February, more than 70% of Russian Shahed-type drones were destroyed by interceptor drones, according to Ukraine’s commander in chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Recent Ukrainian interceptor-drone models include the JEDI Shahed Hunter, a multi-rotor drone that can hit speeds of more 350 kilometers per hour, and the winged Shvidun with a speed of more than 250 kilometers per hour and an operational range of more than 70 kilometers.

Beyond equipment innovation, Ukraine is also experimenting by allowing private companies to develop their own air-defense capabilities to protect infrastructure, while being part of the broader command-and-control system. One company already shot down several drones in Kharkiv Oblast, with another 13 firms authorized to set up air-defense groups, the Ministry of Defense said on Monday.

Analysts studying military matters and geopolitics disagree.

While countries including the U.K. and France have said they’re ready to “contribute to appropriate efforts” to ensure safe passage through the Strait, those plans remain in the preparatory stage for now. Western navies operating in the narrow waterway would be well within range of Iranian missiles, cheap drones and even artillery, defense analysts say.

“No, it isn’t easy,” François Heisbourg, a special adviser at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, said in a response to Trump’s statements posted on Bluesky. “If it were, you presumably wouldn’t be asking us to help you clean up the mess you made.”

The Strait of Hormuz is a relatively constrained maritime waterway, around 50 kilometers wide at the narrowest stretch, though the water is deep enough for fully laden very large crude carriers, or VLCCs — the industry term of art for the biggest oil tankers — to navigate most of the strait. Iran controls the northern coast of the Persian Gulf and along much of the Gulf of Oman, with the Strait of Hormuz the choke point between the two.

“The Strait of Hormuz reminds us that geography matters,” said Frank Hoffman, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, in an online commentary. “Iran holds a significant advantage there with the ability to range the narrow international shipping channel with small boats with rockets and guns, and an array of anti-ship cruise missiles.”

Iran had more than 1,000 fast attack craft specifically designed for swarming larger naval vessels, an estimated stockpile of more than 2,000 naval mines, shore-based anti-ship ballistic missiles with ranges of more than 700 kilometers and drone swarms capable of saturating point-defense systems, Roxana Niknami, a professor in European studies at the University of Tehran, wrote in a March 5 analysis for the European Institute for Studies on the Middle East and North Africa.

“Any naval presence will be at considerable risk from Iran’s still-extant ability to launch drones and missiles from any point along the coastline,” said Emma Salisbury, a non-resident senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Without allied contributions, controlling the Strait will likely be extremely difficult, and those contributions are certainly not forthcoming at the moment.”

The Strait is a vital passage for world trade, according to UN Trade and Development data, with 38% of the world’s traded crude oil, 29% of liquefied petroleum gas and 13% of traded chemicals passing through the waterway in the week before the U.S. and Israel started striking Iran on Feb. 28.

India, Taiwan and South Korea are highly dependent on Hormuz.

Iran has been targeting commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf with missiles and drones, resulting in 17 confirmed incidents between March 1 and March 16, with ships damaged and at least 11 seafarers dead or unaccounted for, according to the International Maritime Organization.

Trump said the Strait of Hormuz will have to be “guarded and policed, as necessary,” by other nations that use it, in a post on his Truth Social account on March 20. The president said the U.S. would help with the effort if asked, though that shouldn’t be necessary once the threat of Iran was removed, saying it would be “an easy military operation for them.”

In another post, he called NATO without the United States a “paper tiger,” unwilling to join the fight against Iran. “Now that the fight is militarily won, with very little danger to them, they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver. So easy for them to do, with so little risk. Cowards, and we will remember.”

Taking questions from reporters on Friday, the U.S. president called reopening the Strait “very simple” and “relatively safe,” but demanding in terms of the volume of ships.

The narrow nature of the Strait would put naval vessels operating there in about the same range as the drone-swarm kill zone in Ukraine, said retired U.K. Air Marshal Martin Sampson, executive director for the Middle East at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in a webinar on Wednesday.

“Smaller, lower-caliber, one-way drones have not had the opportunity to come into play in this conflict so far,” Sampson said. “But Strait of Hormuz operations may well bring different capabilities to bear. So the nature of the operating environment fundamentally changes.”

Meanwhile, China is watching and learning, and U.S. capabilities in the Strait of Hormuz will be of direct operational relevance to the Indo-Pacific theater, according to Sampson.

“Whatever the U.S. deploys there is likely to compromise some of its advantage that it feels that it’s developing and able to deploy in the Indo-Pacific, a priority region,” Sampson said.

Iran’s capabilities today mean the operational challenge of reopening the Strait of Hormuz today is “categorically more demanding” than in 1988, according to Niknami. Meanwhile, the U.S. without allied support doesn’t have the assets for strike, escort and mine-sweeping at the same time, said Salisbury at the FPRI.

The American operation Earnest Will to protect Kuwaiti-owned tankers from Iranian attacks in 1987 and 1988 was “a different world,” said Nick Childs, IISS senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security, in a webinar with Sampson. He said the U.S. at the time had a fleet of nearly 600 ships, compared to fewer than 300 today, and the Navy already overstretched.

The Strait of Hormuz is a more challenging environment than the Red Sea, with lower warning times, according to Childs. Additionally, even residual Iranian capabilities may be more potent that those of the Houthis in the Red Sea, while facing warships with limited capabilities and with questions around strategic stockpiles of munitions, he said.

The mine threat was underestimated in Operation Earnest Will, and mine countermeasures remain a weakness today, Childs said. While the U.S. has Littoral Combat Ships that can be equipped for mine clearing, those were never meant to be in high-intensity operations, and like any other mine clearing assets, would need protection if combat operations were still underway, according to the researcher.

Allies in the Gulf region have modern ships that could contribute to escort or mine-countermeasure missions, but with “a limited ability, actually, to look after themselves in that such a situation, let alone protect others,” Childs said.

Childs said some estimates suggest Iran has 5,000 to 6,000 mines of different types, and if its mine-laying assets are destroyed, Iran could in a worst case just “roll down mines off the back of a dhow.” He said that just the threat of mines could make shippers reluctant to send their vessels through the Strait.

“Mines have two warheads,” Childs said. “One is a high-explosive warhead, and the other one is a psychological one. Just the threat and thought of the possibility that there might be a mining threat may be enough to maintain that stranglehold.”

British Prime Minister Kier Starmer said on Monday the United Kingdom “will not be drawn into the wider war,” while German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said “this is not our war.” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said member states have no appetite to expand their maritime-security operation in the Red Sea to the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf.

Iran declared the strait closed to traffic on March 2, following the start of strikes against the country by the U.S. and Israel two days earlier. While saying the U.S. doesn’t need anyone’s help, Trump has simultaneously called on allies to aid in securing navigation in the waterway, reportedly going as far as to threaten consequences for the NATO alliance if European countries reject those demands.

“The feeling is, this is not Europe’s war,” Kallas told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. “Of course we are allies with America, but we don’t really understand their moves recently. We haven’t been consulted, and we don’t really understand, what are the objectives of this war.”

The EU’s foreign-policy chief said there is no willingness on the part of member states to change the mandate of the bloc’s Aspides naval mission, tasked with securing navigation in the Red Sea, and “nobody is ready to put their people in harm’s way in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran has attacked more than a dozen commercial vessels with drones, missiles and small boats in the strait since the start of the conflict, while multiple media reported the country has started laying sea mines, citing U.S. intelligence. The Strait of Hormuz is relatively narrow, around 50 kilometers wide at some points, well inside the range of Iranian coastal attacks.

Around 20% of the world’s oil consumption transits via the waterway, and Brent crude oil futures have jumped to more than $100 a barrel following the closure, causing anxiety among economists and policymakers about the impact on the global economy.

Trump in recent days explicitly linked U.S. involvement in NATO and support to Ukraine to the efforts by allies with what he called “a very small endeavor, which is just keeping the Strait open.” The president on Sunday told the Financial Times that “if there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”

French President Emmanuel Macron has said he is working on a mission of European and non-European partners to escort shipping to “gradually” reopen the waterway, but only once the hottest phase of the conflict is over.

Setting up a mission of warships accompanying tankers through the dangerous passage would be a “complex undertaking,” requiring collaboration with “all stakeholders in the maritime transport sector,” including insurers, Macron said at defense Cabinet meeting here today.

“We are not a party to the conflict,” Macron said. “And so France will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context.”

France has sent around half of its fleet of major surface combatants, including the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, to the Middle East to protect navigation, French citizens and allies in the region, though the country has emphasized the deployment is strictly defensive in nature.

Germany’s primary responsibility is towards NATO territory, and any deployment outside the alliance area would require both an international framework and a mandate from the Bundestag, the country’s parliament, Pistorius said in Berlin on Monday. The defense minister said he sees “no reason whatsoever” for such a move, saying “it is not our war, we did not start it.”

Germany is calling for diplomatic solutions and a swift end to the conflict, and more warships will likely not contribute to that, according to Pistorius.

“What does Donald Trump expect from, let’s say, a handful or two handfuls of European frigates in the Strait of Hormuz to accomplish what the powerful U.S. Navy cannot manage there on its own?” Pistorius said. “That’s the question I ask myself.”

The U.K. will defend itself and allies, but will not be drawn into the wider war, Starmer said on Monday. He said the country is in talks with allies, including European partners and Gulf states, on a viable collective plan to restore freedom of navigation as soon as possible, to ensure stability in the market and ease the economic impacts, emphasizing no decisions have been made.

Starmer said ultimately the Strait of Hormuz will need to be reopened, “not a simple task.” U.K. assets in the region that could help with reopening the strait are autonomous mine-hunting systems, according to the prime minister.

Smaller NATO allies have also been keen to keep their distance from the conflict, with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre saying on Sunday that “it is not our war,” with the outlook for how the conflict will develop “pretty unclear.”

“We are not part of this war, we did not initiate it, but we are all affected by it,” Gahr Støre said. “It should be the responsibility of the concerned parties to find ways of ending the hostilities that now have great impact around the world.”

Finland’s President Alexander Stubb responded positively to a suggestion that Europe could make demands on the U.S. regarding Ukraine, in exchange for assistance in the Gulf.

“I think it’s actually a really good idea,” Stubb said at a Chatham House meeting in London on Tuesday, in response to an audience question. “I’ll talk about it with my colleagues.”

The U.S. accounted for 58% of major arms imports by NATO’s European member states in the 2021-2025 period, according to a March 9 report by the Swedish think tank. That’s down from 64% for the five years through 2024, based on SIPRI’s year-earlier report.

Europe stepped up defense spending following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, prompting a more than threefold jump in the region’s arms imports. Now European leaders are looking to reduce their dependency on the U.S., as threats by President Donald Trump against allies and a policy shift towards American homeland defense have raised doubts whether the country is still a reliable ally.

“Threat perceptions concerning Russia, compounded by uncertainties over the USA’s commitment to defending its European allies, have boosted demand for arms among European member states,” SIPRI said in its report.

While European defense firms boosted production, and European Union investment support for the bloc’s domestic weapons industry led to a number of intra-EU orders, European nations continued to import U.S. arms in the past five years, especially combat aircraft and long-range air-defense systems, according to Katarina Djokic, a researcher with SIPRI’s Arms Transfers Programme.

Twelve European countries had a total of 466 F-­35 fighter jets on order or preselected for order by the end of 2025, including 39 of the Lockheed Martin jets ordered or preselected for order last year.

South Korea was the next-biggest supplier to European NATO members, securing 8.6% of their arms imports in the most recent five-year period, from 6.5% reported last year. Israel accounted for 7.7% of European NATO imports, from 3.9% in the period through 2024. France increased its share to 7.4% from 6.5%.

Global weapons exports rose at the fastest pace in a decade as Europe more than tripled weapons imports in the face of a threatening Russia. The volume of major arms transferred between states rose 9.2% in 2021-2025 from the prior five-year period, the biggest increase since the 2011-2015 bracket, according to SIPRI..

‘Deliveries to Ukraine since 2022 are the most obvious factor, but most other European states have also started importing significantly more arms to shore up their military capabilities against a perceived growing threat from Russia,” said Mathew George, director of SIPRI’s Arms Transfers Programme.

Shipments of U.S. weapons to Europe rose 217% in 2021-2025 from the prior five-year period, according to SIPRI. That included arms for Ukraine, with the think tank counting weapons bought by other countries for transfer to the Ukrainian forces, including air-defense missiles and guided bombs, as U.S. exports to Ukraine.

The U.S. remained the world’s biggest arms exporter in 2021-2025, with a market share of 34%, ahead of France with 9.8%. Russia accounted for 6.8% of global weapons transfers between states, about a third of its share in the prior five-year period.

“For importers, U.S. arms offer advanced capabilities and a way of fostering good relations with the USA, while the USA views arms exports as a tool of foreign policy and a way of strengthening its arms industry,” said Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.

Germany overtook China to become the world’s fourth-biggest arms exporter in 2021-2025, with 24% of German exports going to Ukraine. Italy climbed to sixth place from 10th in the prior five-year period, with 59% of the country’s arms exports going to the Middle East.

The U.S. had outstanding orders for 936 combat aircraft by the end of 2025, followed by France with 180 or more aircraft, and China with 90 combat aircraft in its order book. Order data can give “a rough indication” of which countries will be the top exporters in coming years, SIPRI says.

The United Kingdom had 34 or more major warships on order, similar to Germany, according to SIPRI. Israel had at least 78 export orders for missile air-defense systems, Germany had at least 66 such systems on order, and the U.S. 55 or more, according to SIPRI.

Ukraine was the largest weapons importer in the 2021-2025 period, accounting for 9.7% of global arms imports, with the U.S. the source for 44% of Ukraine’s imports, followed by Germany with 14%. Arms transfers to Ukraine were “substantially lower” in 2025 than in the preceding two years as the U.S. reduced its military aid to the country, according to SIPRI.

India was the world’s second-biggest importer of arms, even if its share of global imports fell 4% in the period, based on the SIPRI data. Elsewhere in Asia, Pakistan’s imports of major arms rose 66% from the prior five years, while Japan lifted imports by 76% and Taiwan by 54%.

“Fears over China’s intentions and its growing military capabilities continue to influence armament efforts in other parts of Asia and Oceania, which often still depend on imported arms,” said Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.

“In South Asia, the high volume of arms that India imports is largely due to the perceived threat from China and to India’s long-running conflict with the main recipient of Chinese arms exports, Pakistan,” Siemon Wezeman said. “Imported weapons were used in the 2025 clash between India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed states.”

In Africa, imports by Algeria fell by 78% in 2021-2025 from the prior period, while those by Morocco increased 12%, making the latter the continent’s largest arms importer.

With the Strait of Hormuz closed and the Suez Canal and Red Sea threatened, France is also working on a coalition to pool assets, including military, that will allow shipping traffic to resume, Macron said in the televised speech.

“Faced with this unstable situation and the uncertainties of the days ahead, I have given orders for the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, its air assets, and its escort of frigates to set course for the Mediterranean,” Macron said.

The nuclear-powered Charles de Gaulle and its escorts are being rerouted from the Baltic and the Northern Atlantic, where the carrier group had been set to participate in multiple NATO missions. The air group embarked on France’s only carrier typically consists of Rafale jets and E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft, as well as several helicopters.

The deployed carrier strike group included the Italian destroyer Andrea Doria as well as the French frigate L’Amiral Ronarc’h, according to the French Navy. The group also included the frigates Alsace and Chevalier Paul, as well as the oiler Jacques Chevallier, according to French media reports.

Macron said France has economic interests to protect, with oil prices, natural gas prices and international trade “profoundly” disrupted by the war between the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

“We are taking the initiative to build a coalition to pool resources, including military resources, to resume and secure traffic in these maritime routes that are essential to the global economy,” Macron said. “This is what we were able to do several months ago in the Red Sea. This is what we must do there today.”

French forces, which are deployed across several bases in the Middle East, downed drones “in legitimate defense” from the very first hours of the conflict between the U.S. and Israel with Iran, to protect the airspace of its allies, Macron said. France in recent hours sent additional Rafale jets, air-defense systems and radars to the region, the president said.

“It’s crucial that we ensure freedom of movement in the Strait of Hormuz because we are all affected,” retired Air Force Gen. Patrick Dutartre said on French television.

With European Union member Cyprus also struck in recent days, France will also send additional air-defense assets to the island, as well as the air-defense frigate Languedoc, which should arrive off the coast of Cyprus as early as this evening, Macron said.

Establishing robust air and missile defenses, a priority for both NATO and the European Union, may still take five to 10 years, according to the analysts. Europe is better positioned in areas such as strategic airlift and aerial refueling, where it has sufficient capability to stand alone or can close the gap within a few years, based on the assessments.

The U.S., through NATO, provides high-end capabilities critical for effective combat operations, such as command and control (C2), satellite intelligence and deep strike, which European allies either lack or field only in a limited capacity. With American security guarantees seen uncertain amid deteriorating trans-Atlantic ties, Europe faces a multiyear effort to address its dependencies.

“There are areas in which the Europeans have zero meaningful capability, there are a few areas in which the Europeans own an arguably adequate capability today but for which the issue is one of replacement, and there some areas in which scale, not quality, is the issue,” said François Heisbourg, special adviser at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research.

Beyond transport and tanker aircraft, the areas where Europe is closest to having sufficient capability are military satellite communications, battlefield C2, unmanned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and long-range strike, based on the assessment of 16 experts from European think tanks and institutions. Those capabilities can be in place within five years, a majority said.

With Western military leaders worrying Russia could seek to test NATO resolve in Europe within a matter of years, several analysts highlighted having long-range or deep strike as key to deterrence.

After the end of the war in Ukraine, Russia could in a worst case need less than a year to build up enough capabilities for a military operation with limited geographical objectives, Dutch intelligence services said this month. That would probably not be aimed at militarily defeating NATO, “but at dividing the alliance and forcing concessions with regard to the European security architecture.”

Russia is likely preparing for further conflict even as it continues to fight in Ukraine, Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service wrote this month, though it assessed that Russia has no intention to attack a NATO member state in the coming year.

“We need to invest, obviously, in our air defense capabilities and all that, but the notion that you can deter a country like Russia with only defensive capabilities strikes me as a bit naive,” said Guntram Wolff, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank. “So you really have to have offensive capabilities and that means, at the end of the day, deep strike capabilities.”

It’s a view shared by countries including Denmark and Norway, with the former saying in September it needs long-range strike to bolster its deterrence posture, and the latter in January announcing the purchase of Hanwha’s Chunmoo rocket artillery system, including munitions with a range of up to 500 kilometers.

France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom said in February some projects within their joint European Long-range Strike Approach, or ELSA, are at a “high level of maturity,” including an air-launched long-range strike capability. The U.K. and Germany announced in May last year they would work on a new long-range strike capability with a range of over 2,000 km.

Europe doesn’t have a lot of systems that can shoot beyond 500 kilometers, said Chris Kremidas-Courtney, a senior visiting fellow at the Brussels-based European Policy Center and NATO advisor. Central Moscow is around 585 kilometers from the eastern-most point of Latvia.

“If we can’t reach out and touch Moscow, then there’s not a lot to give Mr. Putin and his friends a lot of pause,” said Kremidas-Courtney, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “In a multi-polar world, if you can’t touch the other poles, you’re not really a pole. The sooner we have our own deep strike capability, the better.”

Europe needs its own intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and has the know-how to produce them through French rocket maker ArianeGroup, according to Kremidas-Courtney. “There’s not a lot of people making this stuff, at least no one that is friendly to us,” the researcher said. “I’m pretty sure we could figure this out. It’s just a gigantic price tag.”

The surveyed analysts were relatively optimistic about Europe’s long-range strike timeline, with six considering it will take less than two years to have adequate capability, while another six assess it will take between two and five years.

Space-based ISR and integrated air and missile defense are the areas of greatest pessimism, with half of the survey respondents considering Europe will need more than five years to get those enablers in place at a sufficient level.

European air-defense readiness “depends on what we’re taking about,” said Héloïse Fayet, research fellow at the French Institute of International Relations and head of its deterrence and proliferation program. Full strategic integrated air and missile defense for the whole European territory would be “totally impossible to put in place,” she said.

What’s unclear is whether the U.S. recalibrating its presence in Europe would mean withdrawing Aegis Ashore air-defense sites and other systems, according to Fayet. She noted recent progress on the French-Italian SAMP/T system, and said Europe could get more Patriot systems, at the cost of reinforcing dependency on the United States.

Europe will be able to field sufficient air-defense capability within two years to defeat threats such as cruise missiles and Russia’s hypersonic Kinzhal missile, but western systems for now are unable to stop ballistic missiles such as the Oreshnik, said Frédéric Mauro, an associate research fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.

European countries have started to address some of the air-defense gaps, ordering $18 billion worth of short- and very-short-range air defense systems since 2022, compared to $7.5 billion spent on all types of ground-based air defense in the preceding four years, the according to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies published Feb. 24.

For space-based ISR, the assessment is less stark than a year ago, when a clear majority of respondents expected sufficient capability to be more than five years away. In the latest survey, half of the analysts expect it will take less time.

“I’m a little bit more positive than I was a year ago,” said Wolff at Bruegel. “People have moved, right? You see that investments in satellites are really picking up speed.”

The U.S. halting intelligence sharing with Ukraine in March 2025 brought home the risk to European allies of relying on American space data, prompting a flurry of investment in proprietary capabilities. Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands, Finland, Germany and France all announced plans to acquire satellite-based intelligence in the past year, much of it focused on space-based radar.

Getting systems into orbit isn’t enough, with Europe short of trained personnel with expertise in exploiting signals intelligence, according to Kremidas-Courtney.

“We have to train people in analysis and exploitation of this stuff to convert intelligence into targeting data, something you can make decisions with,” Kremidas-Courtney said. “We’re still failing to recruit enough of the people we need to be trained to run all these things.”

Europe also needs to start coordinating in space-based intelligence if it wants to stop relying on the U.S., according to the EPC researcher. With space-based ISR among the most sovereign capabilities of member states, “that will remain fragmented, but it doesn’t mean we have to be blind.”

Several analysts noted battlefield command and control as another priority. The terms refers to the processes through which commanders coordinate and monitor resources and actions on the battlefield, with modern C2 systems relying on advanced technology to tie it all together.

The European need to build up battlefield command and control “depends on whether NATO operational structures stay once the U.S. is gone, or not willing to intervene,” said Fayet at IFRI. “France has some C2 capabilities when operating in small coalitions, but it might be difficult on a bigger scale.”

Without American command and control, Europe would struggle with things such as coordinated fires and distributed fires through distributed operations, according to Kremidas-Courtney.

“Between the French and the German systems, I think we could cobble together a system to conduct land warfare, defend European territory,” Kremidas-Courtney said. “We would eventually get it right, but from the beginning, it would be a struggle.”

The jury is out on airborne C2 and early warning, with some analysts estimating that NATO’s existing pool of airborne warning and control systems, combined with deliveries of Saab’s GlobalEye, means capacity is sufficient or can be built up rapidly. Others see that taking more than five years.

Opinions also diverged on suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses, or SEAD/DEAD, with three analysts considering Europe may need more than 10 years to put that in place, and others saying it will take less than two years.

“After speaking with air force officers from several European countries, it appears that this is a domain Europeans have quite simply abandoned and must now rebuild from scratch, something that is particularly critical and concerning in the current context,” said Alain de Neve, a researcher at Belgium’s Royal Higher Institute for Defence.

Missile early warning is another critical capability Europe lacks, according to Heisbourg at the FRS, who considers that will take two to five years to put in place.

France and Germany are working on a project called Joint Early Warning for a European Lookout project, combining satellites to detect missile launches with ground-based radars to track ballistic and cruise missiles. The project is pitched as a European capability to complement U.S. assets, with an initial operating capability by the early 2030s.

Some analysts leaned more optimistic about Europe’s ability to provide defense critical enablers without the United States.

“I’m generally unsympathetic to scare stories about the scale or imminence of the Russian threat,” said Nick Witney, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Ukraine has shown what you can achieve in months if you put your mind to it.”

“That said, air and missile defense is a huge lacuna, and C2 and long-range strike need urgent attention,” according to Witney, who estimates getting those to adequate levels will take less than two years. “The rest is in place. We could defend or deter with what we have, if we had to.”

Below are the results of the survey asking how much time Europe will need to ensure an adequate capacity in ten critical defense enablers to deter or fight Russia without U.S. help.

Satellite communications

Provides secure voice and data links for military forces across large areas without relying on local infrastructure, connecting commanders with deployed units worldwide.

The U.S. had 108 communication satellites for military use in 2025, according to IISS data. That compares with six for the U.K., five for France, three for Italy and two for both Germany and Spain.

Space-based ISR

Uses satellites to collect intelligence, conduct surveillance and perform reconnaissance, delivering critical information about enemy forces, terrain and activity to support military decision-making and operations.

Europe had deployed 36 ISR and electronic/signals intelligence satellites as of 2025, compared with 14 in 2015, according to IISS data.

Battlefield C2

The system and processes military commanders use to direct and coordinate forces during operations, enabling timely and synchronized execution of missions.

Progress in battlefield C2 will depend on the speed and scope of U.S. withdrawal from Europe “and how much it pushes Europeans to step up.”

Giuseppe Spatafora, research analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies

We need people, not only commanders, but staffs who are trained and exercise in high-intensity combat. If you want to defend Europe, we need to conduct multi-corps operations on the ground with air and maritime support and space.

Kremidas-Courtney, EPC

Airborne C2

Uses aircraft equipped with sensors and communication systems for a comprehensive view of a battle space, tracking aircraft, ships and other assets to enhance situational awareness and operational control.

NATO operates a fleet of 14 E-3As from Geilenkirchen in Germany that represents Europe’s primary AWACS capacity. Sweden and France have ordered Saab’s GlobalEye, with NATO, Germany and Denmark also interested in buying the aircraft.

Aerial reconnaissance/unmanned ISR

The use of manned and unmanned aircraft to gather visual, electronic or signals intelligence about enemy forces, terrain, and areas of interest.

We have signals intelligent aircraft, we have balloons. So the things that are in the atmosphere, we could do a lot in the next two to three years.

Kremidas-Courtney, EPC

Integrated Air & Missile Defense

The integrated network of sensors, interceptors, and command systems used to detect, track, and defeat air and missile threats against forces and populations.

We don’t have enough of it. We can protect some key places, but protecting Rotterdam and Rome and population centers, I think we would have a big problem with that.

Kremidas-Courtney, EPC

A lot of our effort has been at the lower altitudes, stopping swarms of drones and things like this. We’re catching up there, we have some really good directed energy systems coming online. The reason I like directed energy and cheap missiles is because it returns the cost symmetry.

Kremidas-Courtney, EPC

SEAD/DEAD

Operations to suppress or destroy enemy air-defense systems to create a safer operating environment for friendly aircraft and open the way for long-range munitions.

MBDA is developing the high-supersonic maneuverable Status RS missile, whose roles will include taking on enemy air defenses, though that capability may not arrive until 2033.

Long-range strike

The use of stand-off, precision weapon systems to strike strategic or operational targets at extended range, for example to destroy critical infrastructure or high-value targets.

The ELSA group of nations is working on areas including an air-launched long-range capability, a European multi-missile launcher and low-cost 500 km-plus capabilities based on one-way-attack effectors. MBDA last year presented a one-way effector dubbed Crossbow, with a range of more than 800 kilometers.

Capabilities in the 500-1,000 kilometer range could be available within two years, “but not on the scale that would be really useful to achieve an operational effect against Russia.”

Fayet at IFRI

Some European countries already possess the necessary expertise and know-how, the question essentially comes down to determining how much time would be required to ensure a more substantial production.

de Neve, Royal Higher Institute for Defence

Aerial refueling

Using tanker aircraft to provide fighter jets and other aircraft with fuel in flight, extending their range and loiter time, and allowing for long-duration missions such as keeping a persistent presence over an area.

European countries operate 38 Airbus A330 Multi Role Transport Tankers, four more than a year ago, with another six on order, according to Airbus numbers at the end of December.

The MRTT is a great tanker aircraft, just need to get more.

Fayet, IFRI

Airbus tankers are a lot better than the U.S.’s, but need to scale up numbers in a busy industry.

Heisbourg, FRS

Strategic airlift

Using transport aircraft for rapid and large-scale movement of personnel, equipment and supplies over long distances, supporting operations far from home bases.

Europe operated 131 Airbus A400M heavy transport aircraft at the end of 2025, with 39 more ordered, according to Airbus.

We have the capabilities, just need to get the mass.

Fayet at IFRI

Transport aircraft we have largely in place, and we can do what is necessary.

Wolff at Bruegel

The operation will tie together various allied activities in the region, including Denmark’s Arctic Endurance exercises, NATO said in a statement on Wednesday. Denmark stepped up its military presence in Greenland and invited allies including France and the United Kingdom to join after Trump escalated threats to take over the Danish territory.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and NATO’s military commander for Europe have warned of growing threats in the Arctic and high north from Russia and China, though Denmark has said there are no Chinese vessels near Greenland. As polar ice melts due to climate change, the Arctic is becoming more accessible, raising concerns Russia will increasingly challenge NATO in the region.

“What we are assessing is that there is a real threat” as sea lanes open up, Rutte said at a press conference in Brussels ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers on Thursday. “There is every need to make sure that we protect this vital part of NATO territory.”

Arctic Sentry will be led by Joint Forces Command Norfolk and overseen by Allied Command Operations, NATO said. The operation follows a meeting between Trump and Rutte in Davos, Switzerland, in January, where the two agreed the alliance should collectively take more responsibility for defense of the region, according to NATO.

Denmark will contribute “substantially” to Arctic Sentry, Danish Minister of Defence Troels Lund Poulsen said in a statement, though the Danish defense ministry said it’s “too early” to say what the operation will look like exactly.

“The Kingdom has long been pushing for NATO to play a greater role in the Arctic, and in recent months we have intensified that work,” Lund Poulsen said. “That is why I’m extremely pleased that this work is now resulting in concrete action.”

Arctic Sentry will bring all allied activities in the high north into “one overarching operational approach to the region,” which will allow to quickly address any gaps, according to Rutte. The operation will also benefit from “the latest technological insights” from Allied Command Transformation, the secretary general said.

“What is really new about it is that for the first time now, we will bring everything we do in the Arctic together under one command,” Rutte said.

Rutte said that while he can’t comment on all intelligence NATO is getting, “we have a clear sense that the Russians and the Chinese are becoming more and more active there.” He defended Trump’s concerns about Russia and China increasing their Arctic presence as sea lanes open up. “We have to be very watchful and not naive, that’s basically what he’s saying,” Rutte said.

Arctic Sentry will be an “increased vigilance activity” similar to the alliance’s Baltic Sentry and Eastern Sentry operations, under direct authority of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, according to Rutte.

The United Kingdom plans to double British troops deployed to Norway to 2,000 over three years, the Ministry of Defence said in a separate statement on Wednesday. U.K. forces are expected to play a “vital role” in Arctic Sentry, with military planning underway, according to the MoD.

“Russia poses the greatest threat to Arctic and High North security that we have seen since the Cold War,” U.K. Defence Secretary John Healey said in a statement. “We see Putin rapidly re-establishing military presence in the region, including reopening old Cold War bases.”

The country will deploy 1,500 Royal Marine Commandos to Norway in March for the NATO exercise Cold Response, which will take place across Norway, Finland and Sweden, the MoD said.

The U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force will engage in the exercise Lion Protector in September, with hundreds of troops deploying across Iceland, the Danish Straits and Norway to train protection of critical infrastructure and joint command and control capabilities, the U.K. said.

New naval designs increasingly incorporate containerized payloads, and the commanders of the United States, Italian, Dutch and British navies cited advantages including mission flexibility, quickly getting firepower on the water, and at-sea replenishment.

Italy’s new Thaon di Revel-class patrol frigates have been designed to carry containerized mission modules, while the Netherlands announced a class of multi-role support ships mounting containers loaded with anything from air-defense missiles to electronic-warfare kit or assault drones. The United States Navy has said its new frigate will be fitted with containerized mission packages.

“All our future ships, they will be specifically designed for this kind of capability,” said Adm. Giuseppe Berutti Bergotto, chief of staff of the Italian Navy, speaking at the Paris Naval Conference. “The primary role of the ship will be the same, but the ship needs to have this capability to be ready to attack different missions.”

The modularity of the patrol frigate “was a great idea” that the Italian Navy is now trying to apply to all its construction, according to Berutti Bergotto. He said the navy has also experimented with fitting different containers with different payloads on the deck of a commercial vessel.

“If you look at modularity, it’s like Lego, building blocks are already there, you just need to put them together,” said Vice Adm. Harold Liebregs, the commander of the Royal Netherlands Navy, on the sidelines of the conference. “But keep it simple. Don’t over-integrate.”

The Netherlands has said its modular support vessels will be able to mount a containerized version of the Barak ER surface-to-air interceptor from Israel Aerospace Industries, as well as the company’s Harop long-range loitering munitions.

Liebregs said introducing modularity is sometimes “easier said than done, because not every Lego block now is good enough,” but modules such as air-defense missile systems are available and ready to be plugged in. He said navies have to accept they will have to learn along the way, “so just start somewhere as soon as possible.”

The Dutch navy needs to be ready for war by 2028, and “one of my main challenges is to bring more firepower to sea,” Liebregs said. The multi-role support vessel concept is one possible solution, and fitting such a ship with a container full of Barak missiles would quickly provide some “very capable air-defense capability,” allowing for mass and dispersed operations.

Such ships would have reduced crews of six to eight sailors, and roles might also include escorting Russian vessels in the North Sea, “saving a lot of very expensive warships,” according to the Dutch commander.

“It’s an affordable way to augment our fleet,” Liebregs said. “These kinds of ships are very adaptable, and it fits very well to short-cycled innovation, the thing we very much need.”

The United Kingdom’s Royal Navy is running its own modular mission-system program, and is now trialing what it calls “mission pods” that were produced in the autumn of last year, said Gen. Gwyn Jenkins, the United Kingdom’s First Sea Lord and chief of naval staff. He said standardization of data and power cable connections is key.

“We’re all on this journey, I think,” Jenkins said. “As long as you’ve got commonality across the system, then we can position those mission pods around our different naval bases with allies, give ourselves the ability to come back in and change pods, go back out to sea in any format, replenish at sea with different pods.”

Modularity will allow naval vessels to adapt to future threats as well as new technology, such as the on-board power required for future direct-energy weapons, Berutti Bergotto said. He said navies also need to be able to make changes during ship construction to take into account emerging threats and remain relevant at sea.

He cited his command of the Horizon-class destroyer Andrea Doria, which was commissioned in 2010 with cathode-ray tube monitors because that was the available technology six years earlier.

“When you commission the ship, this ship lasts for 20 years, pretty much,” the Italian admiral said. “You cannot have, after one year, an old ship.”

The U.S. attempted to include modularity in the Littoral Combat Ship program but failed to predict the complexity of building effective modules, and under-invested in that area, according to U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle.

“We’ve learned from that mistake,” Caudle said. “Going forward with our small surface combatant, we’re going to put more energy into this from the acquisition side, the research and development, and how to containerize payloads that we need” to make that ship type effective.

“When you put that ship to sea with modular force packages, things that can be containerized, from ordnance to unmanned systems to towed arrays — the sky’s the limit on what you can modularize there on that platform,” Caudle said. “Then we can build them quickly, fill them.”

Modularity will allow the U.S. Navy to tailor the “high-low mix” to create force packages that might be more suitable to deal with a threat than a carrier strike group or amphibious strike group, according to Caudle.

Caudle said modularity goes beyond payloads, and can also boost U.S. shipbuilding capacity, with the admiral citing large surface ships such as liquid natural gas tankers that are built in modules. The U.S. has historically built its combat ships as a single unit, with the Virginia-class submarines the first move into modularity, according to the sea service chief.

“You’re going to see us extend that methodology to all of our ships going forward,” Caudle said. “What that does is allow more shipyards to enter the actual shipbuilding game and add capacity to an oversubscribed yard structure by tailoring what they can do to add value to how we build our ships and deliver them quickly.”