NATO to augment ‘Rapid Reaction Force’ strength to 300,000

Madrid: Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary-General of NATO, announced that the current times are of military competition and to face the competition, NATO will increase the strength of its ‘Rapid Action Force’ to 300,000. This is the biggest increase proposed by NATO since the end of the Cold War era. The current strength of the NATO Rapid Action Force is 40,000 soldiers.

Moreover, the NATO meeting will start on Tuesday in the Spanish capital Madrid. This is the first general meeting of NATO since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the heads of state of member countries will be attending the meeting. The priority topics for discussion will be awarded membership to Finland and Sweden and the assistance for Ukraine. It is said that military deployments in the European countries near Russia and the Chinese challenge also will be discussed in the meeting.

Before the meeting began, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg announced the additional NATO deployments. A few years ago, NATO formed its ‘Rapid Action Force’ due to rising aggressive Russian activities. The objective behind the formation of the Rapid Action Force was to enable quick military deployment in case of an attack.

Moreover, Stoltenberg said these changes are being made as the threat to Europe has increased given the Ukraine conflict. The NATO chief said that the European countries would be stressing improving the defence expenditure and preparedness and the plans regarding this will be expedited. Following the announcement by the NATO Chief, British Defence Minister Ben Wallace indicated significant steps for increasing the defence expenditure.