What intra-alliance problems and procurement issues are generated by the need to meet the strategic airlift needs of the NATO Response Force?

To achieve its airlift goals, NATO has come up with three solutions. The simplest and the oldest solution involves using the national airlift capabilities of member countries to transport the NATO Response Force. Owing to the great differences in airlifting capabilities of different countries, it is not surprising that following this approach has resulted in the burden of providing strategic airlift capacity for NATO being unequally shared among the members of the alliance. In fact, the US has largely shouldered this burden since the creation of the alliance. More recently, Canada and the UK joined US in helping to transport the troops of the alliance around the world (Hood, 2009). However, NATO will have trouble airlifting its NATO Response Force across the world if it continues to rely solely on current or future national capabilities of these countries. This is because US, Canadian, and British airlift capabilities are constantly burdened by the respective national commitments of these countries, leaving little room for catering to the needs of the alliance (Hood, 2009). Moreover, the existing strategic airlift fleets of the three countries will sooner or later reach the end of their lifespan; which will happen sooner rather than later if they continue to be used for the purposes of the alliance, on top of national interests. Also, the aircraft may simply be unavailable in times of need due to being on maintenance or being used for national commitments. So borrowing it to serve the needs of the alliance may often be simply impossible (Hood, 2009).

Thus, the mainland European nations face special difficulties when it comes to strategic airlifting. To overcome this problem NATO made a special agreement, called the Prague Capabilities Commitment, aimed at developing an airlift capability for Europe, specifically (Hood, 2009). To achieve this goal NATO signed contracts for developing and producing Airbus A400M aircraft for the European members of the alliance. But the procurement of A400M had its problems. Delays in production stalled its release until 2013. Moreover, A400M cannot transport tanks or heavy artillery that the alliance’s strategic airlift is expected to do (Hood, 2009).

Hence, a second solution for solving NATO’s strategic airlift problem was developed. It involves having its members form a commercial partnership and then using this partnership to purchase the required transport aircraft for the alliance (Hood, 2009). The rationale behind such a partnership is that sharing a few airplanes is more cost-effective than having each of the needy alliance members buy its own transport aircraft. The partnership that ten NATO members and two non-NATO countries formed for this purpose is called Strategic Airlift Consortium (SAC). And soon after its creation, SAC obtained three C-17 airplanes; two were purchased and one was donated by the United States (Hood, 2009).

The third solution, for meeting the strategic airlift needs of the NATO Response Force, consists of alliance members forming a commercial partnership and then utilizing this partnership to lease aircraft from the private sector. To this end, 15 NATO nations and one NATO partner nation formed such a partnership. It is called the Strategic Airlift Interim Solution (SALIS). Soon after its inception, SALIS started renting flight hours on Russian and Ukrainian An-124-100 aircraft (Hood, 2009).

However, using An-124 is not without its problems. For example, not long ago a contract dispute regarding the usage of one An-124 was sorted out in court for more than a year, during which, not surprisingly, the airplane could not be used because it was under “ramp arrest.” The influence of foreign governments may also affect the availability of such aircraft (Hood, 2009). For example, while a Russian aircraft charter company may not want to break contracts with SALIS, a conflict between the interests of the Russian government and NATO, may cause the Russian government to exert undue influence on the Russian charter company to make the required aircraft unavailable to NATO. Moreover, this may take place, whether by design or by accident, during a critical mission, where failure is not an option (Hood, 2009).

References

Hood, J. D. (2009). NATO Strategic Airlift: Capability or Continued US Reliance? Retrieved from http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA539589.