Introduction
By Liselotte Odgaard
Russia and China pose a rising two-front threat to the United States and its allies. In response, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and its Indo-Pacific partners Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand (IP4) are attempting to move their partnership rapidly from dialogue to cooperation. For these partners, establishing operational and defense industrial cooperation across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theaters to improve technology and maritime security is key to establishing a defense force posture that is strategically coherent, interoperable, and resilient. In an international context of numerous swiftly changing threats, their navies will need to execute initial responses and manage access across theaters, which requires all-domain strategic communication and coordination of operations. Strengthened interregional technological and maritime defense cooperation would bolster both capabilities and resolve across the US alliance system. Equipping NATO and its IP4 partners with the means to operate in multiple conflicts across several theaters will likely make adversaries more risk averse. To achieve this goal, the following report contains 13 proposals for moving NATO-IP4 cooperation on technology and maritime security forward at the operational, strategic, and institutional levels.
Hans Huygens, Bryan Clark, Kåre Groes Christiansen, and Liselotte Odgaard contribute ideas to promote NATO-IP4 cooperation at the operational level. Huygens discusses how the rise of next-generation technologies has led to dramatic changes that engender the way maritime forces operate. In particular, changes in flexibility, cost-efficiency, interoperability, industrial resilience, and cybersecurity will affect future maritime security strategies. Implementing these will require making investments in flexibly composed fleets, modular and distributed production by strong partners, dual-use technologies, and robust cybersecurity.
Clark recommends using more heterogenous fleet designs that field larger forces of crewed and uncrewed platforms as well as shifting complexity from inside individual ships and aircraft to the kill chains between them. He shows that these measures can help provide effective responses to multiple security threats despite industrial and demographic constraints on crewing and sustaining fleets. With an appropriate command, control, and communications architecture, uncrewed platforms and vehicles can enable all links in a kill chain, allowing operators to focus on decision-making. Such a force design provides flexibility that can support the creative problem-solving necessary to gain enduring advantages against technologically empowered opponents.
Christiansen proposes creating sealift capacity across the North American, European, and Indo-Pacific theaters so that NATO-IP4 can build industrial resilience and ensure that China does not completely outproduce ship manufacturing in the US alliance system. The first step is assigning existing ships to a sealift fleet by preparing them to be fitted with sensors and weapons, which would allow for swift mobilization in the event of a conflict. The second step is manufacturing modern sealift ships in automated ship factories in North America, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific. The factories’ construction would emphasize flexibility by using distributed dual-use supply chains.
Odgaard suggests that NATO’s Indo-Pacific partners Japan and South Korea offer a unique opportunity to develop coordinated sustainment strategies with autonomous underwater systems (AUVs). These vessels can play a key role in mitigating the complex nuclear threats emerging from Russia-China Arctic collaboration. Tokyo and Seoul have long-standing Arctic interests and formidable expertise in shipbuilding, sustainability, and the development of AUVs powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Japan and South Korea can contribute to a stronger Arctic force posture across the US alliance system by participating in coordinated AUV development and operations. An operational framework facilitating integration of this new technology into joint operational concepts and doctrines for the Arctic region would pave the way for allied interoperability, which is required to establish coordinated Arctic operations.
The contributions by Tsiporah Fried, Giulio Pugliese, Shin-ae Lee, and Tomonori Yoshizaki outline proposals for NATO-IP4 cooperation at the strategic level. Fried argues that a permanent conventional naval presence, with contributions from the European Union (EU) and NATO nations, is necessary to deter hostile actions by strategic competitors. To reach this goal, the US alliance can use NATO as a model for interoperability and coordination of forces across the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theaters. A common strategy and sustainable force coordination are necessary when shifting from strategic competition to a time of confrontation.
Pugliese shows that the Italy–Japan–United Kingdom Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) framework, which aims to develop a sixth-generation combat aircraft, provides a window into the dynamics driving NATO-IP4 defense industrial cooperation. The embeddedness of the Japanese, UK, and Italian military-industrial complexes with that of the United States has facilitated the program. GCAP depends on US technology and components due to US defense industrial superiority, which has consequences for export controls.
Lee investigates defense cooperation between NATO and South Korea. She points out that, although benefits from joint defense production and development have long-term strategic value for deterrence, defense, and industrial resilience, cooperation has been slow to develop. A road map based on the industrial capabilities and geopolitical challenges of NATO and South Korea is likely to help the partners leverage their industrial bases for mutual benefit.
Yoshizaki argues that the NATO-Japan partnership has progressed from cooperation by chance to cooperation by design. The 9/11 terrorist attacks challenged Japan’s pacifist foreign policy, prompting Tokyo’s cooperation with NATO on peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, as strategic competition with states such as Russia, China, and North Korea has emerged, the partnership has begun cooperating on maritime issues to connect the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions at the strategic, theater, and tactical levels.
The contributions by Benedetta Berti, Kenneth R. Weinstein, Thomas Wilkins, Masafumi Ishii, and Tsuneo “Nabe” Watanabe lay out institutional proposals for NATO-IP4 cooperation. Berti argues that NATO is an important platform for facilitating strategic exchanges and practical cooperation between industry stakeholders and defense planners from the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions. Industry stakeholder cooperation could be an engine for fostering interregional strategic convergence. Cooperation between defense planners could be instrumental in rethinking assumptions about future capabilities requirements that would boost resilience against cross-theater challenges.
Weinstein argues that there is a significant need to strengthen NATO-IP4 defense-related supply chain cooperation as a first step toward greater interoperability between NATO and the IP4 nations. Thoroughly analyzing scenarios that might adversely affect NATO-IP4 defense supply chains and setting baseline supply chain standards would help improve defense supply chain security.
Wilkins argues that Pillar II—which supports advanced technology cooperation within the trilateral security partnership of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (AUKUS)—can serve as a model for NATO-IP4 cooperation. AUKUS could be an aggregating hub around which the NATO-IP4 member states could pursue additional defense-technological projects. Furthermore, AUKUS members could create new minilateral consortia to expand cross-national defense technology cooperation based on the principle of coalitions of the willing and able. The result would be an interlocking web of projects among select NATO members and partners that pool technological knowledge and defray production and research and development (R&D) costs.
Ishii suggests that quantum technology is an attractive area for NATO-IP4 cooperation. For example, a NATO-Japan framework for cooperation on developing new technologies and producing defense technological equipment based on quantum technologies and accompanied by common export control regimes could be a central element in creating defense technological cooperation across the US alliance system. As a first step, NATO and Japan should establish a working group to discuss road maps for the way ahead.
Watanabe suggests that, by sharing military production capabilities and strategic perspectives, NATO and its IP4 partners would be better able to adopt efficient defense policies that facilitate assisting each other across the US alliance system. The US and Japan are already moving ahead in this area, as the signing of the Defense Industrial Cooperation, Acquisition, and Sustainment (DICAS) agreement at the 2024 Japan-US summit indicates. These two partners should expand such agreements to encompass European allies and other IP4 partner countries.
As a whole, this report’s contributors offer an innovative approach to strengthening cooperation on next-generation technologies. These efforts can empower NATO and its Indo-Pacific partners to prepare their maritime forces for a future of complex and swiftly changing threats and security challenges across the US alliance system.