Defense Policy Europe & Eurasia NATO Security & Defense Southern & Southeastern Europe United States

Report June 10, 2026 • 4:41 pm ET

The future of NATO’s deterrence in the air domain

Bottom lines up front

NATO’s European allies must determine how to carry out the Alliance’s mission with reduced US military support as Washington shifts resources toward the Indo-Pacific.
NATO airpower remains heavily dependent on US enabling capabilities.
To preserve credible deterrence, allies must prioritize resilient C2 networks, deeper stockpiles, stronger airbase resilience, and autonomous and attritable systems.

Introduction

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is in the midst of a dramatic transformation. European allies must determine how to provide collective defense, crisis management, and cooperative security assuming reduced military support from the United States as US resources shift to the Indo-Pacific. This concern is especially acute in the air domain. European allied air forces need to compensate for reduced US airpower availability while ensuring sufficient resilience to continue operating in a contested environment. Achieving this feat at the necessary scale to deter NATO’s main adversary—Russia—while also mitigating other threats to NATO necessitates European allied air forces assessing capability gaps based on the operational problems they need to solve in both peacetime and wartime, then managing the resultant risks over time. This report addresses a central question: What capabilities must European NATO airpower possess—independently or with only limited US operational support—to deter and, if necessary, defeat Russian aggression in the near to medium term?

To answer that question, this report identifies the problems NATO airpower must solve, the gaps that stem from reduced US support, and risk management recommendations for the short and medium terms. In general, allied air forces should mitigate capability gaps in the short term, especially for critical capabilities such as command and control (C2) and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), through “good enough” solutions, while laying the foundation for closing those gaps in the medium term through investments that build capacity across Europe.

The environment

Credible recommendations for European allied airpower must be grounded in strategic context. The Alliance’s strategic environment is characterized by three key constraints that shape its needs from airpower. These factors—Russia’s military posture, the growing likelihood of strategic simultaneity, and the evolving role of the United States as an enabling partner—shape the operational problems NATO air forces must be prepared to address.

Russia and other threats

There is broad European consensus that Russia poses a serious and potentially existential threat.¹ Militarily, Russia imposes a scale problem on NATO defenses. Russia’s geography, missile inventories, and willingness to conduct gray-zone and kinetic operations impose persistent demands for defensive density, magazine depth, and operational endurance. Ambiguous incursions—small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), balloons, airspace violations—are not episodic irritants.² They are a continuous operating condition for the foreseeable future. European allied air forces must detect, attribute, and respond (or support civilian responses) indefinitely, across multiple flanks, without exhausting readiness.

The potential for large-scale conventional conflict imposes even greater demands. Official assessments place the risk window between two and ten years, with NATO leadership warning Russia could be ready for major action by 2030.³

A large-scale Russian attack would most likely occur on the eastern flank, though scenarios involving Finland or Norway cannot be dismissed.⁴ In such a conflict, Russian airpower would likely rely on long-range missiles and uncrewed systems to strike fixed targets across depth, while crewed aircraft employ stand-off weapons near the front. Russian doctrine increasingly emphasizes a reconnaissance-strike complex built around precision and potentially hypersonic systems.⁵

These scenarios place particular pressure on NATO’s defensive posture. Sustained missile and drone strikes against infrastructure—including air bases, logistics hubs, energy networks, and C2 nodes—are likely in the early stages of conflict. The number of assets identified on NATO and national Critical Asset Lists (CALs) will exceed what can realistically be covered on Defended Asset Lists (DALs) given available defensive resources. Defensive planning therefore becomes an exercise in prioritization and scarcity. In addition to building defensive capacity, policymakers must provide acceptable risk guidance to military planners.

Russia also exacerbates instability along NATO’s southern flank through activity in the Sahel and Middle East.⁶ Southern allies must allocate ISR and force posture toward terrorism and regional instability, while an opening Arctic requires similar capabilities in the High North. European allied airpower must therefore face three strategic axes: north, east, and south. It cannot optimize exclusively for the eastern flank.

Simultaneity as a design assumption

European allies must assume reduced US availability during crisis. This is not a political judgment; it is a resource allocation reality. A conflict involving China would demand most US air units and key support elements such as space and cyberspace capabilities. Under simultaneity conditions, high-demand/low-density US assets—F-35 squadrons, tankers, ISR platforms—are most likely to be reallocated. Even if US political commitment to NATO remains firm, operational capacity might not. Allied force design must therefore function with only “critical but more limited” US support.⁷ Deterrence requires credible capability—combined with the belief that it will be used—even when US reinforcement is constrained.

The United States as a strategic enabler

The United States will remain a critical enabler of NATO airpower. Even under conditions of strategic reprioritization toward the Indo-Pacific, US contributions to theater-level C2, space-based ISR, advanced munitions, cyber capabilities, and nuclear deterrence should continue to shape allied force design, especially in the short to medium term. However, as mentioned above, allied planning must account for variability in the scale and immediacy of US operational participation.

Transatlantic defense industrial integration remains a major strategic advantage and is a stated US defense goal in the recent National Defense Strategy.⁸ European allied air forces field US-origin systems such as the F-35 and AIM-120, benefiting from interoperability, shared sustainment architectures, and economies of scale. At the same time, US industrial output is finite. In a global contingency, production priorities might shift.

Allied force design should therefore assume continued US partnership but not unlimited US capacity. Planning must incorporate flexibility in access to US-produced systems, sustainment pipelines, and high-end enablers.

In the nuclear domain, continued reliance on US extended deterrence remains the most financially rational course in the short to medium term.⁹ Expansion of allied nuclear forces would consume significant portions of national defense budgets—funds urgently needed for conventional airpower modernization and resilience.¹⁰ Maintaining the current deterrence architecture allows European allies to focus resources where conventional capability gaps are most acute.

Time

Time intensifies these constraints. Russian reconstitution timelines are likely short, as Moscow has operated on a wartime industrial footing for several years while most European states remain structured for peacetime production with limited surge capacity. The next decade represents a period of elevated risk exposure in which immediate mitigation matters more than long-term transformation.

Increased defense spending does not eliminate risks associated with time; it sharpens focus on investment tradeoffs. Choices between prestige platforms and munitions depth, between high-end modernization and stockpile resilience, and between nuclear expansion and conventional density will determine whether European allies purchase the needed capabilities to deter or win with the time and resources available.

Synthesizing the environment

The strategic environment imposes four key constraints on NATO airpower and force structure. First, Russia’s “strike mass” and theater-wide reach demand defensive depth and resilience beyond current NATO capabilities. Second, simultaneity reduces guaranteed access to US high-end airpower enabling capabilities. Third, the United States will continue to provide key enabling capabilities that shape the structure of allied airpower. Fourth and finally, European allies are on a short timeline to resolve these issues—disciplined prioritization is essential to ensure that investments deliver necessary results as quickly as possible.

NATO’s Joint Air Power Strategy

NATO’s Joint Air Power Strategy provides the doctrinal baseline for this analysis. It identifies four core air functions—counter-air, attack, air mobility, and joint ISR—enabled by a layered C2 architecture.¹¹ This study evaluates capability gaps within those functions by examining the operational problems NATO airpower must solve under the structural constraints described above.

Resulting operational problems

While precise contingencies are unknowable, four operational problems define the core demands on NATO airpower. If NATO can solve these, it can generate the operational effects required for deterrence and defense: provide sustained protection against ambiguous activities; defend people and critical infrastructure from air attack; penetrate the Russian integrated air defense system (IADS) to strike key targets; and establish temporary, localized air superiority to enable broader air operations.

Problem 1: Providing sustained airspace protection and facilitating appropriate responses against ambiguous activities on all NATO flanks

NATO must detect, identify, attribute, track, and, when necessary, engage intrusions ranging from small uncrewed systems to crewed aircraft across all altitudes. Attribution is essential, as ambiguous activity demands evidence sufficient for political decision-making.

This mission extends beyond the military. Effective response requires integration with law enforcement, intelligence services, and civilian air traffic authorities. The core challenge is closing the kill chain in peacetime conditions—rapid detection, credible attribution, and legally authorized action across multiple domains.

Problem 2: Defending people and critical infrastructure from air attack

In a conflict with Russia, NATO should expect sustained missile and uncrewed strikes against air bases, logistics networks, energy systems, and C2 networks. Russian strike capacity likely exceeds NATO’s defensive density.

NATO must therefore prioritize. Protecting air bases and military logistics is essential to sustaining combat operations. Civilian infrastructure remains politically important, but effective resistance is impossible without functioning military infrastructure. Hardening, dispersal, redundancy, and active defense must ensure airpower can survive initial strikes and continue generating combat sorties.

Problem 3: Penetrating the Russian IADS to strike high-value targets

Disrupting Russian offensive momentum requires early strikes against high-value targets protected by layered air defenses. Even limited degradation of logistics, command nodes, or missile systems can produce disproportionate operational effects. Achieving this objective requires the ability to identify and track mobile, concealed targets; penetrate integrated air defenses using standoff munitions, electronic warfare, and unmanned systems; and assess strike effects rapidly enough to inform follow-on operations.

Problem 4: Establishing temporary, regional air superiority to enable air packages to be brought to bear against Russian surface forces or other targets

Penetrating strikes alone are insufficient. NATO must create windows of temporary and geographically limited air superiority to mass airpower against Russian surface forces and critical targets.

Permanent theater-wide superiority is unlikely early—or perhaps ever—in a conflict. The objective is operational access—establishing local control long enough to enable decisive air effects. If Russian ground forces represent the operational center of gravity, NATO’s ability to degrade air defenses and concentrate airpower could determine the overall outcome of the campaign.

Problem summary

The first two problems are defensive; the latter two are offensive. All four depend on closing kill chains at scale under contested conditions. Success across all four requires resilient sensing, integrated C2, sufficient capacity, and the ability to sustain operations under attack.

Gap analysis definitions

This study uses the four operational problems to identify capability gaps. In doing so, it also highlights related policy and institutional constraints that affect NATO airpower’s ability to generate effects. Capability, capacity, and resilience form the analytical framework. Capability is “the ability to create an effect through an integrated set of aspects.”¹²

While this study emphasizes materiel, capability also depends on trained personnel, infrastructure, interoperability, and doctrine. Capacity is expressed quantitatively—how much effect can be generated, over what geography, and for how long.¹³ Resiliency is the ability of a capability to continue delivering effects under attack, disruption, or degradation.¹⁴ This includes redundancy, dispersal, survivability, and the avoidance of single-point dependencies.

These three variables interact. A force might possess a capability but lack sufficient capacity to sustain it at scale. It might possess both capability and capacity yet lack resilience if it depends on a single platform, location, or supply chain. Gap analysis must therefore examine not only whether something exists, but whether it can scale and survive.

Interoperability and interchangeability

Because NATO is an alliance of sovereign states, aggregate airpower depends on how effectively national systems operate together. Interoperability is the ability of different systems, organizations, and nations to act together coherently, effectively, and efficiently.¹⁵ NATO defines interoperability as requiring technical, procedural, and human alignment.¹⁶

Interchangeability goes further; it is the ability to substitute one system, platform, or unit for another with minimal friction.¹⁷ A basic aspect of interoperability is the ability to rapidly and seamlessly transmit information back and forth. Information—whether status updates, sensor tracks, orders, or simple weather data—is the key driver of military action. Historically, sharing typically took the form of ensuring reliable and effective voice communication by standardizing frequencies, brevity terms, and even language.¹⁸ Today, digital data flow is just as, if not more, important to military operations.¹⁹ Information and intelligence sharing is fundamentally a part of both interoperability and interchangeability.

Interoperability and interchangeability are critical. Most allies cannot independently field sizeable, capable air forces. National specialization might be economically rational, but it conflicts with political expectations of sovereign defense capabilities. Effective interoperability and interchangeability mitigate this tension by allowing nationally generated capabilities to scale at the Alliance level. Building credible NATO airpower, therefore, requires more than acquiring platforms. Allies must align systems, procedures, and training so that allied air forces can rapidly aggregate into a singular entity with the necessary capability, capacity, and resilience to defend Europe.

The building blocks of airpower

Airpower delivers operational effects through NATO’s four functional areas: counter-air, attack, air mobility, and contributions to joint ISR. These functions rest on institutional foundations that enable sustained combat operations: C2, airbases and associated airpower infrastructure, materiel readiness (available munitions, spare parts, etc.), and training readiness (how ready are the personnel to execute combat operations?). These institutional layers are themselves underpinned by national foundations: industrial capacity, financial resources, and available personnel. Together, they form the structural base upon which Alliance airpower rests (see Figure 1). The gap analysis below examines gaps across these operational, institutional, and foundational layers in terms of capability, capacity, and resilience based on assessing the four operational problems described previously.

Figure 1. Building blocks of airpower

Foundational concerns

Although European allies collectively possess greater industrial, financial, and demographic weight than Russia, NATO airpower is not a single force. It is the aggregate output of thirty-two sovereign air forces. Each of those air forces is built from three foundational pillars: industrial capacity, manpower, and financial resources. Capability, capacity, and resilience are functions of how effectively nations align these three variables.

Industrial capacity

Neither European nor US industrial capacity is sufficient for sustained high-intensity conflict. Production rates for munitions and spare parts lag anticipated wartime expenditure, and cross-border industrial fragmentation slows scaling and standardization.²⁰ Ukrainian intelligence assesses that Russia produces about one thousand Iskander and Kinzhal medium-range missiles per year, not including other strike weapons. US and European combined Patriot and Aster 30 interceptor production totals less than 1,100 per year.²¹ At first glance, this seems like a good balance, but two factors make it troubling. First, Patriot missiles need to be distributed around the globe, not just to Europe. Second, it often takes multiple interceptors to down a single incoming missile. Similar issues exist with air-to-air, suppression of enemy air defense (SEAD), and long-range weapons.
In the near term, meeting the NATO demand for advanced munitions and critical components will require continued cooperation with US manufacturers. In the medium to long term, European allies must increase their own production depth through greater pooling of resources and more integrated supply chains.
Industrial policy is largely national. This creates friction in cross-border trade, investment, and scaling. Even where NATO or European Union (EU) institutions provide guidance and funding, implementation remains nationally controlled. The result is slower expansion of the European industrial base and continued European reliance on US systems.

Supply chain consolidation might be an area in which European leaders can find quick wins with large pay-offs. Advanced materials (composites, ceramics, etc.), dual-use mechanical components (gears, bearings, transmissions, etc.), and defense electronics (sensors, radios, software, etc.) are areas in which European investment could substantially improve capacity.²²

Regardless of the specific reforms, production rate—not just technological sophistication—must be a central principle. European industry must be able to replenish air forces under the high consumption rates of large-scale conflict.

Personnel

European allied air forces face structural personnel constraints driven by demographic trends and, in certain countries, limited societal support for military service. Most nations ended conscription in the early 2000s and now struggle with both recruitment and retention, particularly in highly skilled technical roles.²³

Modern airpower is people intensive. Theater-level C2, ISR, space and cyberspace operations, electronic warfare, and aircraft maintenance all require experienced and specialized personnel. For example, operating a single fighter squadron requires around five hundred people, accounting for aircrew, operations support, and flightline maintenance. Accounting for other necessary support (such as maintenance back shops, weapons managers, fuel truck operators, etc.) raises the number to between one thousand and 2,500 people (the higher numbers are for aircraft with increased maintenance demands, such as fifth-generation fighters).²⁴ Shortages of these personnel directly affect the operational and tactical effectiveness of NATO air forces.

Conscription can augment entry-level personnel but does not solve shortages in skilled roles.²⁵ Retention of experienced personnel is therefore more critical than accession alone. Financial incentives, improved working conditions, and professional development can help, but socioeconomic trends deepen the challenge—many European societies face demographic challenges, strong private-sector competition for technical talent, and limited societal familiarity with sustained military service.²⁶ Sustained airpower requires a renewed emphasis on a social compact that recognizes national defense as a shared responsibility.²⁷ Personnel constraints are foundationally linked to operational capability gaps—efforts to close the gaps with materiel will stall without also closing personnel gaps.

Finances

Aggregate European NATO defense spending is significant. Non-US NATO defense expenditures exceed $600 billion annually, and most allies now meet or exceed the 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) benchmark and 20-percent equipment investment target.²⁸ However, spending remains largely nationally controlled and nationally allocated. This reinforces procurement fragmentation and industrial duplication. The EU’s recent defense industrial initiatives aim to encourage greater integration, but financing mechanisms remain new and unproven.²⁹ Regardless of EU efforts, allies must reduce regulatory and financial barriers that inhibit defense industrial growth and personnel investment.

The central financial challenge is not aggregate volume but allocation discipline. Without prioritizing scalable production, sustainment depth, and Alliance-wide readiness over national duplication, increased budgets will not produce proportional gains in building NATO airpower.

Institutional gaps

Four institutional gaps recur across all four operational problems. First, theater-level C2 is almost wholly reliant on the United States. Second, sensor density and integration are too low to provide the situational awareness needed for effective C2. Third, materiel stockpiles, especially munitions and spare parts, are inadequate for sustained conflict. Fourth, airbases lack the resilience required to survive and regenerate combat power under attack. These gaps cut across defensive and offensive missions alike.

C2—the airpower linchpin that fails without the United States

C2 is the mechanism that transforms thirty-two sovereign air forces into a coherent combat force. To be effective, European allies must develop the ability to manage large-scale air operations without extensive US participation, especially below the theater level. NATO’s C2 architecture rests on Allied Air Command (AIRCOM) at the theater level, the Combined Air Operations Centers (CAOCs) at Üdem, Torrejón, and Bodø at the regional level, and tactical battle management from the NATO Airborne Early Warning and Control Force and nationally sourced control and reporting centers (CRCs) or airborne C2 platforms. This system is postured for peacetime and limited crisis management.³⁰ It is not sized for large-scale conflict, especially without US augmentation.

Personnel levels illustrate the gap. During steady-state operations, US theater CAOCs are staffed at levels several times greater than NATO CAOCs.³¹ In a large-scale conflict, these headquarters would face simultaneous demands for offensive planning, defensive battle management, dynamic targeting, ISR integration, and national coordination—functions that, in US practice, are supported by significantly larger and frequently augmented staffs. Closing this gap requires several hundred additional European specialists and the necessary equipment at NATO CAOCs.

Alternatively, NATO could pursue a more decentralized model. Any regional C2 node is inherently multinational, which brings some political concerns into the mix. For allies with smaller air forces, sending a person to a NATO CAOC might mean not having someone with that expertise at the national CRC. Moreover, a more decentralized C2 network is more difficult to target by adversaries, although there is a corresponding increase in coordination challenges. The existing centralized model offers more overall advantages and should be pursued (airpower is most effective when centrally controlled), but European allies should consider hedging against issues with the regional CAOCs by contributing to robust national and multinational CRCs.

The technical side of C2 is equally strained. NATO’s Air Command and Control System (ACCS) has taken more than two decades to connect national networks to Alliance-level systems, and integration remains incomplete.³² Data transport and fusion represent the most immediate bottleneck. ISR volume is increasing faster than bandwidth and processing capacity.³³ Expanding sensors without expanding data architecture will degrade C2 rather than improve it. Efforts such as the NATO Digital Backbone improve data architecture but remain insufficient without national-level policy alignment on classification, sharing, and funding.³⁴

Fusing the data from myriad sources—including civilian sources—requires robust digital support and skilled personnel to maintain and facilitate that capability.³⁵ Emphasizing common data environments rather than common applications or software can go a long way toward easing the data fusion burden by allowing nations to choose preferred digital tools that both inform and pull from a common data lake.

In short, NATO cannot meaningfully generate airpower without first ensuring its C2 enterprise can handle a much larger load in terms of people, data architecture, and processes including information sharing.

A distributed, integrated sensor network

Domain awareness underpins every operational problem. NATO’s sensor architecture remains predominantly national and optimized for tracking traditional aircraft. It is insufficient for detecting, attributing, and tracking threats ranging from very low, slow UAS to hypersonic glide vehicles. Surface sensing is equally imperative, with a high demand for both land and maritime sensing capabilities. Maritime ISR is particularly important to both a wartime scenario and day-to-day operations. Attribution is especially critical outside declared conflict. Ambiguous air and maritime incursions—particularly drones, widely suspected to be Russian—often cannot be conclusively attributed, complicating political response.³⁶ NATO needs a layered, multi-phenomenology sensing architecture that integrates surface-, air-, and space-based active and passive sensors.
Near-term improvements include replacing NATO’s E-3 fleet and expanding national procurement of crewed and uncrewed airborne sensors. However, airborne sensing alone cannot close the gap. Surface and space layers must expand in parallel, especially surface-based sensors given the lower cost. The Alliance Future Surveillance and Control program provides a long-term framework, but NATO allies, in the short-term, need more available passive sensors and adaptable radar solutions.

Software-driven fusion across all sensor types is as important as hardware acquisition. Without integration into the C2 architecture, additional sensors add noise rather than clarity into the system.

The ability to achieve mass through regeneration

In the air domain, mass is generated not simply by the number of platforms but by regeneration rates. In air warfare, mass depends less on the number of platforms than on the ability to regenerate combat power faster than it is degraded. The ability to recover, repair, rearm, and relaunch aircraft—and to replenish ground-based interceptors—is what sustains combat airpower.

Allied stockpiles of spare parts and munitions are insufficient for prolonged high-intensity conflict. Today, spare part availability (followed closely by low capacity of maintenance expertise) is the biggest driver of aircraft downtime.³⁷ Even when aircraft and launchers remain operational, insufficient munitions can render them ineffective. The Ukraine conflict demonstrated that advanced systems can become useless once interceptor inventories are exhausted.³⁸ Of concern, NATO Deputy Secretary General Radmila Shekerinska recently stated that Europe had effectively exhausted its surface-to-air missile supply supporting Ukraine.³⁹ Munitions stockpiles are clearly in dire straits.

Some munitions deserve more attention than others. Aside from surface-to-air interceptors, key munitions on which to focus are SEAD weapons, including those with electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, medium-range air-to-air weapons, long-range precision strike weapons, and less expensive counter-UAS weapons. Short-range strike weapons such as the ubiquitous Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) or Brimstone missile are well-stocked or can be rapidly procured—they are not critical constraints in the event of conflict.
Spare parts are also in short supply, especially for high-end aircraft like the F-35.⁴⁰ Ensuring that NATO European air forces do not grind to a halt due to lack of materiel sustainment is of paramount importance.

Sustaining mass requires significant increases in national and NATO-managed stockpiles of key parts and munitions, expanded warehousing and prepositioning, and clear policies for rapid cross-border transfer during combat. The Multinational Ammunition Warehousing Initiative provides a useful model but must expand in scale and scope.⁴¹

While the bulk of stockpiles will likely remain in national inventories, laying out policies and procedures to streamline the flow of these items from an air force that has them to the air force that needs them during combat will be critical to sustaining mass.
Interoperability and interchangeability materially affect regeneration rates. Greater commonality in munitions interfaces, ground support equipment, and maintenance procedures would allow pooling of stockpiles and multinational maintenance teams during crisis. Programs such as a Universal Armaments Interface should be accelerated, as standardization reduces friction and mitigates personnel shortages by enabling cross-national sustainment.

The ability to generate airpower through resilient airbases

Airbases are both the engine of airpower and its most visible vulnerability. Large, fixed installations will likely be targeted early by ballistic, cruise, hypersonic, and uncrewed attacks. Many allied bases lack the hardening common during the Cold War and therefore present attractive targets.
Resilience requires a combination of dispersal and hardening calibrated to geography and threat density. Closer to Russia, where threat density is highest, dispersal under Agile Combat Employment concepts is essential.⁴² Farther away, hardening of primary bases might offer greater cost-effectiveness.

Dispersed operations and forward area arming and refueling points demand higher levels of tactical interoperability than currently exist. Multinational ground teams must be able to refuel and rearm multiple aircraft types, operate standardized equipment, and connect seamlessly to allied C2 networks. This requires greater standardization in ground support equipment, communications systems, and procedures than NATO currently maintains, as well as national regulatory and security changes.⁴³ This capability was once a core aspect of NATO operations and efforts are under way to reinvigorate it—air force leaders should make this a priority.⁴⁴

Hardened bases should prioritize protection of aircraft shelters and parking areas, fuel and munitions storage, C2 facilities, power generation and distribution nodes, and aviation ground equipment. Hardened bases used to be the norm in Europe, but a combination of shifting Alliance frontiers, decreasing budgets and threat perceptions, and base consolidation reduced the emphasis on base defenses.⁴⁵ This trend needs to move rapidly in the opposite direction. Defenses must be layered. Medium- and high-altitude missile defense systems should protect key installations as part of area air defense, while robust low-tier detection grids and scalable point-defense systems counter drone and low-altitude threats.

Cost-benefit analysis must guide investment. Hardening many bases against limited cruise missile strikes or drone swarms is reasonably affordable. Hardening those same bases against sustained ballistic missile salvos might not be economically viable. Resilience should focus on sufficient survivability to maintain sortie generation rather than invulnerability.

Functional capability gaps

Many gaps identified through the operational problems were foundational or institutional. However, significant shortfalls remain within NATO’s functional airpower areas. Organizing these by function clarifies where capacity, capability, and resilience deficits most directly constrain operational outcomes.

Problem One (ambiguous airspace protection) primarily exposed weaknesses in C2, data fusion, and sensor integration. Problem Two (defense of people and critical infrastructure) reinforced those gaps and revealed insufficient defensive capacity. Problems Three and Four—penetrating strike and sustained air campaigning—exposed the most acute functional shortfalls: insufficient SEAD mass, limited airborne EW depth, constrained ISR for dynamic targeting, aerial refueling shortages, and the challenge of scaling combat power over time. Categorizing these gaps into counter-air, attack, air mobility, and ISR enables recommendations based on capability areas.

Counter-air

The Ukraine war has reaffirmed the decisive impact of air superiority—or its denial. Before conflict, NATO must protect its airspace from adversarial probing and coercion. In conflict, even temporary and localized air superiority can unlock decisive operational effects. At a minimum, NATO must deny adversaries the ability to exploit the air domain. Four counter-air gaps dominate: insufficient SEAD mass, limited airborne EW capacity, inadequate ground-based air defense density, and the difficulty of sustaining counter-air effects at scale.

SEAD capacity: SEAD is foundational to penetrating strike and air superiority. Effective SEAD requires integrated ISR to locate threats, electronic attack to degrade them, and kinetic attack to suppress or destroy them—all synchronized with strike and escort forces.

European NATO SEAD capacity is limited. The F-35 is optimized for the SEAD mission, but only when properly trained, supported, and equipped with appropriate munitions.⁴⁶ Germany and Italy retain Tornado ECR squadrons that provide additional capacity, but overall allied SEAD mass remains small relative to the scale of Russian IADS. Most other European NATO fighters cannot conduct SEAD without significant investment in training, sensors, munitions, and integration.

Short-term expansion of SEAD capacity should prioritize munitions depth and podded sensors that can be fielded across existing aircraft. European geography also enables joint fire support—long-range artillery and sea-launched missiles—to contribute to degrading air defenses, but this requires deliberate integration planning. In the medium term, sustaining and upgrading fifth-generation fleets, while enhancing fourth-generation aircraft where feasible, remains the most practical pathway to expanding SEAD capacity. Specialized SEAD munitions remain a priority across all time epochs.

Airborne EW: Electronic warfare is tightly linked to SEAD but merits independent attention. Allied airborne EW capability is currently concentrated in the same limited platforms that provide SEAD. Other aircraft largely possess self-protection systems rather than offensive electronic attack.⁴⁷ Two gaps dominate. First, European allies lack sufficient capacity to collect, analyze, and distribute electronic intelligence. Second, the allies lack depth in airborne electronic attack—jamming and spectrum manipulation—to support both strike and defensive operations.

In the short term, podded EW solutions offer the fastest method to broaden capacity, especially if they are deployable across multiple platforms. Investment in uncrewed systems and integration of electronic intelligence into broader data fusion architecture is critical; electronic intelligence must feed directly into targeting and battle management systems rather than remaining stovepiped.⁴⁸

In the medium term, European allies are unlikely to afford sizeable fleets of specialized crewed EW platforms. A network of attritable uncrewed platforms performing electronic attack and sensing functions offers greater resilience and mass. The question is not whether European allies can afford large and dedicated EW fleets—they likely cannot—but whether they can field autonomous alternatives sooner.

Ground-based air defense capacity: Defending critical infrastructure and national populations requires layered ground-based air defense. European allies field a wide range of systems, from high-altitude interceptors to medium-range and point-defense solutions. The problem is not absence of capability, but insufficient capacity and low resilience. The gap between the number of assets that should be defended and the number that can be defended is substantial. Even with ongoing initiatives such as the European Sky Shield Initiative, defensive density remains inadequate relative to anticipated strike volumes.⁴⁹

The Alliance needs to mitigate this gap in the short term by ruthlessly prioritizing what areas and infrastructure should be defended. Additionally, nations need bigger stockpiles of existing systems and interceptors, particularly those capable of countering high-altitude missile and low-cost drone threats, to sustain defense against high-volume air attacks. In the medium term, economies of scale through greater standardization of systems and munitions will be essential to improve munitions depth and interoperability.

Sixth-generation capabilities and autonomy to scale counter-air: Stretching back to the Second Offset Strategy in the 1970s, NATO has relied on qualitative overmatch to offset quantitative disadvantages. European allies now find themselves in a difficult position concerning counter-air qualitative advantages. Short preparation timelines demand investing in improvements for existing platforms, but European allied air forces have inadequate mass to conduct long-term campaigns for air superiority. Further, not investing in sixth-generation capabilities generates long-term risk, but overinvestment will create short-term risk due to the high costs of sixth-generation programs. The key issue is how to find some qualitative advantages while simultaneously increasing counter-air capacity in the short to medium term, while ensuring progress toward transformational sixth-generation capabilities in the long term.

The challenges of producing a sixth-generation fighter—notably high developmental costs and challenging research needs—are already putting the Future Combat Air System, one of the two sixth-generation fighter programs among European allies, at risk.⁵⁰ Even in a best-case scenario, sixth-generation fighters will not reach the field until the mid-2030s. European allies should focus their investments in sixth-generation capabilities intended to improve and augment fifth-generation platforms and wait to invest heavily in sixth-generation platforms until short- and medium-term capacity risks are mitigated.

In the short and medium terms, sixth-generation investment should focus on core technologies that can provide significant qualitative advantages to current platforms. These investments should emphasize sensors, self-protection EW, power systems, and autonomous systems. Most of those items are intended to improve the survivability and lethality of existing platforms. Autonomous systems represent the path to increasing counter-air mass.

Autonomous combat aircraft and one-way attack systems might reach operational maturity much earlier than crewed sixth-generation fighters, particularly if investment prioritizes data integration and agent training. Moreover, such systems are much less expensive to field than crewed fighters and have a reduced personnel requirement.⁵¹ This capability area carries some risk as it remains largely unproven, but it provides the soundest path to rapidly building meaningful counter-air capacity within the next decade.

Figure 2. Pillars of Alliance counter-air power

Attack

The purpose of achieving air superiority is to enable attacks against an adversary through the air domain. Similar to counter-air, the primary gap in this area is capacity—specifically munitions depth, sortie generation, and the ability to regenerate combat power despite attrition.

Munitions capacity: Conflict with Russia will require sustained employment of long- and medium-range munitions launched from air, land, and maritime platforms.⁵²

These munitions must survive interception and, in many cases, receive in-flight updates to remain effective against mobile or time-sensitive targets. This places additional demands on resilient data links and cross-domain integration within NATO’s digital architecture.

Two broad approaches exist. One is to fire sufficient weapons to compensate for expected attrition by enemy defenses. This approach is straightforward, but it is expensive and rapidly depletes stockpiles, especially in dense integrated air defense environments. The alternative is to degrade air defenses sufficiently through sustained SEAD operations so that fewer weapons must be expended per target. Both approaches require deep munitions reserves, albeit differences in the quantities of different munitions types. Given the likely duration required to meaningfully degrade Russian IADS, NATO must plan to sustain long-range strike operations for extended periods.

Both approaches require extensive munitions reserves and industrial surge capacity. In a protracted conflict, strike capacity will be limited less by aircraft availability than by munition inventories and production depth. NATO must therefore plan not only to employ long-range strike at scale, but to regenerate munitions inventories at a rate that keeps pace with attrition.

The recommendations discussed in the industrial section above are critical to closing the munitions capacity gap.

Increase attack mass through attritable platforms: Even with increased munitions production capacity, reliance solely on expensive long-range munitions launched from sanctuary will likely prove unsustainable over time. This transition is observable in Operation Epic Fury in Iran.⁵³

Employing short- and medium-range, lower-cost munitions requires accepting greater operational risk by pushing strike assets deeper into defended airspace. That risk grows in scenarios involving reduced US combat support, potentially equating to hundreds fewer fighters and bomber aircraft available for sustained operations.

European allied air forces must therefore generate mass through both high sortie rates and the deliberate integration of autonomous and attritable systems. Reusable uncrewed strike platforms, collaborative combat aircraft, and one-way attack drones can expand capacity at lower cost and absorb attrition in ways that crewed platforms cannot.

However, platform mass alone is insufficient. Sustainable attack requires rapid kill chain integration—sensor-to-shooter latency must be reduced, cross-border targeting authorities streamlined, and battle damage assessment accelerated to enable dynamic re-strike cycles. Without this digital integration, additional platforms will not translate into proportional operational effect.

Air-launched autonomous systems could also extend operational reach and partially mitigate air refueling constraints, particularly in environments where tanker survivability is uncertain.⁵⁴

Air mobility

NATO faces capacity gaps in heavy airlift, but aerial refueling shortfalls represent the most immediate operational constraint on sustained air operations.

Most European fighter aircraft have limited range and will likely operate from bases distant from forward areas. Tankers are therefore essential for extending reach. Yet dedicated European tanker capacity within NATO remains limited. Of more than 150 aircraft capable of refueling, only twenty-seven are dedicated tankers; the remainder are dual-use platforms such as the A400M.⁵⁵ Competing airlift demands will further strain tanker availability during a large-scale contingency.

Beyond raw capacity, tanker survivability presents an additional challenge. Tankers are high-value, low-density assets that must operate outside the effective range of IADS and long-range interceptors. Reduced US participation could further constrain available refueling depth, increasing operational risk for European NATO counter-air and attack forces by reducing force package size.

In the short term, the use of forward arming and refueling points and dispersed operating concepts can partially reduce tanker demand and complicate enemy targeting. Air-launched autonomous systems might also extend operational reach and reduce refueling requirements for crewed aircraft. These measures mitigate, but do not eliminate, the underlying shortfall.

In addition to tanker procurement—both dual-use and dedicated—European NATO air mobility resilience will require strengthened runway repair capacity, protected fuel infrastructure, and cross-border logistics policies that enable rapid reinforcement and redistribution of assets under combat conditions. In the medium term, expansion of multinational constructs such as the Multinational Multi-Role Tanker Transport Fleet and the Strategic Airlift Capability offers the most viable path to increasing capacity while preserving affordability.

ISR

Most ISR gaps stem from the sensor and C2 deficiencies discussed previously. However, penetrating strike and sustained campaigning introduce an additional requirement: high-fidelity, tactical intelligence capable of locating and tracking mobile targets in contested environments. Air domain awareness improvements will support aerial targeting, but additional sensors are required to find, fix, and track surface targets such as fielded forces, ships, and mobile missile launchers. European allies require at least limited capacity to conduct this mission in highly contested conditions.

Equally important are processing, exploitation, and dissemination. Tactical ISR is only effective if processed and delivered rapidly to operators—this is a function of ensuring not only the appropriate equipment but also trained personnel and established processes. This function is closely tied to battle management and might need to occur near operating forces or on airborne platforms to ensure information gets to the users that need it.

Finally, intelligence sharing across the Alliance is the glue that binds allied sensing networks together. For a variety of reasons, European allies have differing levels of willingness to share intelligence, although nations are moving toward increased collaboration.⁵⁶ National efforts to establish wide-ranging policies for intelligence sharing, especially operational and tactical intelligence, will pay dividends for the Alliance. Without robust allied intelligence sharing, ISR capacity will remain stymied by national stovepipes.

Prioritization and phasing

The analysis above identifies a wide range of capability gaps affecting NATO airpower. Not all gaps can be addressed simultaneously. Political, fiscal, and industrial constraints require prioritization and phased implementation. The most effective approach is to focus first on mitigating immediate operational risk, while building the structural capacity necessary to close those gaps over time.

The recommended actions fall into three interconnected layers. Foundational investments—industrial capacity, personnel development, and financial allocation—determine whether European airpower can scale over time. Institutional investments—C2, sensing networks, stockpiles, and base resilience—determine whether NATO can generate and sustain combat power. Operational investments—counter-air mass, strike capacity, air mobility, and ISR—determine whether the Alliance can produce battlefield effects. Each layer supports the others: operational capability cannot expand without institutional capacity, and institutional capacity ultimately depends on foundational resources.

Because many of these gaps cannot be resolved immediately, allied policymakers must pursue a phased approach. In the short term, the priority should be mitigating risk by strengthening existing capabilities and improving interoperability across the Alliance. In the medium term, European allies must invest in structural reforms and capacity expansion that enable NATO airpower to operate effectively, even under conditions of reduced US operational support. The priorities below highlight the highest-impact actions in each layer.

Acknowledgements

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, the Joint Staff, Department of War, or the U.S. government.

The author would like to thank the interviewed experts and workshop and tabletop exercise participants for their generosity in sharing their time, expertise, and insights throughout this project. The author is also grateful to the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative staff for their support in advancing this work, and to General Atomics for its financial support, which made this research possible.

About the author

Fellow

Edward Brady

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Industry Middle East

Explore the program

The Transatlantic Security Initiative aims to reinforce the strong and resilient transatlantic relationship that is prepared to deter and defend, succeed in strategic competition, and harness emerging capabilities to address future threats and opportunities.

Learn more

Image: German Air Force Eurofighter Typhoons fly over a remote stretch of Iceland while training with the Swedish Air Force as part of NATO’s Arctic Sentry activity. NATO photo courtesy of the German Air Force.