Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) has said the organisation wants to increase troop numbers for its rapid response forces to more than 300,000.

The boost to the NATO Response Force (NRF), which currently comprises 40,000 troops, would be a topic at a summit of NATO leaders in Madrid later this week.

Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Mr Stoltenberg said he expected NATO leaders to “consider Russia the most significant and direct threat to our security.”

Mr Stoltenberg said changes to the rapid response force and other responses to Russian threats “constitute the biggest overhaul of our collective defence and deterrence since the Cold War.”

“The NRF consists of a highly capable joint multinational force able to react in a very short time to the full range of security challenges from crisis management to collective defence,” NATO said on its website.

In peacetime, NRF troops are usually under national command but can be requested for deployment to another ally by NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

NATO countries would have to agree within how many days these troops would be ready for deployment, with current discussions that some units need to be operational within a maximum of 10 days, others within 30 or 50 days.

Details for the emergency deployment will be laid down in new regional defence plans, which will be agreed on next year.

The latest announcement was part of how NATO plans to strengthen the alliance’s defence and deterrence capacities in Eastern Europe after Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Next to increasing the NRF’s troop levels, more military equipment, including heavy weapons, was to be positioned permanently in NATO countries in the vicinity of Russia.

Allied countries also want to increase the forces present in Eastern flank nations. Germany has already announced its plans to send more troops to Lithuania to support a multinational NATO battlegroup. 

(dpa/NAN)