ANKARA, July 8 — NATO held its first-ever Defense Industry Forum on Tuesday alongside its summit in Ankara, signaling a new push to strengthen the alliance’s military-industrial base. Yet analysts say the effort faces challenges as members remain divided over how to achieve that goal.
The forum brought together political leaders, senior military officials, and defense industry executives as NATO urges members to increase defense spending, boost arms production, and deepen industrial cooperation.
In his opening remarks, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said that there could be “no strong defense without a strong defense industry,” calling for faster procurement, closer cooperation between governments and industry, and expanded production capacity.
Rutte announced new multinational procurement initiatives worth billions of U.S. dollars, covering airborne surveillance aircraft, high-altitude surveillance drones, and counter-drone systems.
Despite the ambitious announcements, analysts point to persistent challenges.
Members pursue differing national priorities and industrial interests, while allies remain divided over procurement priorities, burden-sharing, financing, and the extent to which domestic industries should be integrated into multinational production networks, they say.
Ozgur Eksi, an Ankara-based defense and security expert, told Xinhua that balancing national defense industries and collective security would require overcoming long-standing competition among allies to protect domestic defense industries.
Foreign policy analyst and journalist Serkan Demirtas said that while “the need to expand production is widely recognized across the alliance,” reaching consensus on production roles, cost-sharing arrangements, and industrial benefit distribution remains a far more difficult challenge.
Demirtas said that countries with established defense industries, including Türkiye, are seeking a larger role in NATO’s industrial architecture, while some traditional producers remain cautious about opening procurement and technology-sharing arrangements.
The Ankara summit took place against the backdrop of mounting U.S. pressure on European allies to assume greater responsibility for their own defense.
A key agenda expected at the summit is how to implement the agreement reached at last year’s NATO summit in The Hague, where members states committed to increasing defense-related expenditure to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035.
Türkiye is using Tuesday’s forum to showcase its expanding defense industry and advocate for a larger role in NATO’s industrial strategy.
Its efforts have attracted renewed attention after U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday in Ankara that he was moving toward restoring Ankara’s participation in the F-35 program, following years of exclusion over its purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system.
Observers see the development, along with the ongoing negotiations over the sale of U.S. jet engines to power Türkiye’s indigenous KAAN fighter, as a sign of improving defense ties between the two countries.(Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
