NATO Military Chief: We’re Discussing the Possibility of Carrying out Preemptive ‘Precision Strikes’ on Russian Territory in the Event of an Armed Conflict

Bauer: “But we need to invest more in air defense, for example, but also deep precision strike, which is a discussion that is relatively young in NATO, and I’m very happy that we had it and that we have now changed this attitude from — I mean, the idea was we’re a defensive alliance, so we will only sit and wait until we’re attacked. And then when we’re attacked, we will be able to shoot down the arrows that come to us. But it’s smarter, not only to do that, but also to attack the archer that is in Russia, if Russia attacks us. So you need to have a combination of deep precision strike with which you can take out the weapon systems that are used to attack us. And of course, because we’re a defensive alliance, we will have to take the first blow. So Russia will start the conflict because we are not going to attack Russia out of nothing. So yeah, we will need more air defense. That’s one of the lessons from Ukraine. And at the same time, we are going to invest in the deep precision strike. Now, there’s a number of things we need to do more and better to become better. But we also have to understand that all the regional plans are based on the Russian threat of 24 February, 2022. That is where our plans have been based upon. Now, the Russian armed forces, land forces are bigger than in February, 2022. That is concerning. But at the same time, the quality of those forces has gone down. So it’s older equipment and it is less trained soldiers. So at the moment, the Russians are not the same threat as in February, 2022. So we have a bit of time. We have a bit of time to prepare ourselves, but we need that time because our industry is building up too slow. To the point of view of what Fabian said, we need to ramp up the investments in the defense industry in order to become readier ourselves and to continue to support Ukraine.”