(Adnkronos) – NATO allies must “spend more money on defense: some fear that we will spend it as we have in recent decades, but this is not the case. We have to spend more: today we spend” about “2% of GDP, but we have to spend much more”. This was reiterated by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, guest of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, during a session dedicated to technology in the world.
Yesterday, European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius said that European countries should spend 5-6% of their GDP on defence. Some large NATO member states, such as Italy and Spain, are well below 2%.
Rutte also noted that today “it is drone technology that is really changing the way war is waged. Today a $400 Ukrainian drone can hit a Russian tank that costs millions of dollars. We use marine drone technology in the Baltic Sea. AI will also be transformative”. In Europe, however, “we do not produce enough and we are too slow to innovate. Speed is essential” in deploying new technologies, “not perfection”.
