NATO's Most Game-Changing Weapons

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) celebrates its 75th anniversary on Thursday, representing an expanded global alliance of 32 member nations and military and technological advancements that have endured during the most perilous and turbulent periods of recent history.

The transatlantic alliance has blossomed with time, growing from 12 founding members at its creation on April 4, 1949, to its current 32 after the recent welcoming of Sweden and Finland into the fold. Foreign ministers are gathering Thursday at NATO headquarters in Brussels and will reconvene from July 9 to 11 in Washington, D.C., where the founding treaty was signed.

The original member states of NATO were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. Of the current membership, 30 are European countries.

A lot has changed in terms of military and weapons capabilities in the seven-plus decades since World War II, experts tell Newsweek, bringing forward technological advancements that still endure as the Russia-Ukraine war has passed its two-year mark.

"The alliance has been through several phases," retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel Mark Cancian told Newsweek. "There was the Cold War phase up until 1991, when you had basically the original members focused on deterring the Soviet Union. Very successful, but then the Cold War ends and that goes away.

"And then there was a time where it focused on out-of-area operations. That was Iraq and Afghanistan and a bunch of other activities. NATO was deeply, deeply involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan."

Another phase, beginning in 2014 with Russia's annexation of Crimea up to the present day and an ongoing military stalemate in eastern Ukraine, has again enveloped NATO and pitted its members against Vladimir Putin and Russia.

Weapons

The Russia-Ukraine war has provided an arena for NATO to display its military strength, in the form of weapons provided to Ukraine to combat Russian aggression. But many of these have been around for decades.

Tanks

The German Leopard 2 and U.S. M1 Abrams tanks have become hot commodities in Eastern Europe over the past few years.

The Leopard 2 was first introduced in 1979, a year before the M1 Abrams, but did not really showcase its abilities until wars in Afghanistan and Syria. Around 3,600 Leopard 2s of various types have been built since the late 1970s, utilized in different manners by 21 nations.

The Leopard 2 was designed by Krauss-Maffei. Its cannon was made by Rheinmetall, and its engine by MTU Friedrichshafen.

The Leopard 2A4—the most likely variant to be sent to Ukraine—has a top forward speed of around 42.2 miles per hour, and 19.2 miles per hour in reverse. The 2A4 weighs around 52 tons empty, and 55 tons equipped for battle.

The 2A4's 1,500-horsepower, 12-cylinder twin-turbocharged diesel engine has a capacity of 1,160 liters, giving the tank an average range of around 173 miles before it needs to refuel (210 miles by road, 136 miles cross country).

Some 10,700 M1 Abrams and variants have been constructed and have seen service in, for example, the Gulf War, Afghanistan War, Iraq War and the civil war in Yemen. Currently used by nine nations, its most advanced version used by U.S. forces is the M1A2 SEP.

The M1 Abrams was first built by Chrysler Defense, which was later acquired and became General Dynamics Land Systems.

The M1A2 SEP Abrams has a top forward speed of 42 miles per hour and a reverse speed of 25 miles per hour. The various SEP variants weigh between 69.5 tons and 73.6 tons.

The M1A2 SEP uses a 1,500-horsepower multi-fuel gas turbine engine, which U.S. forces typically fill with jet fuel. It has a maximum range of roughly 264 miles.

"The weapons are tremendously different from what we saw at the beginning of the alliance," Cancian said. "At the beginning of the alliance, we still had Sherman tanks running around Europe. Now, you have M1-A2s and Leopards.

"What you see, I think especially for the wealthier countries, is a substitution of capital for labor. In other words, they become more capital intensive over time. And I think that reflects both increasing wealth and decreasing number of personnel."

Missile Systems

The MIM-104 Patriot, built by U.S. contractor Raytheon and now used by numerous countries worldwide, gained fame after its use in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and is lauded for its ability to not just intercept and defend against ballistic missiles, but also to strike targets at long distances.

Considered one of the most capable long-range weapons to defend against incoming ballistic and cruise missiles, Patriots are able to shoot down Russian missiles and aircraft far from their intended targets inside Ukraine.

The Storm Shadow is a long-range, air-launched attack missile manufactured by France-based MBDA Systems, mainly for the U.K. and French armed forces. It can operate in extreme conditions, both day and night, offering deep-strike capability with a firing range in excess of 250 kilometers (155 miles)—about 30 miles short of the range of U.S.-made surface-to-surface Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS).

Storm Shadow missiles have a slightly shorter range than ATACMS, which can reach up to 186 miles, or 300 kilometers, according to manufacturers Lockheed Martin.

The U.S. has also provided Ukraine with High-Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) that can hit targets at an approximate 80-kilometer (50-mile) distance.

Air Power

F-16 and F-35 fighter jets have provided NATO allies with air superiority.

More than 1,000 F-16s have been flown for some three decades by countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Turkey, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Israel, Egypt and Poland.

The Lockheed Martin-made F-35A Joint Strike Fighter jet is new and much improved, notably for its dual cap abilities in terms of carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons—making it the first fifth-generation aircraft to be nuclear-capable.

It can be equipped with B61-12 nuclear bombs as part of what has been described as a new standard of aircraft that in time will supplant older and less reliable aircraft.

U.S. remains most important NATO member

"There's absolutely no doubt" that the U.S. is NATO's most important partner because of its military capabilities, John Erath, the senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told Newsweek.

He described NATO's military growth as a "good news-bad news situation," with the bad news being that an intended GDP growth of the alliance's defense capabilities was intended to be undertaken during the alliance's 50th anniversary in 1999 but never materialized to hit the 2 percent goal.

"That obviously didn't happen, and it took the 2 percent goal in 2014 to start to move the ball," he said. "So, the process of improving defensive capabilities has been historically a little bit behind where U.S. administrations have wanted it to be.

"But the good news is that it is happening now, in particular since 2018 or so and especially since the current phase of the war in Ukraine began. That was a real wake-up call for a lot of Europeans."

Last year, the U.S. contributed approximately 68 percent, or $860 billion of the $1.26 trillion NATO spent, which worked out to be 3.49 percent of America's total GDP. Canada contributed 1.38 percent of its GDP at $28.95 billion (2.29 percent of total contributions), while the collective European allies accounted for $375.1 billion (29.68 percent) of the total budget.

Last year, Poland allocated 3.9 percent of its GDP, surpassing the U.S. in percentage terms. Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, the U.K. and Slovakia contributed more than the 2 percent guideline last year.

Over the past 75 years, the U.S. has contributed $21.9 trillion to NATO's defense budget, according to its yearly Defense Expenditure of NATO Countries report.

"With regard to specific technologies, there's the U.S. and there's everybody else," Erath said. "You can say that, on a one-for-one basis, European countries can build tanks that are quite similar to Abrams. They can build helicopters, Apache; they can build a cruise missile that performs somewhat relatively to a Tomahawk. But the U.S. has a vast advantage on everyone else because we integrate all of these systems."

He added: "An American tank can go into action, knowing they have aerial surveillance, airstrike support, artillery support—it's all networked so it can be focused on the same critical point. Nobody else does that to the same degree."

What to watch for in coming years

Eric Gomez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, told Newsweek that Poland should be a country to watch in coming years based on its large boost in defense spending.

They are buying a lot of very advanced U.S. capabilities that are going to be delivered over the rest of the 2020s and maybe into the early 2030s, he said, which in turn could translate into one of NATO's most capable militaries

"Poland is also pursuing arms purchases from South Korea, which could offer a model for other states that want to increase the quality of their military without necessarily paying the premiums and waiting for delivery of U.S. weapons," Gomez said.

"U.S. capabilities are better than South Korean ones, but South Korea has more free capacity to build things faster, and its military equipment is pretty close to U.S. equipment in terms of overall quality, so it could be an attractive supplier for countries in NATO that want to buy more things for the same amount of money. A space worth watching," he said.

A question that is already being raised by some U.S. lawmakers is how NATO allies look at situations like Ukraine while assuring their own citizens that there is enough domestic production.

Gomez said that the war continues to impact defense industrial base decisions, notably in the U.S. as opposed to most other member nations. The U.S. has also focused more attention on China as a major adversary.

"The war has put a lot of pressure on the U.S. and NATO to expand defense industrial capacity, but Ukraine is fighting in a very different way than the U.S. and NATO would fight," Gomez said. "Does it make long-term strategic sense for the U.S. and NATO to expand production of things like unguided 155mm artillery shells, which Ukraine needs a lot of, if NATO's core competencies are in other weapons and ways of fighting?"

Nikolai Sokov, senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, told Newsweek that on the nuclear front, the U.K. has announced development of a new nuclear warhead, while France is working on its own new Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM).

"But all developments have been emblematic of slow evolution, which has characterized NATO for many years," Sokov said. "So far, NATO is still in the debates phase and is contemplating restoration of the defense-industrial base."

Something "significant" to observe is the possibility of nuclear sharing with Poland and France's apparent willingness to take the leading role in European nuclear deterrence, he added, based not really in technology but strategy—representing a change in posture and policy.

"We are in the third year of the war in Ukraine and it's been ten years since Crimea, but there have been more words than action, I suppose," Sokov said. "To a large extent this has been caused by the strategic transition—new threats and challenges, responses to which are unclear.

"The other factor is the need in massive investment as well as political and institutional changes to revive, not reinvigorate—revive, the defense industry. Such decisions are difficult to make in the time of financial austerity, economic slowdown, and uncertainties of the domestic political scenes in most NATO countries."