NATO and Prototyping Warfare

Commentary by Arnel P. David andBenjamin Jensen

Published July 8, 2024

This series-featuring scholars from the Futures Lab, the International Security Program, and across CSIS-explores emerging challenges and opportunities that NATO is likely to confront after its 75th anniversary.

In the future, NATO will revolutionize the way it organizes, operates, and fights through prototype warfare, becoming a more lethal and agile force capable of deterring and defending every inch of the alliance.

Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) is undergoing a sweeping transformation, revitalizing its warfighting system and ushering in a renaissance in allied operations. Yet, NATO capability development has not matched this pace of change. The alliance stands at a critical juncture. To remain the world's premier defensive alliance in an era of unprecedented technological upheaval, it must revolutionize its approach to capability development.

The current system, plagued by bureaucratic inertia and multiyear (or even multidecade) delays, is simply unsustainable. Independent research has identified the process as "overly complicated," and it is failing to put capabilities into warfighters' hands. To compound this challenge, emerging technologies change so fast that the initial requirements that birthed them are often obsolete. This leaves NATO forces ill-equipped to face emerging threats. Several nations are already overhauling their broken procurement systems and reforming acquisition policies. NATO, as a whole, must follow suit.

The Allied Command Transformation (ACT) in Norfolk has advocated for a "learn by doing" approach, but a critical temporal disconnect exists between ACT's focus and SHAPE's immediate capability needs. ACT is looking at capabilities that are decades away from delivery, while SHAPE needs the ability to "fight tonight."

In an unprecedented development, the alliance now possesses a strategy with nested operational plans, establishing a new benchmark for capability development targets within NATO's Defence Planning Process (NDPP). While the NDPP offers guidance to nations on capability targets, it must be augmented with mechanisms to rapidly discover and develop capabilities within NATO formations. Put simply, NATO needs to create the conditions from which adaptation and innovation can flourish across the entire alliance. It can achieve this with the concept of prototyping warfare.

Prototyping, rooted in principles of rapid iteration and experimentation, offers a dynamic alternative to traditional, linear development models. Increased prototyping can unleash the alliance's key superpower: its diverse network of talent across 32 nations. This can be done immediately in three ways.

First, the alliance needs to increase its threshold for risk and provide commanders with funds to take chances on commercially available technologies outside of the normal capability development program. Early and aggressive testing, integration, and prototyping of technology and warfighting concepts are essential to finding competitive advantages in modern conflict. This will lead to new ways of organizing, operating, and fighting.

Second, all NATO warfighting commands (e.g., joint force headquarters, land forces command, air command, and maritime command) need to proliferate the use of digital gaming and simulation technologies to test concepts and plans more regularly. Organizations should not wait for episodic exercises to do this once or twice a year. They need digital tools to do this more regularly and to analyze tests with a higher degree of rigor. There is enormous potential in gaming and simulations through the unfettered collection of learning data. This data can feed into sorely needed artificial intelligence (AI) applications to improve decisionmaking and warfighting systems.

Third, NATO needs to stop talking about AI and start using it. There is a risk associated with these technologies, but there is an even greater risk posed by not using them. The difference between an early adopter and a late follower is exponential. For military organizations, this can be the difference between success and defeat on a future battlefield. Tools such as generative AI are increasing in everyday use, and if organizations take years to integrate this kind of technology, their employees will either find a way to use it (e.g., Shadow AI) or go where it is being used. NATO organizations need to begin testing and prototyping how they will use these types of AI tools. These efforts should expand on earlier U.S. Army experiments, including the use of digital staff officers such as ScaleAI's Donovan.

The alliance can also learn from Ukraine and private industry. Ukraine's need to innovate and survive-as well as the rapid introduction of new technology on both sides-has been described as "the most significant fundamental change in the character of war ever recorded in history" by General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The alliance can use prototype warfare to drive innovation outside of major combat by institutionalizing the urgency and dynamism of wartime adaptation.

In private industry, SpaceX's rapid trial and error prototyping to develop rockets and OpenAI's early release and testing of ChatGPT are examples of this approach to developing capabilities faster. NATO can mimic the pace and competitive intensity of private industry to prototype warfare. Capability development cannot take multiple decades. The most powerful alliance in the world's history needs the most powerful capabilities. Prototyping can deliver these capabilities faster and cheaper than ever before.

Colonel Arnel P. David is a U.S. Army strategist currently serving as the director of the Strategic Initiatives Group at NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). Benjamin Jensen is a senior fellow for Futures Lab in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., and the Petersen Chair of Emerging Technology and professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps University School of Advanced Warfighting.

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