Critical Supply-Chain Resilience (Operational Priorities)

Operational Rationale and Strategic Anchoring In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, NATO and EU leaders confronted the stark reality that Western defence supply chains were not prepared for a high-intensity war of attrition [1] [2] . The war’s enormous consumption of munitions – with Ukrainian forces firing thousands of shells daily – quickly outstripped the West’s production capacity, exposing deep vulnerabilities in stockpiles and industrial readiness [3] [4] . Supply-Chain Resilience Programmes emerged as a distinct operational priority to address this strategic problem: ensuring that Allied forces can be equipped and sustained through protracted, high-intensity conflicts despite attempts by adversaries to disrupt or exhaust our logistics and industrial base. In essence, this priority translates high-level intent (to prevail in a long war or simultaneous crises) into a coherent set of missions and tasks aimed at hardening the defence-industrial ecosystem against shocks, surges in demand, and hostile interference. At the strategic level, recent NATO and EU policy documents have explicitly called for strengthening defence supply chain resilience. NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept – forged amid the Ukraine war – underscored the need for “a more resilient and flexible industrial military base” across the Alliance [5] .