^{29, September 1999, Jane's Defence Weekly}

NATO Defence Ministers congratulated themselves on the success in Kosovo, before dealing with the deficiencies highlighted by the operation and the subsequent problems of overstretch.

The Defence Capabilities Initiative (DCI), introduced by US Secretary of Defense William Cohen a year ago and formally accepted at April's Washington summit, occupied much of the ministers' attention at the Toronto meeting.

The DCI, which according to one NATO official, is "to direct national plans increasingly to NATO priorities" addresses five areas: mobility; sustainability; precision engagement; command, control and communications (C3); and force survivability.

Cohen said: "Kosovo showed the need for progress in all these areas and there was clear agreement at this conference to move forward on all fronts."

With limited funds and limitless possibilities, the allies will focus their efforts on three of the more mature areas to achieve early results: strategic lift; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); and C3.

Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen Wesley Clark, told reporters that ensuring secure communications was a problem in the Kosovo air campaign: "We had a lack of ability in some cases to transfer information, some cases voice, some digital, beyond visual range, identification friend or foe."

Cohen said: "In some cases, countries will have to spend more money, but in many cases we can achieve improvements by working together and spending our defence budgets more intelligently." For example, "Germany has proposed a European mobility command that promises to lead to greater co-ordination in the movement of troops and equipment." Mobility command exercises would provide experience for the Europeans to make a decision on whether the Airbus A400M will meet their future needs.

The allies have also agreed that the NATO Military Committee will establish a multinational joint logistics centre.

One observer at the meeting commented that he was surprised at how willing the NATO members were to give up national capability in order to restructure for the common good.

But despite these initiatives, officials pointed out that the DCI will involve spending money. For example, Cohen said: "There has to be a commitment to acquire aircraft which are intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance aircraft. We have a shortage of that capability." Similarly, Cohen expected more countries to acquire precision-guided munitions, whether they purchased the "lower cost" ones being developed by the USA or they developed their own. That, of course, touched on the issue of whose technology to adopt - a contentious question for the Europeans, some of whom expressed concern about being pushed to buy US technology.

A NATO official said countries with declining defence budgets were past the point where "they can get more and more for less and less". However, there is some flexibility. In addition to multilateral or bilateral projects, there are the NATO common funds. The NATO Infrastructure Program is primarily used for construction, but "many ministers expressed the need to move that away increasingly to high technology areas ... instead of simply maintaining facilities which were designed essentially for Cold War operations".

In his strongly-worded presentation to the ministers, Cohen said he wanted them to have ready for their December meeting fixed milestones with a timetable for their achievement, with some idea of how resources can be allocated.

These milestones can then be incorporated into the force goal planning cycle, which, if necessary, will be adapted to accommodate them in order to avoid any delay in the DCI.

At the final session of the two-day meeting, ministers expressed support for the European Security and Defence Identity, stressing that it comes under the umbrella of NATO and that a strong transatlantic link must be retained. Cohen said: "We proceed on the basis that there is going to be an upgrade in the capabilities of the European Union and the European members of NATO."

Secretary-General Javier Solana, chairing his last ministerial meeting before taking over as the High Representative for the Common and Security Policy for the European Union, said: "Countries have to think seriously about the level of capabilities of their armed forces if they want to continue to have the possibility of participating in a constructive manner in the alliance."