{"id":2152,"date":"2026-03-24T07:07:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T05:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=2152"},"modified":"2025-12-31T18:47:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T16:47:19","slug":"acting-today-to-shape-tomorrow-a-proactive-approach-to-building-natos-advantage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=2152","title":{"rendered":"Acting Today to Shape Tomorrow: A Proactive Approach to Building NATO\u2019s Advantage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Milestone in Military Transformation<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Military Committee agreed on a new NATO policy regarding the <strong>Long Term Military Strategic Shaping (LTMSS)<\/strong>. This decision marks a key milestone in the implementation of the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept, the Alliance\u2019s North Star vision for military transformation.<\/p>\n<p>This new policy frames Alliance\u2019s efforts to shape the evolution of the strategic environment to its advantage. It is geared towards three overarching objectives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Setting conditions to preserve NATO\u2019s freedom of decision and action;<\/li>\n<li>Positively influencing perceptions, decision-making and behaviour of other actors, and<\/li>\n<li>Building and maintaining long-term military advantage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>From Awareness to Action<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The LTMSS process begins with enhancing NATO\u2019s strategic awareness. Since 2023, ACT conducted in-depth studies on the long-term trajectories of Russia, terrorist groups and organizations, and the evolution of their military strategies and capabilities. A similar study has focused on the People\u2019s Republic of China.<\/p>\n<p>These studies provide the baseline for developing a shared understanding of these trajectories, and how they intersect \u2014 or diverge from \u2014 NATO\u2019s strategic paths. The main vehicle used to evaluate these dynamics are wargaming and experimentation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Strategic Wargaming for Strategic Gains<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I ACT launched a new series of Strategic Competition games, such as <strong>RED DRAGON\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0\u00a0<strong>SENTINEL VAGUARD 44<\/strong>. The first wargame on terrorist threats,\u00a0<strong>PHANTOM THREAT 45<\/strong>, was being conducted in Madrid in May 2025.<\/p>\n<p>These strategic games help generate the most important element of the LTMSS process \u2013 concrete, forward-leaning shaping options that NATO needs to enact today in order to maintain its advantage and freedom of manoeuvre tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Growing Community of Interest, A Shared Vision<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The LTMSS initiative is supported by a vibrant and expanding Community of Interest, including representatives from eight Allied nations\u2014Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and T\u00fcrkiye\u2014alongside ACT, Allied Command Operations (ACO), and several NATO Centres of Excellence.<\/p>\n<p>This community comes together annually at the LTMSS Working Group. The next meeting took place in Madrid in May 2025. This session marks a major milestone: the achievement of <strong>Initial Operating Capacity (IOC)\u00a0<\/strong>for LTMSS, and it will chart the next steps in implementing this new policy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Shaping Today to Secure Tomorrow<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>LTMSS represents a fundamental shift in NATO\u2019s strategic mindset\u2014from reactive to proactive, to build advantage and shape the strategic environment to Alliance\u2019s strengths, setting conditions for continued security and strength in a rapidly evolving world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Milestone in Military Transformation The Military Committee agreed on a new NATO policy regarding the Long Term Military Strategic Shaping (LTMSS). This decision marks a key milestone in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-2152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nato","tag-nato"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/NATO-ADVANTAGE.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2152"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2216,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions\/2216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}