NATO’s Assistant Secretary-General for Operations, Tom Goffus, revealed critical insights about Ukraine’s defensive innovations and alarming weapons procurement delays during his address at the Air and Space Forces Air Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, The War Zone reports.
Goffus said he was most amazed at Ukraine’s cost-effective acoustic sensor network for detecting low-altitude threats.
“Essentially, Ukraine is covering its entire nation, 1,000 meters and below, with acoustic sensors for less than 50 million euros ($54 million),” Goffus said. “It’s crazy what they’re doing with this.”
The Zvook acoustic detection system has become a focal point for NATO’s new Joint Analysis Training and Education Center (JATEC) in Poland. This center represents the first organization jointly run by NATO and Ukraine.
Goffus’s most urgent concern focused on the severe deficiencies in NATO’s defense industrial capacity compared to Russia’s production capabilities.
“Russia, with an economy 5% the size of NATO, produces in three months many critical munitions that it takes 32 allies an entire year to produce,” he warned. “Something is very wrong here, and we must fix it.”
He highlighted specific examples of alarming procurement delays affecting NATO members:
- Lithuania faces a five-year wait for AMRAAM missiles for their NASAMS systems
- Bulgaria must wait seven years for Javelin missiles for their Strykers
- Major allies looking to purchase Patriot systems face a 10-year wait.
“The defense industrial base has not been this important in a long time,” Goffus emphasized, stressing that these procurement timelines are unacceptable in the current security environment.
Goffus also outlined several strategic lessons from the Ukraine conflict. He emphasized that “shared awareness” among allies was critical for NATO’s unified response in 2022, unlike the fractured approach in 2014. He characterized Putin as “an opportunist, not a strategist” who “pushes on doors, and when nobody pushes back, he walks in.” Goffus stressed that NATO faces a “strategic confrontation” where “peace, crisis, conflict used to be a sequence… Now, it’s a spectrum.”
Despite these important strategic insights, the practical challenges with defense technology and procurement represent the most immediate and actionable findings from Ukraine’s ongoing experience.
Read more:
- “We try anything that can kill more Russians.” New Ukraine AI drones require just 30-min training
- Drones targeted oil refinery in Russia’s Leningrad oblast about 800 km from Ukraine
- Russian combined attack on Donetsk’s Dobropillia kills 11, injures 30 including children
