NATO held its first-ever Deep Strike Symposium in June, hosted by its top commander in Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich. Senior officers and officials met to examine a question Russia’s war against Ukraine has made impossible to dodge: if Moscow attacks NATO territory, how does the alliance stop the war machine behind the assault, rather than merely slow the troops at the border? The Wall Street Journal reports that NATO’s emerging answer includes strikes deep inside Russia.
From Blocking to Disarming
For decades, NATO’s European defence planning relied heavily on obstacles to an invading force’s advance. Grynkewich’s approach goes further. Allied forces would first stop the initial wave. If the attack continued, they would hit the system sustaining the next waves: military bases, supply depots, command structures and industrial facilities inside Russia.
A conventional strategy strips an invading force of the means to keep fighting. Hitting only the troops already moving toward NATO territory would leave the facilities supplying and directing them intact. Grynkewich’s stated aim is to break the military system being used against the alliance.
Ukraine has shown why the distinction is important. Defence cannot mean indefinitely absorbing attacks while the aggressor’s bases, logistics and production remain beyond reach. Ukraine’s strikes against Russia’s rear are part of its defence against an invasion Russia chose to launch. NATO is now applying that battlefield lesson in its planning: stopping an attack may require striking the machinery that enables it.
The Weapons and the Political Test
Precision weapons are central to the plan, including cheaper systems that could be produced in greater numbers. Fabian Hoffmann, a missile specialist at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, counts at least 48 announced projects for low-cost cruise missiles across Europe, involving 20 manufacturers. An industrial shift with real consequences beyond the planning document.
NATO’s military leadership has adopted this approach as doctrine. The harder test would come if Russia actually invaded: whether European political leaders would authorise strikes on military targets deep inside Russian territory.
The alliance can build missiles and identify the bases, depots and factories that sustain an offensive. It would still need leaders willing to use that capability while the invasion is underway.