What this campaign was
Agreed at Madrid in June 2022 and completed on 1 July 2024, the Force Model replaced rotational force generation with a larger pool of high-readiness forces that can be pre-assigned to specific plans. The Allied Reaction Force, agreed at Vilnius, launched the same day as its agile complement.
Pre-assignment to plans is the change that reorganised everything downstream of it. Forces earmarked for a specific regional plan have to be able to reach it, which is why military mobility, host-nation support and sustainment became this module's binding constraints in the same period — and why the module treats reinforcement depth as an arena in its own right.
Confidence: High As of 2026-09Reviewed 2026-09-21
Summary
At the Madrid Summit in June 2022 Allies agreed a new NATO Force Model including more troops at high readiness and further measures to improve the Alliance's ability to reinforce Allies in the east. NATO describes the model as providing a larger pool of high-readiness forces which can be pre-assigned to specific plans for the defence of Allies. At Vilnius in July 2023 Leaders approved a new generation of regional defence plans and agreed to establish a new high-readiness, multinational and multi-domain Allied Reaction Force as part of the model. The transition was completed on 1 July 2024, fully replacing the NATO Response Force, and the Allied Reaction Force launched on the same date. NATO's own framing of why both are needed is that the security environment requires large, massed units prepared for territorial deterrence and defence as well as a smaller, agile force for crisis management.
Stated objectives
What the participants say. Each entry cites where the position was stated; Vigil records that it was made, not that it is true.
To provide a larger pool of high-readiness forces which can be pre-assigned to specific plans for the defence of Allies, alongside a smaller agile force for crisis management and out-of-area operations.
NATO's own description, on the topic page recording the NRF's replacement.
Assessed objectives
Vigil's reading, graded. Kept structurally apart from stated positions so an assessment can never be published as someone's declared aim.
The model's effect on this module is indirect but decisive: it moves the question from force generation, which the Alliance can decide, to force movement and sustainment, which depend on infrastructure and host-state capacity that no summit decision can create quickly.
Primary forces
- Allied Command Operations Primary force · Confidence: High · as of 2025-04-03
NATO states that the Vilnius plans ensure SACEUR has the necessary forces to defend NATO territory in crisis or conflict.
Supporting & external
- Allied Joint Support and Enabling Command Supporting force · Confidence: Moderate · as of 2026-09-21
The enabling command sits in this module's Force Atlas because reinforcement is what the model assumes; no source assigns it a defined role within the model itself, and none is asserted.
Agreed at Madrid
Allies agree a new force model with more troops at high readiness and measures to improve reinforcement of Allies in the east.
Plans and the reaction force
Vilnius approves a new generation of regional defence plans and agrees to establish the Allied Reaction Force as part of the model.
In force
The transition completes, the NATO Response Force is fully replaced and the Allied Reaction Force launches.
Outcome and present status
In force since 1 July 2024 and the readiness architecture the module's current phase runs on. What it has produced in this theatre is not visible as new formations but as a changed requirement: forces assigned to plans that assume movement across the reinforcement depth this module maps.
Observed adaptations
The Alliance kept both halves of the old concept rather than choosing: the massed, plan-assigned pool answers territorial defence and the Allied Reaction Force answers crisis response, which is the same division of labour NATO articulated when the NRF was created in 2002.
Political implications
The Hague commitment to five per cent of GDP by 2035, in two components, is the resourcing side of the same decision: the second component is what allows infrastructure and resilience spending to count.
Military implications
Pre-assignment converts a force-generation problem into a movement and sustainment problem, and moves the risk from whether forces exist to whether they arrive.
Economic implications
Sustaining pre-assigned forces implies munitions and equipment stocks that the module's industrial layer is not yet built to describe; that work belongs to a later phase and is not anticipated here.
Linked events
Locations
Places this module already publishes as map markers, listed because the campaign is about them. Not an operational area.
What remains unknown
- Tier sizes, force totals, readiness figures and unit assignments are not published and are not carried here in any form.
- Which forces are pre-assigned to which regional plan is not published, and NATO publishes no mapping of commands to plans either.
- No implementation milestone after 1 July 2024 was established by this pass.
Readings the evidence also supports
- The model can be read as a genuine structural change in how NATO holds forces ready, or as a relabelling of national readiness commitments that already existed. The public record establishes the framework and the dates; it does not establish which reading is right, and this module does not choose between them.
Listed because the record's own assessment is not the only one its sources permit — not as a hedge on the assessment above.
Whether implementation milestones are published
NATO has published the transition dates and the concept. It has not published what proportion of the pool is assigned, or to what, and no milestone series exists to follow.
Whether mobility keeps pace with assignment
The model's assumption is that assigned forces can move. The infrastructure that would carry them is the subject of this module's logistics records and is not yet complete.
Watch questions this campaign bears on
Standing analytical questions whose evidence runs through this campaign, each with its latest review. Derived from the Watch object, never restated here.
See the force running this in Explore Interactive: select this record and follow what connects to it.
Assessed as of — 2026-09 Last reviewed — 2026-09-21