00:00Now I'm joined here at NATO headquarters by Colonel Martin O'Donnell, who's a senior advisor to the
00:04Supreme Allied Commander of Europe. Martin, thanks a million for joining us this morning. So first of
00:10all, this troop cut. Now we saw an announcement of 5,000 from Germany. Instead of taking 5,000
00:15troops from Germany, the US is taking 4,000 or cancelling a brigade to Poland. But there is going
00:21to be subsequent cuts. The United States has already warned of this, but can you tell us a
00:27bit more about the context? Yeah, sure. So I think you're talking about
00:30two separate things, but they share one thing in common. I'll talk about the two separate
00:34things, but on the commonality. That is, the United States has made it abundantly clear that
00:41it needs to focus elsewhere, not just in Europe. It has stressed Europeans need to step up.
00:48Europeans are stepping up. There is agreement within the alliance that a stronger Europe
00:53equals a stronger NATO. So that's the commonality that those two things share. Separately, if you
00:59look at each one, you talked about the 5,000 with the 4,000. The 4,000 troops, the rotational
01:06brigade
01:06earmarked for Poland, this has never been about Poland. The other 1,000 troops obviously coming
01:13from Germany, from a long-range fires unit there. And so those are rotational forces. Rotational forces
01:21can rotate in and out. What's happening now is that the Supreme Allied Commander, General Grinkovic,
01:26in both his capacity as Supreme Allied Commander and as European Commander, is looking at how he
01:31needs to potentially adjust forces inside Europe to compensate for that, both U.S. forces and NATO
01:39forces. Separately, yes, the U.S., the U.S., there's been indications that the U.S. will announce changes
01:48to the NATO force model. I think the important thing for your viewers to understand is that
01:53those adjustments have been discussed about with NATO over the course of the last many months.
01:58All right, this is, there should be no surprises on this. And it will focus on areas where we see
02:03Europeans very, very capable of stepping up.
02:05So the idea being that the first announcement was, I suppose, in the middle of a feud with Chancellor
02:10Mertz. This announcement is in relation to ongoing discussions and military planning. So it's a little
02:16bit more sort of forward planning. And can I ask you also about access to munitions? Because we've
02:22seen the United States burning through billions of dollars worth of weapons. Now there's concerns
02:26that Europeans won't be able to access what they need for Ukraine.
02:29Yeah, so I think the United States has also made this clear that there's enough munitions.
02:35Munitions are still flowing, both to Europe and most importantly to Ukraine. Cannot stress enough
02:40the importance of the PERL, the prioritized Ukraine requirements list, and the contributions that we
02:45continue to need from nations to step up. We've seen many, many contributions from many European
02:50nations. We need more to keep coming in to ensure these munitions can continue to go to Europe.
02:54But I suppose in terms of production, that's the key issue, isn't it? Because they can't keep up
02:58with the pace. So what needs to be done about production?
03:00Well, we need to increase our defense industrial base on both sides of the Atlantic. And that was a
03:04big part of the discussion that occurred here yesterday with the Chiefs of Defense meeting. I think
03:08that that will continue at the end of the week with the meeting of the foreign ministers.
03:12Just in relation to the drones, can you just quickly tell us a little bit about, because
03:17we've seen a lot more drone incursions across European territory. Just very quickly, is this
03:21something we need to be deeply concerned about?
03:23Yeah, so I think what, again, the viewers need to understand is we saw NATO shot down a drone
03:30yesterday that potentially threatened NATO airspace. We've done that before. We'll continue to do that.
03:36We're continuing to roll out ground-based interceptors for drones all along the eastern front as part of
03:43eastern sentry. And so viewers should be assured that NATO has a handle on this.
03:48Okay, Colonel Marla John, thank you very much for joining us this morning. And back to you in studio, Maeve.
03:51Thank you so much.
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