Structure of NATO

1952 NATO organisational chart

The Structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is complex and multi-faceted. NATO is run by three bodies. The decision-making body is the Council of national NATO Permanent Representatives, and the decision-making and legislative process of which is converted into policy by the civilian International Staff that is divided into administrative divisions, offices and other organizations. These policies are produced on advice from the standing committees, of which only five are specifically military in nature.

The executive and operational process is overseen by the NATO Military Committee which commands the forces and also oversees their integration, training and research support. The coordination role between the two is carried out by the Defence Planning Committee which directs its output to the Division of Defence Policy and Planning, a nominally civilian department that works closely with the Military Committee's International Military Staff.

All agencies and organizations integrated into either the civilian administrative or military executive roles. For the most part they perform roles and functions that directly or indirectly support the security role of the alliance as a whole.

Civilian structure

NATO has an extensive civilian structure, including:

• Public Diplomacy Division
• NATO Office of Security (NOS)
• Executive Management
• Division of Political Affairs and Security Policy
• Division of Operations
• Division of Defence Policy and Planning
• Division of Defence Investment
• NATO Office of Resources (NOR)
• NATO Headquarters Consultation, Command and Control Staff (NHQC3S)
• Office of the Financial Controller (FinCon)
• Office of the Chairman of the Senior Resource Board (SRB)
• Office of the Chairman of the Civil and Military Budget Committees (CBC/MBC))
• International Board of Auditors for NATO (IBAN)
• NATO Production and Logistics Organizations (NPLO)

The Defence Planning Committee (DPC) is normally composed of Permanent Representatives, but meets at the level of Defence Ministers at least twice a year. It deals with most defence matters and subjects related to collective defence planning. In this it serves as a coordinating body between the Civilian and Military organizational bureaucracies of NATO.

Military structure

NATO's military operations are directed by the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, and split into two Strategic Commands commanded by U.S. and French four-star officers assisted by a staff drawn from across NATO. The Strategic Commanders are responsible to the Military Committee for the overall direction and conduct of all Alliance military matters within their areas of command. The Military Committee had an executive body, the Standing Group, made up of representatives from France, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The Standing Group was abolished during the major reform of 1967 that resulted from France’s departure from the NATO Military Command Structure.

Beginnings

File:NATO Commands 1954.jpg

NATO military command and areas of responsibilities (1954)

A key step in establishing the NATO Command Structure was the North Atlantic Council’s selection of General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the first Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) in December 1950. After Eisenhower arrived in Paris in January 1951, he and the other members of the multinational Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) Planning Group immediately began to devise a structure for the new Allied Command Europe. They quickly decided to divide Allied Command Europe into three regions: Allied Forces Northern Europe, containing Scandinavia, the North Sea and the Baltic; Allied Forces Central Europe, and Allied Forces Southern Europe (AFSOUTH), covering Italy and the Mediterranean. SHAPE was established at Rocquencourt, west of Paris. In 1952, after Greece and Turkey joined the Alliance, Allied Land Forces South-Eastern Europe (LANDSOUTHEAST) was created in Izmir, Turkey, under a US Army General. This was due to the two states' geographic distance from the LANDSOUTH headquarters, as well as political disagreements over which nation should be the overall commander for the their ground forces.

With the establishment of NATO’s Allied Command Atlantic (ACLANT) on 30 January 1952, the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic joined the previously created Supreme Allied Commander Europe as one of the alliance’s two principal military field commanders. Channel Command was established on 21 February 1952 to control the English Channel and North Sea area and deny it to the enemy, and protect the sea lanes of communication. The establishment of this post, and the agreement that it was to be filled by the British Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, was part of the compromise that allowed an American officer to take up the SACLANT post. Previously Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth had controlled multinational naval operations in the area under WUDO auspices.

In 1966, when French president Charles de Gaulle withdrew French forces from the military command structure, NATO's headquarters was forced to move to Belgium. SHAPE was moved to Casteau, north of the Belgian city of Mons. This is about 80 km (50 mi) south of NATO’s political headquarters in Brussels. Headquarters Allied Forces Central Europe was moved from the Chateau de Fontainebleau outside Paris to Brunssum, in the Netherlands.

Allied Command Operations

NATO E-3A flying with United States Air Force F-16s in a NATO exercise.

In 1999 a major reorganisation of the NATO Military Command Structure, a result of the Long-Term Study initiated in 1994, was completed. Before 2003 the Strategic Commanders were SACEUR and the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT). Allied Command Operations (ACO) is responsible for the strategic, operational and tactical management of combat and combat support forces of the NATO members, and Allied Command Transformation (ACT) responsible for the induction of the new member states' forces into NATO, and NATO forces' research and training capability. In late 2003 NATO restructured its command and force structure again. This resulted from post–Cold War restructuring of national forces, and intervention in the Balkan conflicts. The alliance created several NATO Rapid Deployable Corps and naval High Readiness Forces (HRFs), which all report to Allied Command Operations.

The commander of Allied Command Operations retained the title "Supreme Allied Commander Europe", and remains based at SHAPE at Casteau. He is a U.S. four-star general or admiral with the dual-hatted role of heading United States European Command, which is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. ACO includes Joint Force Command Brunssum in the Netherlands, Joint Force Command Naples in Italy, and Joint Command Lisbon in Portugal, all multi-national headquarters with many nations represented. JFC Brunssum had its land component, Allied Land Component Command Headquarters Heidelberg at Heidelberg, Germany, its air component at Ramstein in Germany, and its naval component at the Northwood Headquarters in the northwest suburbs of London. JFC Naples has its land component in Madrid, air component at İzmir, Turkey, and naval component in Naples, Italy. It also directs KFOR in Kosovo. JC Lisbon is a smaller HQ with no subordinate commands. Lajes Field, in the Portuguese islands of Azores, is an important transatlantic staging post. A number of NATO Force Structure formations, such as the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps are answerable ultimately to SACEUR either directly or through the component commands. Directly responsible to SACEUR is the NATO Airborne Early Warning Force at NATO Air Base Geilenkirchen in Germany where a jointly funded fleet of E-3 Sentry AWACS airborne radar aircraft is located. The Boeing C-17 Globemaster IIIs of the Strategic Airlift Capability, which became fully operational in July 2009, is based at Pápa airfield in Hungary.

The current official reference for the NATO Military Command Structure appears to be MC 324/1 (The NATO Military Command Structure, May 2004) and a successor MC 324/2.

Allied Command Transformation

Allied Command Transformation (ACT) is based in the former Allied Command Atlantic headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, United States. Allied Command Atlantic, usually known as Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT), after its commander, became ACT in 2003. It is headed by the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), a French officer. There is also an ACT command element located at SHAPE in Mons, Belgium. In June 2009 Le Figaro named the French officer who was to take command of ACT following France's return to the NATO Military Command Structure.

Subordinate ACT organizations include the Joint Warfare Center (JWC) located in Stavanger, Norway (in the same site as the Norwegian Armed Forces National Joint HQ); the Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC) in Bydgoszcz, Poland; and the Joint Analysis and Lessons Learned Centre (JALLC) in Monsanto, Portugal. The NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC) at La Spezia, Italy, was also part of ACT until it was shifted under the auspices of the NATO Science & Technology Organization.

Canada-US Regional Planning Group

The Canada-US Regional Planning Group (CUSRPG) is the only survivor of the originally five regional planning groups of the late 1940s and early 1950s. All the others were subsumed into Allied Command Europe and Allied Command Atlantic. The NATO Handbook stated in 1990s editions that it was responsible for the defence of the US-Canada area and meets alternatively in Washington, D.C. and Ottawa. (As such it appears to duplicate, in part, the work of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence.)

Organizations and Agencies

New structure for Agencies

A major reorganization of the NATO Agencies was agreed at a meeting of the defence ministers from NATO's 28 member states on 8 June 2011. The new Agencies' structure will build upon the existing one:

• Headquarters for the NATO Support Agency will be in Capellen Luxembourg (site of the current NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency – NAMSA).
• The NATO Communications and Information Agency Headquarters will be in Brussels, as will the very small staff which will design the new NATO Procurement Agency.
• A new NATO Science and Technology (S&T) Organization will be created before July 2012, consisting of Chief Scientist, a Programme Office for Collaborative S&T, and the NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC).
• The current NATO Standardization Agency will continue and be subject to review by Spring 2014.

Former structure

Prior to the reorganization, the NATO website listed 43 different agencies and organizations and five project committees/offices as of 15 May 2008. They included:

• Logistics committees, organisations and agencies, including:
  • NATO Maintenance and Supply Agency
  • Central Europe Pipeline System
  • NATO Pipeline System
• Production Logistics organisations, agencies and offices including the NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency
• Standardisation organisation, committee, office and agency including the NATO Standardization Agency which also plays an important role in the global arena of standards determination.
• Civil Emergency Planning committees and centre
• Air Traffic Management and Air Defence committees, working groups organisation and centre including the:
  • NATO ACCS Management Agency (NACMA), based in Brussels, manages around a hundred persons in charge of the Air Control and Command System (ACCS) due for 2009.
  • NATO Programming Centre
• The NATO Airborne Early Warning and Control Programme Management Organisation (NAPMO)
• NATO Consultation, Command and Control Organisation (NC3O)
  • NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A), reporting to the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Organization (NC3O). This agency was formed when the SHAPE Technical Centre (STC) in The Hague (Netherlands) merged in 1996 with the NATO Communications and Information Systems Operating and Support Agency (NACISA) based in Brussels (Belgium). The agency comprises around 650 staff, of which around 400 are located in The Hague and 250 in Brussels.
  • NATO Communications and Information Systems Services Agency (NCSA), based in Mons (BEL), was established in August 2004 from the former NATO Communications and Information Systems Operating and Support Agency (NACISA).
  • NATO Headquarters C3 Staff (NHQC3S), which supports the North Atlantic Council, Military Committee, International Staff, and the International Military Staff.
• NATO Electronic Warfare Advisory Committee (NEWAC)
• Military Committee Meteorological Group (MCMG)
• The Military Oceanography Group (MILOC)
• NATO Research and Technology Organisation (RTO),
• Education and Training college, schools and group
• Project Steering Committees and Project Offices, including:
  • Alliance Ground Surveillance Capability Provisional Project Office (AGS/PPO)
  • Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation System (BICES)
  • NATO Continuous Acquisition and Life Cycle Support Office (CALS)
  • NATO FORACS Office
  • Munitions Safety Information Analysis Center (MSIAC)

NATO Networks

There are several communications networks used by NATO to support its exercises and operations:

• Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation Systems (BICES)
• Crisis Response Operations in NATO Operating Systems (CRONOS), which is a system of interconnected computer networks used by NATO to transmit classified information at the level of NATO Secret.
• Combined Federated Battle Laboratories Network (CFBLNet), which is a wide area network connecting the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, six NATO countries and Sweden for sharing research and development information.

Further reading

• John Borawski, Thomas-Durell Young, NATO After 2000: The Future of the Euro-Atlantic Alliance
• Dr. Thomas-Durell Young, Reforming NATO's Military Structures: The Long-Term Study and Its Implications for Land Forces, Strategic Studies Institute, May 1, 1998. Often taken for granted, the Alliance's integrated command structure provides the basis for NATO's collective defense, and increasingly, as seen in Bosnia, its ability to undertake peace support operations. However, the very value by which nations hold the structure has resulted in a difficult and time-consuming reorganization process, which has produced only limited reforms.
• Dr. Thomas-Durell Young, Multinational Land Formations and NATO: Reforming Practices and Structures, Strategic Studies Institute, December 1, 1997. Reduced national force structures, new NATO roles and missions emanating from the military implementation of Alliance Strategy and the rapid reaction requirements associated with the embryonic Combined Joint Task Forces (CJTF) concept are but three of a multitude of inter-related issues.
• Dr. Thomas-Durell Young, Command in NATO After the Cold War: Alliance, National, and Multinational Consideration, U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, June 1, 1997. The effectiveness of NATO is largely due to the existence of its integrated and multinational command structure.

External links

• http://www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_2011_06/20110609-Backgrounder_Command_Structure.pdf - NATO command structure review June 2011
• Dr Gregory W. Pedlow, The Evolution of NATO’s Command Structure, 1951-2009 (SHAPE Historian)