NATO's annual summit opens in Ankara on 7 July, with a Defence Industry Forum running alongside the leaders' meeting. The headline politics are about implementation, but the money behind it matters to the security sector.
The target, set at The Hague in 2025, is 5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035, split into at least 3.5 per cent for core military capability and up to 1.5 per cent for broader defence and security-related investment. NATO's own figures show European allies and Canada already lifted spending by close to 139 billion dollars in nominal terms in 2025, a near-20 per cent jump on the year before.
The industrial base is now part of the conversation. The Hague communique leaned, for the first time, into expanding transatlantic defence-industrial cooperation, with allies recognising, in the Atlantic Council's read, that the private sector is critical to reaching 5 per cent. Analysts also flag the scale of the bill: getting the alliance to 5 per cent implies something like 1.9 trillion dollars in additional annual spending, which is why execution, not the target, is the argument in Ankara.
The 1.5 per cent tier is the part to watch from the security side. It covers critical-infrastructure protection, cyber, civil preparedness, resilience and strengthening the industrial base. That is demand that flows well beyond the primes and into physical security, screening, monitoring and the trained-manpower market.
Industry implication: the pipeline is real but it rewards capability, not headcount. Providers positioned on infrastructure protection, resilience and vetted, qualified manpower have the clearest line to this spend. Expect procurement to tighten on quality and compliance as budgets rise, and expect the manpower market to stay tight while public and private demand compete for the same trained people.
