NATO's summit opens in Ankara today, 7 to 8 July, and the theme is execution, not headline-setting. The 5%-of-GDP target was agreed at The Hague last year: 3.5% for core military capability plus up to 1.5% for broader defence and security-related investment, by 2035. Ankara is about turning that into plans and orders.
Secretary General Mark Rutte, previewing the summit, said European allies and Canada are already spending around 4% of GDP on defence and security, called on members to bring 'clear, concrete and credible plans' to reach 5%, and flagged 'tens of billions in new contracts' to be announced (NATO).
Running alongside is the NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum, held today in Ankara — and for the first time it carries high-level announcements through the day across space, surveillance, integrated air and missile defence, and strike (NATO).
The industry read for the security sector: the core-military spend is not the story here. The 1.5% 'broader security' tranche — critical-infrastructure protection, resilience, surveillance, screening, counter-drone and the workforce behind it — is where alliance money increasingly touches the commercial guarding and protective-security market. Two second-order effects to plan for: adjacent demand as national resilience budgets grow, and tighter competition for trained people as defence-industrial hiring ramps up. If you sell security services into government or critical national infrastructure, this is the spending backdrop for the next several years.
