In recent years, both the Alliance and the European Union have been concerned by shortfalls in essential capabilities — including air-to-air refuelling, stocks of precision-guided munitions, and strategic transport — among European countries. In response, countries are now joining forces in an innovative way to boost capabilities in these areas. And Spain is the lead nation in a consortium of nine working to create a fleet of refuelling aircraft.
Air tankers are expensive assets, but are critical to long-distance deployments in support of other aircraft. Indeed, the United States possesses more than 700 air tankers. The lack of such aircraft in Europe is a major shortfall in EU military capabilities. It could also undermine NATO's ability to respond to crises. For this reason, Belgium, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Spain agreed at NATO's Prague Summit to examine ways to make good this shortfall in the short to medium term.
Both the European Union and NATO have analysed the nature of the air-to-air refuelling shortfall in an effort to identify eventual solutions. At NATO, a High Level Group chaired by the Netherlands developed the first study of the air-to-air refuelling shortfall within the framework of the NATO Defence Capabilities Initiative, the Alliance's high-level programme to increase capabilities.
A more recent effort to improve Europe's air-to-air refuelling capabilities came with the launch of the European Capabilities Action Plan (ECAP) within the framework of the European Union's European Security and Defence Policy. The ECAP set up multidisciplinary panels of experts — known as "ECAP panels" — to address the most serious capability deficiencies. This included an Air-to-Air Refuelling Panel, in which nine EU member states under Spanish and Italian stewardship have been working together with industry to explore cost-effective ways of increasing the number of air tankers in Europe.