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also facilitate industry involvement in pooling and
sharing. Since most of the government-to-government
frameworks for international defense cooperation
have thus far been bilateral, the regulations and procedures
for armaments cooperation need to be adapted
for multinational procurement and cooperation.
9. Enhanced coordination of national defense
programing timetables is also essential for significant
pooling and sharing to succeed. Nations must
exchange information on projected national procurement
processes to ensure that production cycles in
such areas as requirements, development, procurement,
and maintenance are in sync. All such coordination
should also be linked to NATO defense planning,
as appropriate.
Further, the number of variants of military systems
should be minimized. This will make maintenance
and training, coordination of doctrine and operational
concepts, and the use of common logistics easier and
less costly. Of course, the most effective allied cooperation
requires that military systems be interoperable,
with common standards and certifications.
10. Bottom-up involvement in pooling and sharing
is likely to be the most successful approach. As
described previously, pooling-and-sharing activities
by small groups of nations have been ongoing, for decades
in some instances, and such regional and subregional
arrangements will likely be the major engine
for more of these arrangements. Experience indicates
that projects organized by nations that are geographically
close, that generally share common values, and
that have similar threat perceptions are more likely
to be developed and actually implemented. At the
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