With its ammo stocks dwindling and its tanks being dusted off for Ukraine, Europe gears up for a major boost in defense spending

(Originally published Feb. 17 in “What in the World“) Russia launched a fresh wave of missile and drone attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure, part of a new offensive that, despite some humiliating failures, Moscow claims is already making gains.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed in an interview not to yield an inch of Ukrainian soil to Moscow as a condition for peace. To help him keep that pledge, members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are stepping up pledges of tanks to Ukraine and promising to boost production of ammunition to address a worsening shortage. They also aim to finally meet their 2014 pledges to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense. Estonia is calling for that target to be lifted even higher, to 2.5% of GDP.

For its part, Latvia intends to follow Baltic neighbors Estonia and Lithuania in boosting its defenses against Russia by buying several Himars multiple rocket launchers as well as naval strike missiles. Latvia’s defense minister, Ināra Mūrniece, said the plan is for Latvia, a former Soviet satellite and now a NATO member, to buy six of Lockheed Martin’s M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems and an unspecified number of NSMs from two companies that used them to develop the Nasams (National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System) that’s being provided by the U.S. to Ukraine—Raytheon and Norway’s Konigsberg. Latvia also intends to reintroduce mandatory military service.