NATO homelands – A top NATO commander says “home” and “away” no longer separate safely in future conflicts as missiles, cheap long-range drones, and sabotage can reach far beyond what Western militaries planned for during decades of fighting. With air defenses struggling to sc
For decades. Western forces could count on one basic comfort: when they fought far from home. the rear stayed out of reach. But that assumption is breaking down. and a senior NATO commander is putting the change bluntly—future wars may not spare Western homelands even if militaries are deployed overseas.
Sir John Stringer. NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe. told Business Insider that in a serious near-peer conflict. Western countries “can’t count on their homelands remaining safe” while their militaries fight overseas. He said air threats are more numerous and can reach much farther than when the West last fought a major war against a similarly capable adversary.
“The days of thinking that you can sit back and be reactive and engage every threat that comes at you using traditional means like fast jets and some surface-to-air missiles” are over. Stringer warned. arguing that the problem now is volume. If adversaries can fire more drones and missiles than defenders can affordably shoot down. Western countries may have to make hard choices about what gets protected—and what does not.
During the era of post-Cold War interventions, the West had time and experience that shaped expectations. Stringer said the West had at least 20 years of fighting counter-insurgency campaigns. For the UK. he described an operational pattern where forces were deployed “2. 000 or 3. 000 miles off the UK. ” fought. then returned to a “very secure rear area called the United Kingdom.”.
“Those days, sadly, are also gone,” he said.
Instead of rear areas being only theoretically vulnerable. Stringer said powerful missiles and cheap long-range drones—alongside sabotage and mass air attacks—can threaten locations that were once considered safer in the back. NATO’s challenge. he said. is that it may no longer be enough simply to fight overseas while assuming the homeland stays untouched; it is now a matter of protecting “the continent of Europe.”.
The commander’s warning lands with sharper force because it echoes lessons already being drawn from the war in Ukraine. Stringer said the conflict has demonstrated the risk to the West: more drones have been used than in any previous conflict. and long-range ones can be launched in the hundreds in a single night. Long-range missiles have also been launched at a scale the West has not had to face.
Ukraine has also shown how drone threats can emerge far from the front. Stringer highlighted that Ukraine smuggled drones into Russia and launched them at airfields in an operation that it said hit 41 Russian warplanes. That operation—Operation Spiderweb—has been estimated to have caused $7 billion in damage. and current and former military officials have said the West must study the operation closely as a new type of tactic and threat.
The pressure isn’t only about what weapons can reach, but what Western defenses can scale to meet them. Stringer said NATO is investing heavily in air defenses. but he pointed to production backlogs and other barriers that could limit building enough interceptors. sensors. and launchers at the scale a major war would demand.
There is also a deeper doubt behind the numbers. Military officials, including in the US, say that the control of the air Western forces have long relied on in conflicts may simply not be possible in future wars.
Stringer’s comments to Business Insider follow remarks he made at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute in 2023. Then, he said that if the goal is to protect what you have, notions of “home” and “away” and safe rear areas “are no longer there, if indeed they have been for many years now.”
Other officials have been reaching similar conclusions from different angles. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said last year that “The home front and the front line are now one and the same. War is no longer fought at a distance — our societies and militaries are in this together.” He added that NATO will invest more in civil preparedness so societies are ready for a day they “pray will never come. ” and that NATO works 24/7 to ensure that day never arrives.
In the UK. the National Security Strategy 2025 warned that “for the first time in many years. we have to actively prepare for the possibility of the UK homeland coming under direct threat. potentially in a wartime scenario.” Sweden has told its citizens to prepare for the possibility of attacks on home soil.
Russia remains NATO’s most immediate concern, but the planning pressures extend beyond one rival. Stringer said threats are rising from many regions. and that NATO “rightly talks about the threat posed to Europe around 360 degrees.” The US. meanwhile. warns that China’s growing arsenal of long-range weapons could directly threaten the US homeland. as well as US territories and bases closer to it.
A related fact sits underneath all these warnings: during the Cold War. many longer-range weapons had standoff ranges measured in “hundreds of kilometers or miles. ” Stringer said. Now. he said. “we’re now talking thousands of miles. ” and it is not just expensive systems launched off heavy bombers—it is also cheap. uncrewed systems.
Taken together, the message is stark. Ukraine’s use of large numbers of drones and long-range missiles. the described impact of Operation Spiderweb. and the scale of the defense challenge all point toward the same conclusion: the old division between battlefield and homeland is fading. and NATO is being forced to plan for a rear area that may be contested more routinely.
With interceptors. sensors. and launchers facing production backlogs and the possibility that air control may not hold. defenders may not be able to respond to every incoming threat fast enough. In that world, Stringer’s warning about volume becomes less theoretical. It translates directly into risk—and into decisions that will determine what gets protected when the homeland is no longer safely “away” from the fight.
NATO Sir John Stringer NATO Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe air defense long-range drones missiles Ukraine Russia Mark Rutte civil preparedness Sweden UK National Security Strategy 2025 China long-range weapons homeland defense