32 b. Planning To define and achieve its national level of ambition, Luxembourg must plan and manage its existing resources and assets and those it intends to acquire. This national planning process is conducted within the framework of policy and military objectives and commitments, of processes and of partnerships, in part mandatory, and it must allow the policy decisions and objectives, the operational in-theatre commitments decided by the Allies and the mandatory NATO planning process to be realized. Several factors and considerations thus structure and determine the planning of the resources and assets of the Luxembourg Defence: • Policy and military objectives Luxembourg’s adherence to international policy objectives and commitments has significant consequences in terms of structures, resources, preparation and engagement of forces, capability building & commitment and in terms of partnering choices, which inform the transformation and adaptation of the forces. These commitments have a direct effect on the armed forces’ organization, resulting in a transformation of our forces and a demanding time line and framework for Luxembourg’s armed forces. This has profound repercussions for the management of human resources, equipment, training and organization, and requires adjustments in terms of the interoperability of our forces and an adaptation of our decision-making mechanisms. • Mechanisms and bodies involved in capability development, acquisition, management and monitoring NATO and the EU have mechanisms to ensure the development, availability and coherence of available capabilities: each of the Allies and EU Member States must develop at national level capabilities that can be pooled for collective defence. Within NATO, this capability development mechanism takes the form of the NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP), which sets concrete objectives for all Allies in four-year cycles and comprises an annual review and monitoring component. It includes tools for evaluation and comparison against quantitative and qualitative benchmarks. Individual Allies are required to achieve objectives assigned to and accepted by them on a national basis in order to contribute, in solidarity, to meeting the Alliance’s needs. Luxembourg is therefore assigned a number of capability objectives to be achieved in the short and medium terms. The European Union mechanism is currently more flexible and functions on a voluntary basis. It is synchronized with the NATO mechanism. The establishment of a Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) in connection with the implementation of the Global Strategy for security will also contribute to improving the coordination of national efforts. For acquisition, monitoring and, where the need arises, employment of capabilities, the Luxembourg Defence favours pooling and the use of existing structures. It therefore engages at various levels in the European Defence Agency (EDA), the European Air Transport Command (EATC), the NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA), and the Luxembourg-based NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA). • Bilateral and multilateral cooperation Luxembourg’s troops deploy within multinational contingents. For these contingents to be operational, it must be ensured that the troops and resources deployed by each country are interoperable, in order to guarantee the effectiveness of the chain of command. The capabilities acquired by Luxembourg must function within a multinationally coherent whole. Engagement alongside our key partners informs Luxembourg’s decisions and enhances the legitimacy thereof as regards capability investments and operational deployments. For Luxembourg, cooperation between Allies and EU Member States is both a necessity and a deliberate choice. The aims of this cooperation are, in particular, to jointly acquire or employ shared capabilities or to ensure the interoperability of forces. Interoperability is a critical requirement because of the increasing complexity of operational situations and the technicality of assets and processes. It involves all areas of cooperation, ranging from common acquisition of capabili-