The two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers comes as the 28-member alliance is close to concluding an air-and-sea campaign in Libya that saw Muammar Gaddafi overthrown without a single NATO casualty.

However, NATO remains bogged down in a hugely expensive war in Afghanistan, where 10 years of Western fighting has failed to subdue a Taliban insurgency, and officials say the extra effort in Libya has exposed limitations that must be addressed.

In the lead-up to a NATO summit in Chicago in May, alliance Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen wants members to identify projects in which they can cooperate to make best use of resources at a time of severe economic austerity in which defense budgets have been particularly badly hit.