“Imagine this: seventy years of military technical advancement crammed into ten years. That is the challenge NATO must confront if it is to preserve the peace”.
Professor Julian Lindley-French
October 1st
Why S & I?
On Tuesday I had the very distinct honour of addressing the seventieth anniversary meeting of the Committee for Standardization at NATO HQ in Brussels in support of my old friend, Assistant Secretary-General Camille Grand and Lieutenant General Scott Kindsvater. My presentation was entitled “Seventy Years On: Meeting the Standardization-Interoperability Challenge”. My message was characteristically blunt as it needed to be: critical to the future Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area will be the speed of relevance of allied defence capability and capacity with unity of effort and purpose integrated at the level and myriad points of required network-centric effect.
Why? Standardization and Interoperability are two sides of the same capability and capacity ‘coin’ and key to generating credible and relevant force at an affordable cost in the post-COVID 19 environment. However, NATO’s future architecture, together with the specialisation and interoperability that supports it, will need to change rapidly over the coming decade. Central to that will be the ability of the Alliance to move forces and resources across its area of operations far more nimbly and securely than today, with the digital at least as important as the physical.
This is because the Alliance faces two possibly existential challenges: the now war and the future war. The now war is already underway and stretches across the 5Ds of complex strategic coercion in the form of systematically applied deception, disinformation, destabilisation, disruption and implied or actual destruction. In a speech this week General Sir Nick Carter, Chief of the UK Defence Staff acknowledged as much in his vision of a new British Integrated Operating Concept. What he was describing was, in effect, a future defence against future war, the deterring which will become NATO’s primary over the next decade. The speed of command and warfare will accelerate exponentially as super-computing steadily gives way to quantum computing which in turn drives forward increasingly intelligent and autonomous artificially intelligent drones and other systems. Given that what will NATO’s ‘battlespace’ look like in 2030? Bio, hypersonics, Nano, big data and advanced machine learning will all abound? NATO needs to answer that question because if it does not others will, most notably China and Russia.
How S & I?
How? Let me assume that in spite of the growing threat to Europe from the likes of China, Russia and a host of global reach, catastrophe-seeking terrorist groups, Europeans are not going to opt for what would theoretically at least be the most efficient application of limited security and defence resources – a common defence. Given that, and the growing pressure on the United States and its armed forces from a host of threats the world over, the only logical way for Europeans to close the yawning gap between the defence they need and the defence they can afford is to forge a much closer collective defence ‘identity’ through NATO.
Only NATO can ensure standardization and interoperability take place at sufficiently high a level to preserve and strengthen the all-important deterrent: high-end military interoperability with the US future force. The purpose of NATO of standardization and interoperability should thus be the creation of a robust, digitized, high-end, first responder, multi-domain fully autonomous (if needs be) NATO Europe Future Force able to operate alongside US forces in an emergency and deal with the most pressing of contingencies in and around the Euro-Atlantic air, sea, land, cyber, space area of operations if US forces are busy elsewhere. Critically, such a force must be ready by 2030 at the latest. If not, then we Europeans will be complicit in creating the conditions for future war through the de facto appeasement of a fast changing and dangerous reality and the slow retreat of NATO forces into deep vulnerability via the Maginot Line cul-de-sac that is low-end force 'co-operability'.
The EU certainly has a role to play. PESCO, the European Defence Agency, the European Defence Fund and the Co-ordinated Annual Review of Defence (CARD) have a critical role to play. There will also be several EU and NATO countries that will be very keen for such an effort to be focussed on the former to 'protect' their respective defence industries. However, if standardisation is EU-led it will inevitably be more to the analogue rather than the digital end of the future tech industrial standards that will increasingly shape the future force. This would lower the capability centre of gravity of the European Future Force and weaken interoperability in the future complex battlespace between US and European forces. This would inevitably place US forces under even more pressure to be the vanguard of all Allied military engagements. Enemies will know this and thus seek to create as many simultaneous attacks as possible to expose NATO’s critical and growing vulnerability: US military over-stretch and an inability of non-US forces to withstand shock or generate a meaningful response in the wake of a high-end attack in Europe.
Will industry play ball? NATO S and I must be as much about shaping and exploiting industrial tech standards as building the future force. It needs to. The NATO Industrial Advisory Group (NIAG) has a vital role to play. However, the age of naïve globalisation must be brought to an end. Allied governments must convince the West’s civilian tech-industry to be a little less global and little more Western when it comes to future defence and deterrence. After all, that is precisely what Beijing has done by investing in the ‘Chinaisation’ of its tech and the standardization and joint interoperability of its own increasingly impressive future force. Parochial Euro-Atlantic defence industrial protectionism will also need to be removed from these issues with the NATO Europe Future Force a driver of defence technological and industrial innovation via better aligned US and European security and defence industrial interests.
In short that will mean a host of projects that see US tech opened up with better European access to US ‘black box’ technology, far earlier industrial involvement in both European-led and US-led project specifications (e.g. a much better version of the F35 programme), with Europeans far more willing to buy far more off the US shelf without inflated US servicing contracts. Finally, Europeans will need to create a much wider concept of what is a 'defence' industry in the 2020s. The British ‘Aircraft Carrier Alliance’ is a case in point. To build the new ships the ACA sought to exploit much of the national supply chain and far beyond. It was lumpy and costly but important lessons about innovation were learned. In return the US must commit to buy far more European equipment with the NATO Europe Future Force a vehicle for the development of much more European ‘kit’ the US might want to buy. That means a European Defence and Technological Industrial Base (EDTIB) that is far broader, far more responsive and far better at fielding advanced ‘make a difference’ equipment than today, as well as agile enough to support a host of new technologies (AI) and the start-up companies that drive much of the innovation.
What about M?
Innovative and creative thinking will be as critical as adaptive systems, even if that means changing the way NATO does business. For example, I am currently supporting a major project on enhancing and improving military mobility during a crisis in Europe. Indeed, it is impossible to discuss the future of standardisation and interoperability without also considering military mobility, because the ability to move forces and resources quickly are an essential component of credible defence and deterrence. Frankly, until the European allies share roughly the same strategic assessment with each other, and more or less that of the US, the danger is that little will move S, I and M from being a series of partial, tactical-level projects to becoming part of the Alliance’s future strategic defence and deterrence architecture. Perhaps by introducing other adaptive instruments such as military mobility to the S & I debate, and linking all of it to a new narrative about the enhanced civ-mil crisis mobility it fosters, the Allies will begin to draw their own conclusions about how best to meet their NATO obligations in the most efficient and effective manner possible in the changed and fast changing post COVID-19 strategic environment.
There is, of course, a politico-strategic dimension to all of this. Implicit in S, I and M is a very different concept of transatlantic burden-sharing. In simple terms, unless Europeans demonstrate to Americans a far greater willingness to share the burden of their own defence in time the Americans may not only be unwilling to bear the load, but also unable. Europeans must not dismiss this threat to the Alliance. The Trump narrative that Europeans are free-riders on the US is taking hold. An opinion poll conducted for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on September 17th entitled “Divided We Stand” and led by Dina Smelz, was clear if unsettling. Americans continue to view alliances as a key part of US international engagement, and a majority continue to believe alliances benefit American interests. However, 57% of Americans interviewed support the Trump administration’s decision to decrease the number of US troops in Germany, whilst an additional 16% percent believed that all US troops should be withdrawn from Germany.” The good news is that 73% of those interviewed believe the US should remain committed to NATO, whilst 52% supported the use of US forces in the event of a Russian invasion of the Baltic States.
NATO 3.0: The Future Integrated Operating Defence and Deterrence Architecture
Standardization, interoperability and mobility are means to an end for enhanced Allied defence and defence in a fast changing and deteriorating strategic environment. Central to NATO’s ability to fight its now and future war about the re-balancing of NATO’s ends, ways and means. To achieve that the Allies have to become far better at dividing the political from the structural which prevents the proper assessment of what NATO will need from its nations in the decade to come. This means moving the NATO debate beyond the stale question of whether Allies spend 2% of GDP on defence by 2024 of which 20% per annum must be on new equipment. Rather, the debate must become far more focussed on the best application of collective resources in pursuit of NATO’s future defence and deterrence architecture. Here, it is the responsibility of the Alliance to offer its political leaders, and indeed its citizens (like me) a clear vision of such an architecture so that we all know what we are paying for. That means going significantly further than both the Defence and Deterrence of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA) document or the 2019 NATO Military Strategy. NATO needs a new Strategic Concept for a new Strategic Architecture!
There also needs to be a much clearer NATO strategic narrative with enhanced standardization, interoperability and mobility at its adaptation, innovation-led core. A new narrative which states unequivocally that in spite of COVID-19 not only are we Europeans moving to do more for our own defence we are determined to build together a new digitised defence within the framework of a new N|TO Integrated Operating Architecture. And, that we fully understand that NATO defence and deterrence cannot be separated from global peace for which a strong US remains essential. For that reason Europeans together recognise the urgent need to ease pressures on US forces by building the first responder, high end, cross domain European future force.
Next steps? This week and for the first time the new British heavy aircraft-carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth took on a full air wing of F35 Lightning 2 strike aircraft and Merlin helicopters as part of NATO Exercise Joint Warrior. The force is comprised of aircraft from RAF 617 (Dambusters) Squadron, the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm and, critically, US Marines Corps strike aircraft from (VFMA) 211 Squadron. It is an example of not just deep standardization and interoperability, but the deep joint and combined force operating concept that must be a central pillar of NATO’s 2030 defence and deterrence architecture. Such interoperability will be vital to enabling the US to make better use of its forces and resources the world over and keep a strong deterrence presence in Europe with allies. Burden-sharing in politically demonstrable action.
Ultimately, enhanced standardization, interoperability and mobility are critical to what must be a new transatlantic strategic security and defence ‘contract’ – NATO 3.0. The US will continue to guarantee European defence in return for Europeans not only doing far more for their own defence, but helping the Americans to help them. As such, S, I & M afford the Alliance not only tactical value, but strategic value. Why? Over the next decade seventy years of military-technological advancement really will be crammed into ten and force upon the world-wide web of democracies of which NATO is a critical part the most profound of choices: do we choose to be strategic prey or do we have teeth?
Julian Lindley-French
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