Defence`s Feeds

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

The global market for airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems is projected to grow at a CAGR of 3.2% between 2013 and 2023, despite shrinking military budgets - airborne ISR represents the eyes and ears of modern defence forces, and major U.S. projects such

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From 27 to 29 October 2015, an Awareness Level Module of the European Armament Cooperation Course (EAC) is taking place at the European Defence Agency’s premises. Organised by the European Defence Agency (EDA), the European Security and Defence College (ESDC) and the Austrian Ministry of Defence (MOD) and Sports, the course has attracted the highest number of attendees in its four-year history. Forty-six enrolled students represent thirteen EDA Member States, the European Commission, European External Action Service (EEAS) and Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation (OCCAR). 

The aim of the EAC course is to enhance mutual understanding of the armaments cooperation issues and to serve as a useful networking platform to foster and harmonise armaments cooperation among the Member States. Most of all, it addresses junior personnel who need to gain knowledge and experience in international acquisition and project management. The course also complements the curriculums of available national courses. “We believe that the practitioners who work in national and international armament cooperation can highly profit from the course. We are able to provide them with practical knowledge and understanding of the armament sector along with its frameworks, the stakeholders’ tools and processes as well as challenges and benefits available at the EU level,” says Massimo Guasoni, the EDA Head of Unit Education, Training & Exercise.

Towards Europe’s strategic autonomy 

Rini Goos, the EDA Deputy Chief Executive, welcomed the course participants and, in his speech, he pointed out the key elements for European strategic autonomy and freedom of action: “Apart from working on capabilities, first of all, we must strive to enhance investment in traditional defence research, particularly in collaborative Research & Technology. Secondly, we need a sound European industrial policy. Thirdly, I would like to mention standardisation: a pan-European standardisation approach is the key to increase European competiveness on a global scale and to strengthen the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base Strategy; it is also the main driver for interoperability. And last but not least, civil-military ‘dual-use’ synergies need to be better exploited. It is only if we move ahead along these four strands of work that Europe will be able to attain strategic autonomy and become a security provider rather than a security consumer”.  

Dr Wolfgang Sagmeister from the Austrian MOD being the Course Director will make sure that all the course objectives will have been met. The topics on the agenda are much varied and include the presentations of the EDA and the ESDC; military dimension of the Common Security and Defence Policy; EU military capability development along with the EDA Capability Development Plan, current trends in military defence capability development; intercultural aspects in international cooperation; EU Defence policies in a wider context, and other.  

The EAC course traditionally comprises two parts: an Awareness Level Module taking place in Brussels, and an Expert Level Course, which will be held from 23 to 27 November 2015 in Warsaw, Poland. However, in order to attend the course, it is mandatory to complete an Internet-based Distant Learning (IDL) module offered by the ESDC. 

Shaping an educational platform Since 2006, the EDA had been working towards establishing a proper training frame in response to the growing needs for harmonised education in the armament acquisition field. In 2009, the Czech Republic’s EU Presidency supported the creation of a new European armaments cooperation course, providing an EU-wide training platform where a common understanding of a European approach to armaments cooperation could be promoted. The EDA Member States welcomed the initiative and later that year the EDA Steering Board, in the National Armaments Directors configuration, approved the top-level European Armaments Cooperation (EAC) Framework, under which the current course was established.

In 2013, thanks to the initiative of Austria and other like-minded countries, including the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, the course took its current form. It followed the success of the pilot European Armaments Cooperation Course organised in Brussels and Stadtschlaining in 2012.

More information:

• News: "EDA organises joint course with European Security and Defence College" (28 October 2014)
• European Security and Defence College website

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The European Commission and the European Defence Agency (EDA) launched the Consultation Forum for Sustainable Energy in the Defence and Security Sector today. The Consultation Forum highlights the importance of energy and energy security as a defence capability. Its aim is to examine how energy efficiency measures and renewable energy sources might be better implemented within the European defence sector. 

“Europe’s armed forces are continuously working towards improving their energy efficiency as well as energy security. The consultation now offers an opportunity to explore important areas of energy policy implementation which will be of benefit to the armed forces as well as the EU as a whole. It also confirms the Agency’s unique position as interface between armed forces, European institutions as well as the expert community“, said Jorge Domecq, EDA Chief Executive, at the occasion of the consultation’s launch. 

"The Consultation Forum is part of a wider EU action to bring energy efficiency in all areas, including in the defence and security sector, allowing the sector to be a more competitive and efficient and to reap the full benefit of single market. The sector has a strong interest in reducing its energy footprint and could thus make an important contribution to the Union’s energy targets", said Paul Hodson, Head of Energy Efficiency Unit in the Energy Directorate General in the European Commission. 

The Consultation Forum brings together European experts from the energy and the defence sectors with the aim to deliver benefits in support of the European Commission’s energy efficiency and renewable policies. 

The Consultation Forum is divided into three working groups. The first examines the management and behavioural aspects of energy efficiency. The second tackles energy efficiency in relation to infrastructure primarily, but also in wider defence estate and – on request of Member States – in deployed camps within Europe and EU operations as well as other military platforms. The third addresses the use and production of renewable energy sources. 

All in all, it is estimated that 120 defence policy and planning as well as engineering and logistics experts plus representatives from academia, industry and national ministries will contribute to the work. The first plenary session of the Consultation Forum for Sustainable Energy in the Defence and Security Sector will take place on 14-15 January  2016 in Brussels.   

 

Background 

The work is conducted under the umbrella of EDA’s Energy and Environment programme. The programme is designed to identify areas of common interest for European armed forces as well as to create and understand the framework for a comprehensive approach to energy management for military forces. The programme also aims to identify fully integrated solutions where both energy reduction and environmental impact are assessed together. The EDA Energy and Environment Working Group was established in June 2014 and has so far worked on a number of projects including the Strategic Research Agenda, a Demand Management (Smart Camp) Technical Demonstrator which has recently been deployed to Mali and Power Purchase Agreements (Go Green). 

 

More information:

• Energy & Environment project page
• Dedicated website on the Consultation Forum

On 13-14 October 2015, the European Defence Agency (EDA) organised the Test & Evaluation (T&E) Collaboration Workshop to bring the concept of T&E Collaboration support closer to the Member States and, for the first time, to provide practical training in cooperation mechanisms and available tools. 

Representatives of six Member States participated in the training event, i.e. Cyprus, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Romania, and the United Kingdom. The workshop was directed to national test centres, project managers and coordinators who may request the EDA T&E Collaboration support. 

The workshop’s agenda covered the whole package of available tools, not only the Defence Test and Evaluation Base (DTEB). Additionally, it offered practical training opportunities with exercises and tests to improve the understanding of the T&E Collaboration operation. 

The workshop started with the theory part, during which the participants were presented with how the EDA T&E Collaboration works, along with some way ahead for the future. The practical part of the training included live exercises with the use of dedicated support tools. In particular, the Defence Test and Evaluation Base (DTEB) was used for initiating cooperation, the Collaboration Database (CODOBA) tool for the management of the cooperation, and the Capability Development Plan (CDP)  for capability implications. Additionally, the training touched upon the standardisation aspects in accordance with the European Defence Standards Reference System (EDSTAR). 

The workshop participants discussed the utility of support tools and the practical ways of cooperation under the different schemes, e.g. test arrangements, Category A/B projects, working groups and EDSTAR expert groups. “The  constructive feedback from the participants will enable us to further optimise the tools and make them as user-friendly as possible,” said Thomas Honke, an EDA project officer on T&E, Qualification and Standardisation. The T&E Collaboration Workshop ended with an official hand-over ceremony of certificates. 

The EDA plans to offer further annual T&E collaboration training events using this format.

Background

The European Defence Agency has taken up the initiative of supporting European Test and Evaluation (T&E) Collaboration in 2013 in a systematic approach. Since that time, the DTEB database has been created enabling enhanced networking amongst T&E facilities and capabilities in Europe. The database is additionally linked to the EDSTAR, CODABA and CDP tools in order to allow swift identification of potential cooperation opportunities and future T&E capability requirements for common staff targets. Moreover, the EDA has initiated a crosscutting T&E expert group in EDSTAR to identify best practice T&E standardisation and to further stimulate T&E cooperation.

More information: 

• Project page Defence Test and Evaluation Base (DTEB) 
• Defence Test and Evaluation Base (DTEB) factsheet

Greetings CCLKOW readers. Today we bring to you a new guest author, @fightingsailor, an officer of the Royal Navy whose biography you can find below. In this piece he discusses the implications of budgets, efficiency and effectiveness. With the latest Strategic Defence and Security Review eagerly awaited here in the United Kingdom, the matter of managing defence in an era of constrained budgets weighs heavily upon the proceedings. In this piece, our author contends with the conflicts and contradictions of the various means to ‘do more with less.’ Although focussed on issues facing defence in the UK, as the American defence establishment grapples again with the demands of sequestration the piece should resonate with the audience on that side of the pond. So, read the piece, consider the questions, and join the discussion on Twitter at #CCLKOW.

 

“My department’s budget may be rising again but there will be no let-up in getting more value for money… Efficiency savings mean we will be able to spend more on cyber, more on unmanned aircraft, more on the latest technology, keeping ahead of our adversaries.”  – Michael Fallon MP, Secretary of State for Defence [1]

 

In this short essay I will examine what value for money means in the context of Defence and whether the inevitable SDSR [2] drive for greater ‘efficiency’ is, in fact, counter-productive in achieving the purpose of the Armed Forces.

As the Secretary of State alludes, the drive for ‘Value for Money’ in Defence  is usually shorthand for efficiency.  Efficiency is the ratio of output to input.  In other words, the drive for greater efficiency means attempting to do more with less or, at least, doing the same with less or more with the same.  There are a couple of issues here for defence strategists.  First, there is an inherent assumption that we understand what our outputs are. We go to great lengths to define these and set up business agreements between the different parts of Defence to ensure that everybody plays their agreed part in delivering them.  This implies, generally, that the purpose of the Armed Forces is to output Forces ready to be used for operations. In part this is true, especially if one applies the POSIWID principle [3], but surely the purpose of the military is to deliver successful Government policy outcomes.  Many of the outputs of Defence may not be relevant to achieving such outcomes in any given crisis.  Take the recent Operation GRITROCK, the UK Military’s contribution to the fight against Ebola in West Africa.  This wasn’t part of any Force Design or Force Testing scenario that I am aware of, and was delivered using Forces whose justification for existence (and thus attribution of input resources such as funding) was for other Military Tasks [4], yet a positive policy outcome was achieved for Her Majesty’s Government. The point here is that where Military Forces exist, they are rarely used for the specific purpose for which their requirements were set, but rather they have broader utility as instruments for Government policy; providing that they exist in the first place.  This is particularly true of units such as warships where the variety of missions that, say, a Type 23 frigate is able to undertake is far in excess of the predominantly anti-submarine mission for which she was originally designed.  So, the Value for Money is generated by buying as much capability as you can afford that is useable in the broadest range of scenarios.

Except; this logic forces you down a route of planning for the most likely scenario.  In risk management terms this is planning for the expected outcome.  This approach works if you’re an insurer and can aggregate your risks across many thousands of policy holders; or a health service whose usage rates by a population can, on average, be meaningfully planned for.  But the Military instrument is not like that.  We have been seduced into thinking that military campaigns have a steady drumbeat of 6 monthly roulements through theatres: whether Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland or one of the many routine operational deployments of the Royal Navy.  If we gear our entire establishment around this model we will achieve efficiency (of sorts) but we will fail strategically.  I say this because what really defines successful use of the military is its response to crisis, and the sort of crisis that becomes generationally defining.  The Falkands in 1982 is the obvious post-WW2 example but Sierra Leone, Iraq in 1991and the Kosovo intervention are other examples where it went well.  Operational failure in warfighting, especially when vital national interests are stake, changes the international balance of power and can redefine a nation’s place in the world order – the outcome is of strategic significance. It’s the stuff that brings down Governments.  To be ready to respond to crises which are, by their nature, largely unexpected takes systemic agility.  This agility comes from diligent contingency planning and meticulous preparation but necessitates a substantial degree of spare capacity in the system that can be drawn upon when the unexpected occurs.  Spare capacity is, self-evidently, not a feature of an efficient system. This is not, therefore about the management of risks to outputs but, rather, about the uncertainty of outcome.  The difference between risk and uncertainty?  In the former the probability distribution of possible outcomes is known, in the latter it is not.  It means you need a different set of management techniques.  That’s why stockpiles and reserves must be maintained, even though they may not have been drawn upon for years, because if they are needed they will be needed in a hurry; and once the button gets pushed it will be too late if they do not exist.  A push for efficiency at the expense of all else risks confusing activity with effect.  So in all that we do we should prepare for the most extreme outcome: high-end warfighting against a world-class adversary.  This should drive our requirements, training and manpower but importantly it should drive our intellectual preparation.  Concepts and doctrine must drive the other lines of development towards dealing with the evolving character of warfare and novel technologies must drive, and be driven by, the need to retain operational edge.  Of course, this will be constrained by the available resource but we need the moral courage to balance the activity of today with setting the conditions for successful effect tomorrow.  Within a system incentivised by annual appraisal this is especially challenging.  Ironically, and perhaps even paradoxically, the better we prepare to win wars, the less likely it is that we will have to fight them and thus our Forces can be used more readily for lower intensity operations.  If you want peace, prepare for war!

But however we define our capabilities and capacities, surely within the Force Development and Generation cycles there are efficiencies to be had? Why don’t we just cut the ‘red tape’ and stop spending money on bureaucrats and pen pushers?  This is an attractive battle-cry when it comes to seeking ways to save money on the generation of military capability and, indeed, in the spending of public money in the round.  The problem, however, is that every bureaucrat, no matter how inefficiently they work, is there to service a process which fulfils a function.  To get rid of the bureaucrat you need to establish that their function is no longer required (at least in the same quantity). But most of these processes are conducted to give a degree of management control and/or assurance over different aspects of the organisation: financial management and probity; contractual propriety; safety and environmental management; commodities management; human resource; etc, etc.  So what functions can we do without? Well, none of them actually.  We can reduce the amount of each that we conduct but, here’s the crunch, we must then be prepared to delegate and empower individuals to do make decisions and commit resources without the levels of assurance and managerial control that have been previously demanded.  In short, we must take risk against these processes and this means that mistakes will occur more frequently; and we must accept that this is not failure, but the system working as it was now designed.  And if we want individuals to hold such increased risk personally, then we may find that they need greater recognition and/or remuneration as part of the deal for doing so.  Process and bureaucracy are like a kelp forest for a scuba diver – it is no one strand that substantially impedes your passage, but the overall effect means a disproportionate effort is required to make progress.

So, beware the inevitable ‘efficiency drive’ after the coming SDSR.  Without a properly reformed system that removes management and assurance processes and delivers a commensurate increases in delegation, it will simply be code for reducing the number of people available to complete a similar amount of process.  The strands of kelp get packed closer together and progress becomes harder than it was before.  There is a real risk of not only achieving a less efficient system as a result, but also one less effective at delivering its real purpose, achieving desirable government policy outcomes using the military instrument. And during the SDSR process the arguments must be made to retain as much high-end warfighting capability as we can possibly afford in order to give the agility to deliver such outcomes, including novel ones like cyber and unmanned systems.  And finally, having sufficient warfighting capability makes it less likely that you will have to use it for this purpose.  If you think peacetime Armed Forces are expensive, try having a war!

. . .

Following this review of the issues of defence management and budgets, the following questions are put forward for consideration and discussion:

1. Have western defence bureaucracies gone too far in adopting modern business practices and values? That is, do the terms of prudence in the private sector apply well to requirements of defence?

2. What should drive peacetime budgets and military plans? Should the aim be to spend the least and hope for the best until war arrives? 

3. Can armed forces and defence bureaucracies afford to reduce their processes and accept less control during peacetime?

4. What would you cut, and why?

. . .

@fightingsailor is a Royal Navy Weapon Engineer Officer with substantial operational and staff experience. At sea he has undertaken operational deployments to the Mediterranean (Libya), Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean (whilst participating in Operations DEFERENCE, ELLAMY, TELIC and KIPION); as well as to Arctic Russia, the Baltic region and the East Coast of the USA. Ashore he served in Afghanistan as the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) Liaison Officer to Task Force Helmand. Staff appointments have predominantly focussed on capability planning, management and strategy. They have included: the Ministry of Defence, PJHQ J6 and the Maritime Capability Division of Navy Command HQ. A graduate of the UK Defence Academy’s Advanced Command and Staff Course (ACSC) he has a keen interest in developing ‘good thinking’ in Defence.

 

 

Notes:

[1] Speech to Conservative Party Conference, 4 Oct 15, https://www.politicshome.com/foreign-and-defence/articles/news/michael-fallons-speech-conservative-conference accessed 10 Oct 15.

[2] Strategic Defence and Security Review. The UK Government’s quinquennial review of Defence and Security Strategy.

[3] The Purpose of a System is What it Does. Brilliantly explained on the thinkpurpose website: http://thinkpurpose.com/2012/11/07/3-brilliant-systems-ideas-that-will-explode-in-your-face-2/, accessed 11 Oct 15.

[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-defence/about accessed 11 Oct 15.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) is continuing to promote maritime affairs and to develop, with Member States, the next generation of mine counter measure solutions via the successful delivery of Unmanned Maritime Systems projects. 

The latest of the fifteen coordinated projects to be successfully delivered, that comprise the Unmanned Maritime Systems (UMS) Programme, one of the largest in the Agency, is the SIRAMIS project. This Dutch-led project, consisted of seven Contributing Members and addressed the knowledge gap of ship signatures with the overall aim of understanding ship signature interaction with multi-influence mines at a close range. This project presented a considerable challenge for the consortium, which comprised of industry, national research centres and academia, both in terms of signature measurement and signature analysis. It also placed an emphasis on cooperation and mutual support, which are the hallmarks of the EDA projects. 

With the successful delivery of this project, plans are at an advanced stage for a follow-on project that will build on the advancements already made and will further address the modelling and simulation dimensions. A feature of the UMS programme is the coordination between projects, and the developments and gains made have positive implications for the follow-on Modular Lightweight Mine Sweeping project that will be launched shortly. 

Maritime Conferences

The EDA is co-organising two conferences on maritime topics. These conferences present an opportunity to engage with key stakeholders and to fully explore and address the pertinent issues relating to the maritime domain. 

The first conference will be held on 29th October 2015 in Berlin and is co-organised with EuroDefense Deutschland. The conference will focus on key questions that relate to UMS and principally address the operational perspective of the introduction of UMS, collaborative efforts resulting in technological advancements and, lastly, the area of legislation, safety and regulation will be explored.  

The second conference will take place on the 12/13 November 2015 in Nicosia and is co-organised with the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Cyprus. The conference will be  conducted within the framework of the Luxembourg Presidency of the European Council. The focus of the conference will be on the Maritime Security Strategy and it will explore the challenges and potential benefits of the implementation of the strategy via its action plan. In particular, the conference will address Europe’s sea lines of communication and the challenges facing European navies. It will also examine the potential of the strategy to be considered as a catalyst for Civilian Military coordination.

More information:

• Invitation for Maritime Unmanned Systems Conference
• Invitation for Maritime Security Conference
• Unmanned Maritime Systems (UMS) research 

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Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

The European Defence Agency invites all users of its Procurement Gateway to participate in a user experience survey. The gateway features defence related business opportunities and information. It aims at providing easy access to defence related information for European government officials, as well as industry representatives and researchers. 

The survey, available until 30.10.2015, will allow the Agency to better understand the needs and expectations of gateway users. It only takes a couple of minutes to be completed and all data shared will be of course treated with complete confidentiality and anonymity.

Share your user feedback, help us improve!

Participate in the survey here.

The Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg has adopted the revised decision on the statute, seat and operational rules of the European Defence Agency.

The text is available here in all EU languages.

Photo: Stuart Price