00:00We're here at the NATO Defense Industry Forum alongside NATO's summit in Ankara,
00:06where billions and billions of dollars in new defense deals have been signed today,
00:10scaling up NATO's capabilities. I'm joined by the Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation,
00:16Admiral Pierre Vendier, who is going to explain to us what all this new money means. Now, Admiral,
00:22what NATO really needs, and it knows it needs this, is to be able to move faster, to adjust
00:27faster, to be more agile, to adapt really to what your biggest adversary is learning on the battlefield,
00:35Russia. So tell me how all of these new deals are going to make NATO into that faster animal.
00:41I think the first signal which is sent by all these announcements is the seriousness of the nations.
00:47So they say they put the money, the money is there, you have bang for the buck. So that is
00:52very good
00:53news. They are serious. They are sending a very strong strategic message. We are doing it. Now,
00:58the question we have is for the following years is, do we buy what we need for the future?
01:06And that is a big question given the evolving character of war, what we've seen in Ukraine,
01:12what we've seen in the Middle East. And so we know that what we buy today is not enough.
01:18And so we need to complement it. It's not old-fashioned. It's really good stuff. But we know
01:24that a tank without drones, without protection, is an easy target. We know the same for the frigates.
01:31We know that the future combat aircraft needs some CCAs, which is a collaborative platform around it.
01:38And so we need to build that. That is centric on AI, on satellites, on space capabilities,
01:46and on computing, on software.
01:48So you're still buying the old traditional stuff, the tanks, the fighter jets, but you're enhancing
01:52them with AI and with, for example, drone protection around all major weapons systems,
01:58right? That's something that's new, that drones are the protectors of the old legacy systems.
02:02For example, if you look at Epic Furry, it's a fight that has been run by four carriers that have
02:09been put at the sea a decade ago, or some decades ago. And they're still relevant with F-35s,
02:16but they've been complemented with MQ-9, with the MQ-4s, with surface drones. Remember that the Apache
02:23fight, the flight of Apache, the pilots have been rescued by a drone in the Strait of Armours. It was
02:29the
02:29best way to get them there. So all the lessons we see in Ukraine are arriving everywhere. And so
02:34it's a question of speed now. How fast we integrate these new things to be better protected, to lose
02:41less people. You don't pay a pension when you lose a drone. You pay a pension when you lose a
02:46soldier.
02:47So it's better to lose a drone. And so these new ways of doing the war are arriving very fast.
02:52And now the frontline is nothing but drones, right? On both sides. People don't even go there anymore
02:56when you're talking about the front line between Ukraine and Russia. So Ukraine is very specific,
03:00because it's a it's a sanctuarized static front line or very, very few gains or losses on the both
03:08side. So it's a it's a meat grinder. Mr. Zelensky today announced that they killed or disabled 30,000
03:16soldiers this month on Ukraine, on the Russian side. So it's very specific, but we've seen a more dynamic
03:23aspect of this kind of war in the Gulf, where you shoot drones all the day and disable some
03:30capabilities, some tankers, some headquarters. So what makes this possible is today the drones have
03:39software that makes a lot of autonomous things. They can navigate by themselves. They can recognize
03:45the target by themselves. They can be retasked by space during the flight. So this is new ways of doing
03:51the war. So when I'm looking at the big deals that were announced today, a lot of them are still
03:56familiar names, the old primes, Airbus, Northrop Grumman, Saab. So how can you spend all of this money
04:05on the big guys and still nurture the small startups that are providing so much of the necessary
04:12capabilities and agility, for example, in drones, but also in other technologies in the Baltic States
04:18and in Ukraine? So it's what we do in ACT. So it's quite simple. In fact, we de-risk. So
04:24we make
04:25large-scale experiments. We've done that with the USV in the Baltic. And today you have a good example.
04:31Italy is running with a massive investment in drones thanks to what we've done. It's the same in the Black
04:37Sea and the same in the Northern Sea. And so today we have just paved the way to just explain
04:44what kind
04:45of standards, what kind of concepts. And then that brings the mission. Give you an example. During
04:50one month last year, we hired 50 boats for 10 million of euros during one month. The average cost
04:58of the AVA Baltic Sentry with four surface combatants in two MPM missions a day is the equivalent of two
05:06days of hiring 50 boats. So you see this kind of trade-off. A frigate is good for making some
05:15assaults with special forces on a non-compliant ship. But just to monitor a vast area, it's not
05:23very useful to put that frigates and MPAs to do that. And that has been very successful,
05:28we should point out, Baltic Sentry. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Do you want to...
05:30As an example, we use space to give a daily list of bunkering tankers across all the AOR. That means
05:40from Mumrosk to the Black Sea. Each day we are able to give the names and the position
05:45of all the ships that transfer oil from a ship to another one. It's the Gulf Fleet.
05:50Trying to cut off Russia's main source of money to wage war against Ukraine. So even if NATO could
05:56absorb all the lessons from Ukraine as one of its security partners, how do you get ahead? Because
06:02Russia is learning all those lessons as well. You need to not only learn what Ukraine knows to be ahead
06:07of your adversary, but you need to be one step further. So how can you do that?
06:12So it's really our job. So we go from foresight to warfight. That means that...
06:18That's a good line.
06:19We look the foresight through wargaming. We use LLMs trained by the Reds. We have teams,
06:28we have Russian specialists, and we see how the conflict can go on. And then from this,
06:35we go to modeling and simulation. We use some very specific tools. The one we are given by the US,
06:41with very accurate modeling. And then we see how the fight is running, what capabilities we did,
06:47how much we need, and what the new things bring. We've worked with industry, with some US industry,
06:54European industry, with Airbus, with Kronsberg, with BIA, to see with modeling and simulation,
07:01what are that kind of force mix that makes the difference. And then we implement new concepts.
07:07We are ahead and not only purely reactive.
07:10So wrapping up, tell me what the most exciting thing is from today, because when I hear all of
07:16these deals mashed together, I can't tell you, OK, what does that mean in terms of a capability?
07:21Tell me what from today is going to make NATO different tomorrow.
07:25I'll give you an example. I think it's the space components. We've run a project named SIMBAD,
07:32which is Wide Area Alerts, so Indication Warning. We use Space Emergery, which is covered eight times
07:40a day on the same place, with a data library, which is ten years. And so that means that you
07:48can
07:48recompose all the building of any situation, would it be air defense systems, would it be hangars,
07:55would it be runways, and you have a full story across all the area of how the system has been
08:01managed.
08:02You can see, for example, tanks gathering areas, and you can count the tanks over the years.
08:09And so you can say how this thing is interesting or not. You can find bunkering situations,
08:16you can see the digging of trenches, and just rewind the thing and say when it happened,
08:23how the offensive is prepared. And that is absolutely different today, because we use compute,
08:29we use AI to do that, and we give indication warning to the commanders.
08:33Wow, it's really interesting. A big future for all the young programmers of today, right?
08:38Thank you very much, Admiral Vendier. And that was Admiral Pierre Vendier,
08:42Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, here at the NATO Defense Industry Forum.
Comments