On February 26 Twitter shareMykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation, has asked SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to provide Ukraine with Starlink terminals to enable satellite communications. In less than 48 hours, Starlink user groups arrived in Ukraine, immediately improving the command and control capability of the Ukrainian Army.
For those of us considering the NATO takeover, it is almost impossible to imagine the Alliance making a demand and adopting a solution so quickly, no matter how urgent the circumstances. Among the many challenges could be the alliance’s complex and consensus-based governance structure, as well as the divergent interests and financing mechanisms among the 30 member states. That is why, in 2016, the International Board of Reviewers concluded that NATO is struggling to provide leaders with required capabilities on time, and estimated that jointly funded capabilities require an average of 16 years from development to delivery.
The complexity of modern weapons systems and the challenges of interoperability mean that any active engagement will lead to the identification of new technical requirements for NATO. The alliance needs the processes and structures in place to quickly identify these requirements and procure solutions. This includes giving leaders the power to make decisions without a lengthy consensus-building approach that may be reasonable, if slow, in peacetime but ineffective during war.
first steps
Previously, NATO sought to improve governance, speed, and efficiency in the delivery of its capabilities. For example, in 2018 NATO adopted a new governance model for co-financed capabilities. It has undertaken efforts to enhance collaboration between strategic leaderships (Allied Command Operations in Mons, Belgium and Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, Virginia), advocated exploration of alternative acquisition strategies to support technology development, and established the Office of the Chief Information Officer to accelerate the delivery of computer and information systems. Moreover, in October 2021 NATO launched its first $1.1 billion Innovation Fund, and last month announced the creation of the first-ever Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic region to harness cutting-edge technologies as part of NATO’s 2030 Agenda.
These are valuable steps, but they do not address the fundamental challenge of rapidly gaining shared capabilities. There are still many processes remaining where consensus-based control over speed, flexibility, innovation, and deployment of prototypes are prioritized at the end of their development stages.
NATO leaders understand the continuing challenge. In a recent address to the North Atlantic Council, the coalition’s supreme commander, General Philip Lavigne, stressed that one of his main priorities is to ensure the timely delivery of new and critical capabilities, adding that “we need to change the rules and make them work for us, not against us.” But NATO leaders cannot fix this on their own – it is the 30 countries in the alliance that will have to agree on a solution. It would be difficult to explore alternatives and get allies to agree on a solution. It could happen on a NATO scale, or some subgroup of member states could take up the challenge and lead the effort, which others might then embrace.
what works
Access to adequate funding is a necessary starting point, and NATO has a proven track record of financing joint capabilities. In 2021, NATO was implementing more than 3,000 co-financed projects, amounting to about $17 billion (about 22 percent of which are financed by the United States). This includes the provision of critical technology that supports the planning and implementation of all NATO air operations, and the exchange of air situation data that enhances awareness of conditions at NATO’s borders with partner nations, including Ukraine.
But the process of deploying capabilities is still subject to delays, which can be dangerous when meeting specific needs during combat operations. To avoid this, alliance members must commit to providing funds to the Acquisition Organization on a discretionary and pre-authorized basis, in essence creating a bank account they can count on when needed. Even if this was a line of credit that members have committed to, rather than a fixed pool of funds, it would limit setbacks caused by slow and politically charged processes for identifying and allocating funding.
Ensuring adequate funding is not the only solution. Leaders also need the authority to simplify the identification of urgent needs and a permanent mechanism, not Dedicated It can provide flexibility and authority to address them. This exists for some coalition members on a national basis. For example, the leader of the Netherlands Defense Organization’s Computer Emergency Response Team has a pre-approved budget and the ability to accelerate acquisitions of up to €500,000 for urgent cyber capabilities within 14 days. However, there is no comprehensive approach to NATO.
The US Department of Defense offers a variety of acquisition tactics that NATO can take advantage of. The United States has a model in which the military services are largely responsible for acquiring and providing weapons systems to joint force commanders. There are also several DoD organizations that have been identified to address challenges across services. This means that there are joint acquisition organizations at the department level and at the service level that buy hardware to serve as examples.
Over time, the Department of Defense has developed processes to allow specific requirements on the battlefield to be addressed quickly. Various sections of the department have also embarked on various forms of organizational innovation.
One example is the Air Force’s Office of Rapid Capabilities, which was formed in 2003 to “accelerate important, often classified programs while maintaining their budget.” The office has a unique management structure – it reports to a board of directors chaired by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainability and includes senior Air Force commanders and the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. These senior leaders can prioritize spending and work to find the necessary funding. Furthermore, the acquisition experts in the Office of Rapid Capabilities are carefully selected to maintain a culture in which “agile, flexible and future-proof technology development” is possible. Along with the Air Force’s new stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider, the bureau is overseeing the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, “a pilot test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform.” The effectiveness of the Office of Rapid Capabilities was underlined by the decision to place these two very important programs there in place of the Air Force’s traditional acquisition organizations.
Another concept comes from the Defense Innovation Unit, which is designed to work across the Department of Defense to identify and understand critical national security challenges that can be resolved using leading commercial technology within 12 to 24 months. The Defense Innovation Unit is reaching out to non-traditional suppliers in innovation hubs, including Silicon Valley, and using flexible acquisition models to issue contracts in as little as two to three months. It then publishes a catalog of ready-to-purchase commercial “solutions” from a range of companies, many of which are not traditional defense suppliers. These vehicles include the Next-Generation Underwater Response EOD, a remotely operated underwater mine searching vehicle, and Hunt Forward, a suite of tools for forward deployed electronic operations. While implementation was not always smooth sailing, the Defense Innovation Unit nonetheless offered battlefield commanders a range of innovative solutions to turn to.
The Office of Rapid Capabilities enables its leadership to finalize requirements and quickly commit to funding, a critical component of its success. The Defense Innovation Unit focuses on creating a pipeline of new technologies. These organizations are not unique. There are other cross-services, such as NAVALX, Army Applications Lab and AFWERX, that aim to adapt innovations from traditional and non-traditional suppliers. The RAF has its own Rapid Capabilities Office, which has also shown promising results.
These American models demonstrate that bureaucracies that resist change such as the Department of Defense can still develop new organizational structures and processes. The Dutch and British models show that attempts at organizational innovation are not limited to the Pentagon. NATO may choose to adapt one of these approaches or develop its own unique approaches. The goal should be to provide its commanders with the flexibility and power to “check requirements”—formally agreeing to what a warrior needs to carry out combat—and to make resources available. The decision structure could be a small circular board of senior leaders, perhaps with time limits for approval or rejection of requirements to force quick decisions.
NATO also needs a way to connect with industry partners across the alliance, and to benefit from innovations from small businesses and start-ups using new and flexible contracting mechanisms. The Alliance currently lacks the tools to quickly adopt commercial technologies. Two related policies would help enhance the ability of new technologies to communicate with existing systems. To increase operational effectiveness, NATO must take advantage of interoperability standards that allow different systems to operate seamlessly in a multi-domain environment. A related approach is to adopt open systems architecture approaches to NATO weapons. This will provide design information for companies to develop components that can work with existing systems using a “plug and play” approach. Both policies will build on NATO’s traditional strengths to develop standards while making these standards relevant to innovative companies.
All of these process changes and organizational innovations will require effort—and the journey may be slowed by NATO’s culture of consensus building. Transformation takes time, but it only begins when there is a clear reason for the change. The scale and scope of Russia’s attack on Ukraine provides this case, and the Starlink delivery provides an example of what would be possible if NATO had a more flexible approach to acquisitions.
Cynthia R. Cook directs the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Defense Industrial Initiatives Group, which investigates defense acquisition and spending policy, international defense industrial cooperation, and emerging technologies. Previously, she worked for 25 years at RAND, working and supervising a wide range of component acquisition studies across the US Department of Defense, along with the Australian, UK and NATO Departments of Defense.
I sleep. From 2014 to 2020, she held the position of Chief Officer and Head of Industrial Relations at the NATO Communications and Information Agency. Prior to joining NATO, she was a fellow at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris, and held the position of Chief Policy Officer at the European Defense Agency and Senior Analyst at the Polish Ministry of Defense.
Photo: NATO
Comments
Post a Comment