Let me first of all thank the OSCE and its Secretary General, my good friend Marc de Brichambaut, for this initiative, which is both timely and needed. Too often, in the history of military art, doctrine has lagged behind technology developments: it may happen because the pace of transformation is so frantic, due to ongoing operations, that military thinkers are not up to it. It may also happen because of a natural tendency to intellectual lazyness. The point is that, no matter what the reasons are, we cannot afford it.
The two excellent presentation we heard have the merit to look at our subject from two different, but closely interfaced perspectives. I will briefly comment the paper by Gen. Smith and than I will concentrate on some thoughts inspired to me by Professor May. No doubt that the member countries of OSCE, so well represented here today, have such an amount of shared interests in overall security, that no one can imagine diverging policies, at least in the medium and long run: the issue of interoperability is therefore at the top of our priorities, throughout the military staffs in our countries. No nation alone can be politically and militarily effective in facing the challenges we have ahead, and the prerequisite for acting efficiently is the capability to talk together, to share flawlessly the required intelligence, to operate systems, be they IT or any other hardware, which are compatible and mutually supportive, to have a well funded habit of operating together, according to procedures which are common and fully understood by or troops, at all levels, from generals to privates.
That's why I am surprised and deeply concerned when I hear some influential politician on the other side of the Atlantic ocean to revive the concept of semipermeability in technology transfers: the acknowledgment that never the US could get along without the technologies developed in the allied countries and trasparently shared is astonishingly accompanied by the statement that the transfer system should be designed so to let external technologies enter the United States, but not to allow US technology out.
It is a concept frankly unacceptable on moral and political grounds as well as on organisational and practical ones and I applaude the efforts by the Allied Command for Transformation to work out the matter, and I assure that we are ready to agree regulations and procedures which have to be both efficient and equitable. But let me turn to the presentation by Professor Mey, which is so dense with concepts and ideas that it may well deserve a full day discussion. Let me therefore call your attention only to a couple of points.
First of all the basic principles of warfare, as defined in the past from Sun Tsu to von Klausewitz stand as always: suprise, mass are still inescapable requirements, although the new information technology is offering different and new forms to achieve them. Mass, for instance is required to exert a pressure unbearable by the adversary and we can now obtain the same overwhelming pressure with much leaner forces only thanks to a new dimension in situational awareness, that allows us to concentrate our assets with an unprecedented level of co-ordination. However, notwithstanding the permanence of principles, the new environment is radically revolutionary and does require a substantial revisitation of military doctrines.
As Professor Mey underlined, hierarchies are flattening, with the consequent risks, and the related opportunities.
- Micromanagement on the one side,with the diabolic temptation to direct from the highest level even the most elementary tactical action;
- Fragmentation of reponsibility on the other, with unjustified reliance on self co-ordination of the smallest elements of the organization.
That's why I am fully convinced that by far the greatest challenge is not technology in itself, is not security and integrity of data, is not decluttering of information, but the quantum leap in culture required at all echelons: generals must learn to do and stick to their job of strategists and planners, leaving tactics where they belong to, and platoon commanders must learn to take their own growing share of responsibility to conduct actions concurring to reaching the intent indicated by generals, without minute by minute directions.
In a nutshell, in the future we need to rewrite our military doctrines, taking into full account the redistribution of responsibility imposed by the new technology and conversely we have to take the greatest care in nurturing the maturity and the cultural level of our troops, starting from recruitment, throughout the education we have to provide. I wonder, and it is my conclusion, weather the OSCE is not in the position to take any initiative in the field of education of military personnel, also to make everybody aware of the specifics related to the operations peculiar to its mission.
Thank-you for your attention.
