1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:09,210 It gives me great pleasure today to introduce you to Professor, also Lieutenant Colonel Alexandrovich Moorhouse, 2 00:00:09,600 --> 00:00:15,120 who is an associate professor of international relations in Geneva and also 3 00:00:15,450 --> 00:00:20,850 head of military intelligence on the first helmet brigade of the Swiss Army. 4 00:00:22,410 --> 00:00:30,390 He's also the editor of a Swiss military review and is now on a visiting frontier of our changing world program. 5 00:00:30,930 --> 00:00:36,250 And of course, the subject he's going to take us beyond coin introduction to Conventional Warfare. 6 00:00:36,380 --> 00:00:40,380 So thank you very much for the introduction. 7 00:00:41,070 --> 00:00:44,879 A year ago, I committed or edited a text on counterinsurgency. 8 00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:48,210 We had a conference and these were the proceedings of this conference. 9 00:00:48,810 --> 00:00:55,050 So not too long ago we had I heard you talk about drone strikes and information control and so on. 10 00:00:55,230 --> 00:01:00,540 So here is the latest edition of these conferences on information warfare. 11 00:01:00,720 --> 00:01:10,500 And as I said before, over lunch, I'm very happy to talk about the exact opposite of counterinsurgency and the opposite of information warfare, 12 00:01:10,710 --> 00:01:18,060 essentially talking about the subject over here. Is there a future for conventional defence? 13 00:01:18,330 --> 00:01:22,050 And if so, what will be that, that future? 14 00:01:22,530 --> 00:01:29,940 Let me say a few things about what moved me in the direction of doing this research and study. 15 00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:41,520 Well, very, very originally. My first Ph.D. was on the Technology and War, the impact of the Evolution of technology on the conduct of war. 16 00:01:41,550 --> 00:01:47,879 This was quite some time ago. At the time, I became acquainted with a very now a very close friend of mine, 17 00:01:47,880 --> 00:01:51,780 Martin van Creveld, and was very happy to to continue this journey with him. 18 00:01:51,930 --> 00:01:59,190 And I'm very surprised, interested, enthusiastic to see that some of these ideas of of ten or 15, 19 00:01:59,190 --> 00:02:03,059 perhaps even 20 years ago, are still being debated and discussed. 20 00:02:03,060 --> 00:02:07,920 Man machine interface. I just heard those those words a few moments ago. 21 00:02:08,550 --> 00:02:17,370 I went on to do a second Ph.D. dissertation on the history of the arms industry, and this, for quite some time has been my speciality. 22 00:02:17,610 --> 00:02:27,299 So this is also an interest of mine to advise perhaps the industry and the economy about the future of conventional weapons and conventional defence. 23 00:02:27,300 --> 00:02:33,420 Because of course we're talking about very substantial investments and very substantial markets. 24 00:02:34,110 --> 00:02:35,970 We've talked about a number of other things. 25 00:02:36,330 --> 00:02:46,740 Yes, I have a personal interest in particular with regards to land warfare because I commanded a tank battalion for the last four years. 26 00:02:46,920 --> 00:02:55,020 And so what you are going to see is really the results of a preliminary study that I did for the Swiss Ministry of Defence. 27 00:02:55,020 --> 00:03:01,979 And what I have done or what I am doing, I am in the process of doing these next few months is expanding this from land 28 00:03:01,980 --> 00:03:09,120 warfare to also include air and sea warfare in the in the months to come. 29 00:03:09,480 --> 00:03:20,760 Since I work for an American company industry educational facility, Webster University, of course I need a disclaimer. 30 00:03:20,880 --> 00:03:25,350 And none of the people, institutions, journals, universities, 31 00:03:25,620 --> 00:03:34,649 ministries that have been evoked before have are going to necessarily adhere to the 32 00:03:34,650 --> 00:03:41,490 discussions and and principles and conclusions that are going to be presented in this survey. 33 00:03:41,490 --> 00:03:55,560 And I will move on perhaps to ask the question of how contemporary and how important is this question of the future of conventional defence today? 34 00:03:55,590 --> 00:04:04,740 Well, I would say it is an extremely hot topical issue just about everywhere around the world if you're talking about the United States of America. 35 00:04:04,950 --> 00:04:11,590 It is a hot, highly topical issue just because of what this is from yesterday, the Army Times. 36 00:04:11,650 --> 00:04:17,040 I'm not talking about the raise in pay for those, of course, who were attracted to that. 37 00:04:17,220 --> 00:04:21,750 But I am talking about the downsizing of the US military. 38 00:04:22,470 --> 00:04:28,590 I'm not going to talk about that in specifics, but you know that the level is going down. 39 00:04:29,340 --> 00:04:37,560 How far is it going down? This is something that that I'm going to to talk about in just a few moments time. 40 00:04:37,770 --> 00:04:48,810 The US Army is actually the loser out of the three, four, five, now six branches of the US Department of Defence. 41 00:04:49,140 --> 00:04:54,390 The US Army will see its numbers shrunk by more than 13%. 42 00:04:54,600 --> 00:04:59,220 The number of brigades is going to be reduced from 45 to 33. 43 00:04:59,690 --> 00:05:04,490 Recall those numbers in just a little while and definitely out of the different 44 00:05:04,730 --> 00:05:09,770 branches of the US Navy is going to secure definitely its its position, 45 00:05:09,770 --> 00:05:15,500 its procurement. The US Air Force definitely has its foot in the in the door. 46 00:05:16,430 --> 00:05:24,889 But since the US Department of Defence is moving away from stabilisation, long term operations, from nation building, 47 00:05:24,890 --> 00:05:33,260 from counterinsurgency, all of those things that we've talked about and moving into more decisive sea air warfare, 48 00:05:33,380 --> 00:05:40,280 especially with regards to a pivot to Asia and shifting a focus from the European Theatre of War 49 00:05:40,700 --> 00:05:48,649 to the Pacific Theatre of War will definitely the U.S. Army is going to feel these these losses, 50 00:05:48,650 --> 00:05:57,020 and definitely it is requesting it is defending its position, rightfully so, to maintain certain capacities. 51 00:05:57,020 --> 00:06:06,320 And I'm interested, of course, in trying to define determine which of these capacities should be the ones to be rescued or salvaged. 52 00:06:06,740 --> 00:06:11,060 At the same time, we talked about information warfare just a few seconds ago. 53 00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:19,399 At the same time, there's very conflicting signals, conflicting signals because in the news, this is literally a week ago, 54 00:06:19,400 --> 00:06:26,330 a week and a half ago, you see these two articles, one that is showing armoured vehicles in malls. 55 00:06:26,570 --> 00:06:30,320 Has anyone been to mom's beautiful town, Belgium? 56 00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:35,630 Eat very well. Well, it has a dark side as everything, I'm sure. 57 00:06:35,930 --> 00:06:46,610 But you see this picture which looks like it is brought back from the past, from the 1970s and 1980s at almost the same time. 58 00:06:46,610 --> 00:06:55,190 This is almost an information operation. You see these Abrams tanks being moved back for an exercise in South Korea. 59 00:06:55,580 --> 00:07:03,110 And, of course, all of this recalls to those people who have loved these moments and times and experiences, 60 00:07:03,290 --> 00:07:07,580 the reforms are exercises of the 1970s and 1980s. 61 00:07:08,300 --> 00:07:15,320 Well, just how far is there a recollection of this Cold War period? 62 00:07:15,890 --> 00:07:25,610 Well, not very much, because a closer examination in both of these deployments here in Belgium and the lower one here in South Korea, 63 00:07:26,300 --> 00:07:32,810 if you read the small characters who come to the conclusion that essentially we're talking about 55 armoured vehicles, 64 00:07:33,020 --> 00:07:39,620 this has absolutely nothing to do with the order of scale of the military exercises, 65 00:07:39,620 --> 00:07:46,910 the field training exercises that were conducted in the 1970s and 1980s where literally we were talking about this, 66 00:07:47,060 --> 00:07:53,450 we were airlifting sea, lifting hundreds of armoured vehicles across the Atlantic. 67 00:07:53,450 --> 00:07:58,880 And this was a naval, a logistical, an air transport exercise. 68 00:07:59,030 --> 00:08:09,019 And what you see here in the German countryside was only the how shall I say, the the last stage of the exercise itself. 69 00:08:09,020 --> 00:08:13,669 So we're talking a definitely not of this period. 70 00:08:13,670 --> 00:08:17,450 We're talking about something very different than this Cold War period. 71 00:08:17,690 --> 00:08:22,760 At the in the in the in the years of the reporter exercises, 72 00:08:22,910 --> 00:08:29,630 we're talking about the strength of about 15,000 armoured fighting vehicles on the Naito 73 00:08:29,780 --> 00:08:35,150 side and something like 35,000 armoured fighting vehicles on the Warsaw Pact side. 74 00:08:35,330 --> 00:08:42,050 So these numbers that I just presented 55 is something quite, quite modest in comparison. 75 00:08:42,800 --> 00:08:51,320 I'd like to explain explicit this problematic or this research question that I mentioned before, 76 00:08:52,070 --> 00:08:54,680 is there going to be a future of conventional defence? 77 00:08:55,310 --> 00:09:01,790 Of course there might be some people from the mindset that no conventional defence is no longer necessary. 78 00:09:02,390 --> 00:09:09,950 Excuse me for not talking about that, because we have I mean, there's a there's a lot of discussion that has taken place in the 1990s, 79 00:09:09,950 --> 00:09:18,710 in the years 2000 in the United States, whether you call them legacy or or otherwise, these forces are here to stay for at least some time. 80 00:09:18,890 --> 00:09:23,120 And now it's no longer a question of determining whether these forces will stay, 81 00:09:23,270 --> 00:09:30,530 but what will they what will be their main relative importance and what will be their focus in terms of missions? 82 00:09:30,830 --> 00:09:38,300 And so looking at it from perhaps, yes, a modest Swiss experience, I would say there's pretty much three choices. 83 00:09:38,540 --> 00:09:45,830 There's three choices. The first is to have those ground forces essentially as a a mopping up, as a civil defence. 84 00:09:46,580 --> 00:09:50,510 And this is not only the case for Switzerland, by the way, 85 00:09:50,690 --> 00:09:58,429 but many other countries would actually require or need the military to perform operations other than war. 86 00:09:58,430 --> 00:10:03,700 Let's put it this. This way. So security, safety, disaster relief operations. 87 00:10:04,360 --> 00:10:10,750 We had this talk where I think speaking about the weather was an important theme over here. 88 00:10:10,900 --> 00:10:12,650 Well, you never know. 89 00:10:12,670 --> 00:10:21,690 Maybe thinking about the weather and climate change is going to be an important subject or topic these next few years and generations. 90 00:10:21,760 --> 00:10:35,680 I don't know. The second possibility would be to have a very high tech army, a high tech land force here with many different gadgets, 91 00:10:37,450 --> 00:10:42,850 definitely capable of doing what the conventional armed forces are doing today, 92 00:10:43,090 --> 00:10:50,590 but bigger, better with more range, with more accuracy and so on and so forth, with more discrimination perhaps as well. 93 00:10:50,860 --> 00:10:54,189 And the third option would be this French concept. 94 00:10:54,190 --> 00:11:00,069 But today, everybody or just about every country has its own name for the dual operative, 95 00:11:00,070 --> 00:11:05,860 I would ask, and this would be a very comprehensive sea, air, land battle. 96 00:11:07,000 --> 00:11:11,950 If I say sea for I start, some people in the room will probably understand what I mean by that. 97 00:11:11,950 --> 00:11:24,459 But essentially the the working in the form of a very comprehensive network where the land forces are really a component of a very deep materialised, 98 00:11:24,460 --> 00:11:26,200 if you will, system. 99 00:11:26,530 --> 00:11:37,870 So this will be my my problematic my my question will try to give a few, a few hints as to where we are going with regards to to these three options. 100 00:11:38,620 --> 00:11:45,720 But now what I would like to do is to talk about the arguments against the development of, 101 00:11:45,880 --> 00:11:52,090 of conventional defence, of conventional land forces, and of course, give a few arguments in in favour. 102 00:11:52,390 --> 00:12:00,010 Well, my first argument I'm going to be very quick on this, because, of course, there are some people who believe that war is a thing of the past. 103 00:12:00,010 --> 00:12:04,180 It's no longer relevant. It's no longer relevant to have boots on the ground. 104 00:12:04,450 --> 00:12:07,720 And I found I'm quoting my sources, this is The Economist. 105 00:12:08,260 --> 00:12:14,800 This is a chart which basically shows all of the different conflicts since the end of the Second World War. 106 00:12:15,010 --> 00:12:26,889 And as you see towards the right hand side, I don't see the number of conflicts worldwide shrinking in any in any way, perhaps in numbers of casualty. 107 00:12:26,890 --> 00:12:36,510 But for the rest, pretty much there's the same number of conflicts before the Second World War, after the Second World War, after even the Cold War. 108 00:12:36,520 --> 00:12:49,150 So conflicts are definitely still an actual and present occurrence and and situation, but the needs or situations that need to be resolved. 109 00:12:49,900 --> 00:12:54,160 Second argument comes from the coin school of thought. 110 00:12:54,160 --> 00:12:58,059 Let's put it this way. People will talk about asymmetric warfare. 111 00:12:58,060 --> 00:13:02,469 We'll talk about counterinsurgency. We'll talk about anti-terrorist operations. 112 00:13:02,470 --> 00:13:10,330 We'll talk about military operations other than war. And a lot of proponents of this school of thought will challenge the need and 113 00:13:10,330 --> 00:13:15,370 especially the resources that are going into the conventional heavy forces, 114 00:13:15,370 --> 00:13:22,810 because, of course, these forces, these heavy, high tech forces are extremely costly. 115 00:13:23,080 --> 00:13:29,380 Now, without going into all sorts of details, I can point you to a certain number of articles and references to this. 116 00:13:29,650 --> 00:13:32,920 But I would give two arguments against this vision of things. 117 00:13:33,160 --> 00:13:40,510 The first argument is that today, any use of force or any interference, any peacekeeping operation, 118 00:13:40,810 --> 00:13:45,520 any intervention that takes place in a developing country anywhere in the world 119 00:13:45,790 --> 00:13:51,430 probably is going to be confronted to some heavy weapons of one kind or another, 120 00:13:51,610 --> 00:13:59,140 because just about every country in the world today has some measure of heavy weapons or heavy firepower. 121 00:13:59,290 --> 00:14:07,390 And so this asymmetric school of thought, I would say today, can definitely be challenged. 122 00:14:07,750 --> 00:14:17,409 The second principle that I would I would object to that is the fact that certainly in the 1990s, in the years of dividends, 123 00:14:17,410 --> 00:14:26,290 of peace, there has been a trend to lighten up the forces, especially peacekeeping or peace support operation forces. 124 00:14:26,710 --> 00:14:29,800 There has been a trend to employ lighter and lighter forces. 125 00:14:30,040 --> 00:14:35,230 Well, probably Canada was the was the trigger for that in Afghanistan. 126 00:14:35,680 --> 00:14:39,430 We have moved since pretty much in the opposite direction. 127 00:14:39,430 --> 00:14:46,180 And many forces have, rather, whether we're talking about this was my experience in the Balkans with regards to France, 128 00:14:46,180 --> 00:14:48,100 with regards to even the United Kingdom. 129 00:14:48,490 --> 00:14:58,180 There's pretty much a trend to bring back heavier forces and heavier weapons just in order to demonstrate a willingness of political will. 130 00:14:59,220 --> 00:15:02,490 To the to the countries that that needs this stabilisation. 131 00:15:04,080 --> 00:15:09,240 Again, I could I could point you to to a certain number of examples for that. 132 00:15:09,510 --> 00:15:15,660 There are those people who say that peacekeeping operations do not necessitate heavy weapons. 133 00:15:15,840 --> 00:15:19,840 And I have a background with the International Committee of the Red Cross. 134 00:15:19,920 --> 00:15:28,049 Without going into all sorts of details of how I would call this very much a misinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions, 135 00:15:28,050 --> 00:15:34,230 proportionality does not mean and most people in the room acquiesce to this does not mean 136 00:15:34,230 --> 00:15:39,630 that you should not bring in a heavier weapon than the opponents or parties to the conflict. 137 00:15:39,810 --> 00:15:44,879 But proportionality in the sense of international humanitarian law actually really 138 00:15:44,880 --> 00:15:50,960 means you should try and avoid unnecessary casualties and collateral damage. 139 00:15:50,970 --> 00:15:58,290 So I think that there is no longer this much of a discussion with regards to, as was my experience in Sarajevo, 140 00:15:58,650 --> 00:16:04,230 bringing in only very lightly armoured vehicle or vehicles that were not armoured at all. 141 00:16:04,620 --> 00:16:11,370 Today we have we have moved away from this, from this policy, from, from this vision. 142 00:16:11,610 --> 00:16:17,010 And today more and more we are moving into a vision where we want decision. 143 00:16:17,280 --> 00:16:20,730 Relatively quick decision on the on the ground. 144 00:16:20,940 --> 00:16:29,260 And we want to avoid casualties. And of course, this requires the use of relatively heavy state of the art equipment. 145 00:16:29,730 --> 00:16:36,960 Another school of thought will challenge conventional weapons in the sense that so many revolutions in military affairs have taken place, 146 00:16:37,170 --> 00:16:43,230 that today one could say those heavy forces, those legacy forces that I talked about earlier, 147 00:16:43,380 --> 00:16:46,980 those that you saw in my first slide, the Challenger tanks, 148 00:16:46,980 --> 00:16:55,620 the 60 plus ton vehicles are or will become very rapidly obsolete because of advanced detection devices, 149 00:16:55,620 --> 00:17:00,990 because of strikes, a stand off strikes from the air and so on and so forth. 150 00:17:02,370 --> 00:17:10,589 I'm not going to quote Martin Van Crutchfield here, but there's an absolutely fantastic passage in his book on war. 151 00:17:10,590 --> 00:17:19,940 And what is it? We're in the. From 2000 B.C. to the present war in history, I believe. 152 00:17:21,320 --> 00:17:29,080 Essentially saying the following, the fact that we still have heavy platforms and heavy weapons, those to two things. 153 00:17:29,090 --> 00:17:38,720 Number one, the relative imprecision of strikes, despite what the retailers want to want to make you believe and and sell you. 154 00:17:38,900 --> 00:17:45,950 And number two, because if you look at things on the long term, medium to long term, ten years or more, 155 00:17:46,190 --> 00:17:50,990 these platforms, these heavy platforms are actually more durable than the lighter platforms. 156 00:17:51,020 --> 00:17:53,740 I'll try and explain that in just a little while. 157 00:17:53,750 --> 00:18:02,110 So all of these revolutions in military affairs have actually not managed to contradict the need for bigger and better platforms. 158 00:18:02,120 --> 00:18:03,860 There's more room for improvement. 159 00:18:04,040 --> 00:18:12,210 You can add more gadgets, you can add more countermeasure devices in a larger boat than you can in a in a small boat. 160 00:18:12,230 --> 00:18:20,450 The same is true for land platforms. There's another school of thought that will challenge conventional warfare, saying conventional weapons, 161 00:18:20,720 --> 00:18:27,920 saying it is essentially irrelevant and it is irrelevant because there are new threats and these threats are terrorism. 162 00:18:28,310 --> 00:18:32,540 On one side, they are information warfare. On the other, they are cyber warfare. 163 00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:38,840 For some people, yes and no, because as you as you perhaps know, 164 00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:48,940 the military is engaged in crisis management essentially through the lens of crisis being defined by their effects and not so much by their causes. 165 00:18:48,950 --> 00:18:57,650 So you will need a relatively large amount of manpower in order to diffuse and to care for the concerns, 166 00:18:57,670 --> 00:19:03,950 the consequences of technological disasters, of crisis, of the movement of populations, for example. 167 00:19:04,160 --> 00:19:14,900 And so that school of thought basically saying the threats and the needs of the past have been superseded by these new threats, I would say is untrue. 168 00:19:15,080 --> 00:19:20,330 Probably these new threats have added themselves to the to the earlier threats, 169 00:19:20,570 --> 00:19:26,570 to the more conventional threats, but have not superseded these in any in any way. 170 00:19:27,350 --> 00:19:34,729 There are other people who say that network enabled operations remember this brutal operative. 171 00:19:34,730 --> 00:19:38,540 I hope they had a design that I presented before. 172 00:19:39,260 --> 00:19:43,850 There are other doctrines that that talk about a network enabled operations. 173 00:19:44,090 --> 00:19:51,440 A lot of people will say the importance, the relative importance of the land component is going to diminish within this, 174 00:19:51,860 --> 00:20:00,530 because we are going to divide sensors and shooters, because we're going to use more unmanned aerial land, sea vehicles, and therefore, 175 00:20:00,530 --> 00:20:05,420 the relative importance of these conventional forces is going to go away. 176 00:20:05,990 --> 00:20:12,770 Once again, if you are going to want to demonstrate a presence or guard or secure something, 177 00:20:13,640 --> 00:20:20,030 tele presence is not quite the same as being present physically on the ground with heavy weapons. 178 00:20:20,960 --> 00:20:32,180 I wanted to also talk about this light versus medium versus heavy weapons and their relative or respective durability, if you are interested. 179 00:20:32,180 --> 00:20:36,110 I have a few articles as references to this. 180 00:20:37,100 --> 00:20:40,790 This is a very old story between the wheel and the track. 181 00:20:40,810 --> 00:20:48,800 I'm sure that some of you have read quite a bit of literature already, 50 years dating back to 50 or more years on this topic. 182 00:20:49,130 --> 00:20:54,740 Well, I think it's probably time to end this debate once and for all, essentially. 183 00:20:54,860 --> 00:21:00,470 Wheels have limitations. Wheeled vehicles, wheeled or light armoured vehicles have limitations. 184 00:21:00,680 --> 00:21:04,460 I can even tell you which limitation this is. It is weight. 185 00:21:05,090 --> 00:21:11,150 Each axle has a technical technical limitation of two and a half tons per axle. 186 00:21:11,360 --> 00:21:15,170 So if you're going to have a six by six or an eight by eight vehicle, 187 00:21:15,380 --> 00:21:23,180 it will not be able to be heavier than the number of axles multiplied by this two and a half ton figure. 188 00:21:23,480 --> 00:21:32,360 And as I said, I'm very happy to point you to these articles, especially since a lot of these vehicles have been designed in my country, 189 00:21:32,780 --> 00:21:38,600 the Parana series of vehicles, you see the problematic that is being posed today. 190 00:21:38,960 --> 00:21:51,560 A lot of these vehicles have been built originally to be relatively cheap, to be air transportable within the ten, 12, maybe 14 tonne range. 191 00:21:51,860 --> 00:21:59,240 Well, unfortunately, these vehicles have grown and this is the first this is now the third generation of the piranha or the Stryker, 192 00:21:59,450 --> 00:22:01,250 if you want to call it that vehicle. 193 00:22:01,520 --> 00:22:08,600 And those vehicles that are now being operated in countries like or used to be operated in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, 194 00:22:08,840 --> 00:22:13,940 have grown to the point that they are now weighing over 20 tons. 195 00:22:14,270 --> 00:22:19,840 This is, of course, with. The same engine, the same suspension mechanism, the same brakes. 196 00:22:20,110 --> 00:22:23,430 And this is leading to a lot of questions. 197 00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:36,280 Also, the with the size of the vehicles has grown considerably to the point where these vehicles are almost unable to go into heavy terrain because, 198 00:22:36,280 --> 00:22:39,970 of course, they will they will tip to the side. This is quite problematic. 199 00:22:39,980 --> 00:22:43,600 It's one of the limitations of these vehicles, another limitation. 200 00:22:43,600 --> 00:22:47,710 But this will get us into the very technical nitty gritty, 201 00:22:47,890 --> 00:22:57,590 is the fact that these vehicles essentially are made out structurally of the the armour that they that they possess. 202 00:22:57,610 --> 00:23:05,530 It's very difficult. It's very hard to add on a lot of armour on these vehicles, as would be the case on heavier systems, 203 00:23:05,530 --> 00:23:12,760 heavier weapons, where essentially the the chassis is is one component and armour can be added on at a later stage. 204 00:23:13,390 --> 00:23:18,790 It's not really possible. It's not really feasible. It's not very workable on these types of vehicles. 205 00:23:18,970 --> 00:23:25,000 And we are now seeing vehicles are just this is actually from the British competition, the French competition. 206 00:23:25,240 --> 00:23:28,870 I'll just talk about this vehicle right here, the boxer vehicle. 207 00:23:29,020 --> 00:23:33,430 We are now seeing vehicles for the transport of infantry. 208 00:23:33,880 --> 00:23:43,420 I don't know if you have ever stood next to one of these vehicles, because that is the same experience as a John Deere tractor in the Midwest. 209 00:23:44,050 --> 00:23:46,960 These vehicles are basically rolling cathedrals. 210 00:23:47,470 --> 00:23:58,630 This vehicle now weighs 42 tons and it is as absolutely gigantic and huge as the largest semi-trailers that you can possibly imagine. 211 00:23:58,930 --> 00:24:06,070 So imagining those vehicles now moving on the battlefield that have the ground clearance to protect them from mines, 212 00:24:06,250 --> 00:24:12,100 that have all of the applications and plugs for the personal equipment that needs batteries. 213 00:24:12,290 --> 00:24:17,650 We're talking about the dependency on on high tech and electrical output. 214 00:24:18,100 --> 00:24:25,340 Just a few moments ago raises many questions as to how survivable these vehicles actually are. 215 00:24:25,360 --> 00:24:33,230 So I would say there's probably a limitation, an intrinsic limitation to the light armoured vehicles and probably more of a shift. 216 00:24:33,250 --> 00:24:39,610 I'll come back to that to the heavier weapons on the process, side or side, 217 00:24:39,610 --> 00:24:48,340 that is reasserting the need for conventional warfare and conventional weapons systems and equipment. 218 00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:53,350 One of the people that I can could quote is Joseph Nye, 219 00:24:53,890 --> 00:24:57,850 because anyone who comes out with a bestseller talking about soft power in 220 00:24:57,850 --> 00:25:02,800 the 1990 and ten years later comes back with another book called Smart Power. 221 00:25:03,250 --> 00:25:06,760 This is just I'll interpret the subtitles for you. 222 00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:12,040 It just means I was wrong ten years ago. Soft power, perhaps. 223 00:25:12,430 --> 00:25:18,430 Works may work. But then what is the cost of that soft power? 224 00:25:18,640 --> 00:25:23,770 You may have to wait for years, for years on end to influence the situation. 225 00:25:24,040 --> 00:25:29,170 And, you know, at the end of the day, there's no guarantee after waiting for ten years. 226 00:25:29,350 --> 00:25:35,380 Saddam Hussein did not one day get up, go to in front of national television to say, 227 00:25:35,650 --> 00:25:40,570 well, I've had it, folks, you know, I'm ceding power to somebody else. 228 00:25:41,170 --> 00:25:44,830 It doesn't work that way. There's no guarantee that soft power works. 229 00:25:44,860 --> 00:25:53,409 So today there's I would say in the literature, at least more of an understanding for the need, for a combination of the soft power, 230 00:25:53,410 --> 00:26:04,540 the influence, but also of the dedicated, punctual, decisive, hard actions and intervention in some cases. 231 00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:11,740 I'll just take out the Joker card if I if I need to, I will just use the word genocide. 232 00:26:11,770 --> 00:26:15,820 There are some situations where an intervention is absolutely, 233 00:26:15,970 --> 00:26:26,830 dreadfully needed and and you cannot afford to wait for ten or 15 years for a possible reaction on the on the ground. 234 00:26:26,980 --> 00:26:33,850 I'm moving forward to talk about the evolution of conflicts, because this is very much a topic here in this centre. 235 00:26:34,570 --> 00:26:39,160 And I'm bringing back my ICRC hat here for just 30 seconds. 236 00:26:39,670 --> 00:26:43,950 You, I am sure, are familiar with this chart. Definitely. 237 00:26:44,020 --> 00:26:50,980 You can read this chart in different ways. You can say today inter-state conflicts are a thing of the past. 238 00:26:51,220 --> 00:26:57,879 They're no longer relevant in international affairs. There's almost no true inter-state conflict in the world. 239 00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:04,510 I said, almost. But at the same time, all of these intrastate conflict, internal conflict, 240 00:27:05,290 --> 00:27:15,520 I would say we have a bit of a legal myopia in this sense that many of these internal conflicts are, in fact interstate. 241 00:27:15,580 --> 00:27:21,340 Aid or proxy conflicts in disguise. I can give you numerous examples, but I'll just quote two. 242 00:27:22,030 --> 00:27:29,320 One obviously is the Darfur conflict, where you have essentially an insurrection in the south of Sudan. 243 00:27:29,560 --> 00:27:36,460 But on the other side of the border, you also have pretty much an insurrection against the Chad government. 244 00:27:36,610 --> 00:27:43,360 And of course, if you go into the detail where you understand that all of these insurrections are supported, 245 00:27:43,360 --> 00:27:50,590 promoted, helped by the by the rival country, the rival state. 246 00:27:50,890 --> 00:27:53,980 The other example, of course, in many ways would be Syria. 247 00:27:54,130 --> 00:28:03,460 That's opening a can of worms. I am cognisant of that. But definitely it can be said that there were there have been two distinct conflicts in Syria. 248 00:28:03,670 --> 00:28:09,550 There is a conflict in Syria before May or June of 2012, I would say. 249 00:28:09,730 --> 00:28:16,570 And then the scale has the scale of this conflict has expanded tremendously since outside 250 00:28:16,570 --> 00:28:22,330 powers are really sending in troops by the tens of thousands with a lot of equipment. 251 00:28:22,810 --> 00:28:25,990 That is something I'm happy to discuss with you if you want. 252 00:28:26,110 --> 00:28:32,440 But essentially we're talking about a conflict which has internationalised in many different ways. 253 00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:40,160 Another factor of the renewal or possible renewal of conventional warfare is this graph. 254 00:28:40,180 --> 00:28:52,570 This is actually an extract from a McKinsey study on the evolution of the situation and evolution prospects for the arms industry in Europe. 255 00:28:52,900 --> 00:29:00,219 And this is a very interesting 17 page survey and study, and it points to the fact that, yes, 256 00:29:00,220 --> 00:29:08,980 definitely the funding in terms of procurement are going down at an almost unprecedented, unprecedented level. 257 00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:17,970 We're talking about essentially in the United States, a lowering of the procurement budget by almost 50% over three years. 258 00:29:17,980 --> 00:29:27,010 This is very, very substantial. But, of course, if you believe that there are these economic cycles and cycles in procurement, 259 00:29:27,310 --> 00:29:38,320 you are seeing people like McKinsey essentially advising the CEOs of of arms firms and 260 00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:44,680 also the procurement officials that this is actually a fantastic time to do what? 261 00:29:44,920 --> 00:29:49,149 It's a fantastic time for mergers and acquisitions. And there's a name for this. 262 00:29:49,150 --> 00:29:55,660 It's consolidation. Well, this is pretty much the consolidation of the arms sector that has taken place in the mid 263 00:29:55,660 --> 00:30:01,120 1990s that has essentially led the United States to launch some very ambitious programs. 264 00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:07,030 Well, yes. Half a generation, 5 to 7 years later. 265 00:30:07,270 --> 00:30:12,190 So, of course, this is all futuristic predictions and it can be argued, 266 00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:18,940 but in many ways you see a lot of sharks, a lot of investors, a lot of technology enthusiasts here, 267 00:30:19,150 --> 00:30:23,889 and perhaps also a lot of policy advisers in the United States of America looking at 268 00:30:23,890 --> 00:30:31,180 these graphs and seeing this not so much as a lethal downfall of US procurement, 269 00:30:31,420 --> 00:30:34,960 but true opportunities for the defence sector. 270 00:30:35,140 --> 00:30:40,300 And there are different this is actually definitely being piloted in the United States. 271 00:30:41,920 --> 00:30:48,819 You're perhaps familiar that last year there was a the signature of a of the 80 an arms trade treaty. 272 00:30:48,820 --> 00:30:56,800 I happened to be involved in that because in Geneva, arms limitation disarmament is very much a hot topic. 273 00:30:57,340 --> 00:31:04,690 What I will say with this is that there's usually a confusion when it comes to the arms industry and arms technology. 274 00:31:05,290 --> 00:31:11,650 Everyone wants to put everything in the same bag. I'll just put this forward for your consideration. 275 00:31:11,890 --> 00:31:17,470 There's, in fact, three very distinct arms industries or arms sectors. 276 00:31:17,740 --> 00:31:27,160 And each one of these arms industries or sectors has their own regulatory how should I say, regime? 277 00:31:27,730 --> 00:31:35,350 You have the strategic arms on the left, you have the conventional arms in the centre, and you have these so-called small arms on the right. 278 00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:41,980 What I would like to say here is that definitely a lot of the attention has been 279 00:31:41,980 --> 00:31:47,350 focussed and for correct reasons on small arms these last ten or 15 years. 280 00:31:47,620 --> 00:31:54,970 But in fact we're seeing more of a shift today in terms of investment in the conventional and the heavier forces. 281 00:31:55,210 --> 00:32:01,330 And of course, if we mention proliferation into the strategic forces, why do you think that is? 282 00:32:01,900 --> 00:32:04,750 I'll come to that in just a second. 283 00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:15,400 But because of the BRICS and today, this is no longer so much a market and a, how should I say, an interest for Middle Eastern? 284 00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:28,170 Countries because the Middle East has been essentially taken over by Asia as the first region that procures massive amounts of of military equipment. 285 00:32:28,180 --> 00:32:35,090 I'm not going to detail all of this, but you have here two countries that are worthy of interest. 286 00:32:35,110 --> 00:32:43,390 We talked about Japan, and of course, I could also have mentioned Japan plus 50% in defence spending, spending over two years. 287 00:32:43,660 --> 00:32:50,170 This has, of course, to be mitigated by the fact that the yen has decreased in value by about 30%. 288 00:32:50,410 --> 00:32:53,980 But still, this is this is extremely sizeable. 289 00:32:54,910 --> 00:33:02,200 I can give you another number of examples with regards to very large defence 290 00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:08,310 acquisition projects in China or other countries in the Indo-Pacific region. 291 00:33:08,620 --> 00:33:18,340 I'll just throw one word out at this point and I will say that these weapons here on the left of these weapons here on the right, 292 00:33:18,820 --> 00:33:24,100 these are the weapons traditionally of guerrilla warfare, insurrection, I'll call it liberation. 293 00:33:24,460 --> 00:33:31,020 These weapons here in the centre and to the to the left of this graph are the sovereignty weapons. 294 00:33:31,030 --> 00:33:35,950 And I like this word because and this is a very bold statement on my part, 295 00:33:36,220 --> 00:33:44,050 but I would say that if you look at the true power or where the true power is going to be in 15 and 20 and 25 years from now, 296 00:33:44,230 --> 00:33:51,820 perhaps we will be speaking a lot less in the UN about human rights and we will be speaking a lot more about sovereignty. 297 00:33:51,940 --> 00:33:56,680 I'll just leave this for your for your thought. 298 00:33:57,880 --> 00:34:08,560 Another factor of that is putting wind into the sails of conventional defence is the American pivot to Asia. 299 00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:10,720 Some people will say that it has. 300 00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:22,810 It still remains to be seen just how effective and how pertinent, how visible this this evolution in in strategy is, is going to be. 301 00:34:23,290 --> 00:34:32,379 This is not the the topic for today. But as I mentioned before, the effects that are extremely visible is that the naval assets, 302 00:34:32,380 --> 00:34:38,160 the air assets, the standoff assets and the coalition partnering partner, 303 00:34:38,390 --> 00:34:47,440 partner fearing efforts of the United States of America are very visible in this region of the world today. 304 00:34:47,590 --> 00:34:55,600 So the losers in many ways are the U.S. Army versus other branches of services for time constraints. 305 00:34:56,440 --> 00:35:03,880 Unless you really ask me to, I'm not going to go into the detail of the conventional forces still available today. 306 00:35:04,060 --> 00:35:08,720 But I will just outline this fact. We're seeing here a reduction. 307 00:35:08,740 --> 00:35:12,490 This is the announcement that was made. Was it yesterday or two days ago? 308 00:35:12,730 --> 00:35:18,460 Already we're seeing the reduction from 17 heavy brigades or armoured brigades to ten. 309 00:35:18,790 --> 00:35:27,190 So that's almost shrinking this in half. And the Stryker Brigade combat teams, intermediary forces are going to remain pretty much the same. 310 00:35:27,430 --> 00:35:38,350 What this number here doesn't really tell you is that there has already been a cut in half in the heavy U.S. forces because these U.S. forces, 311 00:35:38,350 --> 00:35:45,810 these heavy U.S. forces used to have pretty much double the number of armoured fighting vehicles than they have today. 312 00:35:45,820 --> 00:35:59,590 So we're seeing essentially a shrinking within a decade or so to about 25% of the of the post the immediate post-Cold War levels. 313 00:35:59,980 --> 00:36:05,800 This is the situation of France. Unless there are some specific questions, I won't go into the details. 314 00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:15,159 But essentially France is maintaining the capacity to project up to two brigade combat teams for a very short duration. 315 00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:20,920 We're talking about 1 to 2 months. Of course, most people in the room will know the British example. 316 00:36:21,190 --> 00:36:24,640 The German example follows pretty much those same trends. 317 00:36:24,940 --> 00:36:33,220 And if we look at a parallel in the air, the third dimension you see here, 318 00:36:33,490 --> 00:36:39,940 the very substantial reduction in available air forces or readiness air forces in Europe. 319 00:36:40,660 --> 00:36:51,370 I like to point out next to this graph that today the largest conventional military force in Europe is, of course, as everybody knows, Turkey. 320 00:36:52,240 --> 00:36:58,180 Turkey has over 800, I would say, state of the art fighters at 16. 321 00:36:58,420 --> 00:37:03,070 If we're talking about land warfare, we're talking about close to a thousand armoured fighting vehicles. 322 00:37:03,220 --> 00:37:07,840 And these are not obsolete vehicles in any shape or form. 323 00:37:07,990 --> 00:37:15,250 So this definitely leads us to rethink the defence capacities in in Europe. 324 00:37:16,180 --> 00:37:19,930 You may have heard encountered even read this paper. 325 00:37:20,740 --> 00:37:26,290 Yes. No, I like the term bonsai armies because this is very much what it is becoming. 326 00:37:26,560 --> 00:37:31,480 And with the reduction in budgets, the reduction in the size of armed forces. 327 00:37:31,780 --> 00:37:40,269 Well, very quickly. The question now is becoming, what are we going to simply abandon in terms of capacities, 328 00:37:40,270 --> 00:37:46,840 in terms of tools and equipment, and what are the core skills or competencies that we want to maintain? 329 00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:54,540 When I was here in in Oxford the last time. This is very much what I heard actually from British embassy officials. 330 00:37:54,550 --> 00:37:57,970 I was actually surprised that this is not only a Swiss question, 331 00:37:58,150 --> 00:38:05,920 how far can you reduce while maintaining a certain knowhow and a certain ability to project forces? 332 00:38:06,430 --> 00:38:15,910 This is very much the case also in Switzerland. And I would I would say that also in the United States, those exact same questions are being asked. 333 00:38:16,150 --> 00:38:25,120 How far can you scale down and what are the skills, competencies and tools that you want to keep in the in the toolbox? 334 00:38:25,810 --> 00:38:37,299 This problematic is in many ways compounded by the fact that Europe or many European countries are facing a technological I don't want to say crisis, 335 00:38:37,300 --> 00:38:39,010 but an obsolescence crisis. 336 00:38:39,310 --> 00:38:51,310 There is right now the need to refurbish the House because many of the weapon systems that are being employed today are I'm not going to say mid-life, 337 00:38:51,310 --> 00:38:58,810 because you're going to think that I'm selling you a nuclear reactor because the midlife has been passed a long, long time ago. 338 00:38:59,020 --> 00:39:05,800 So now we're talking about the extension of service life of many of the weapon systems that we are seeing. 339 00:39:06,490 --> 00:39:09,670 I talked about Martin Bryant Crawford earlier on. 340 00:39:09,910 --> 00:39:17,650 And, you know, of course, what what his answer to the problem is, well, bigger and heavier is going to be the solution. 341 00:39:17,860 --> 00:39:24,610 So pretty much everything is going to indulge with an extra ten, 15 or 20 tons. 342 00:39:25,060 --> 00:39:29,530 The vessels are becoming larger, the tanks are becoming heavier and so on and so forth. 343 00:39:29,530 --> 00:39:35,470 And we're adding all sorts of of gadgets. But one has to realise that all of this is extremely costly. 344 00:39:35,770 --> 00:39:45,940 It's not only extremely costly, but it raises quite a lot of of questions with regards to the renewal of this equipment for the industry. 345 00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:51,550 I'll just let you know in one particular dossier mandates that I'm very familiar with. 346 00:39:52,510 --> 00:40:01,570 One of the biggest difficulties or challenges for the industry is the fact that today there's about 2000 main battle tanks, 347 00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:05,650 leopard two main battle tanks that are available for sale, second hand. 348 00:40:05,950 --> 00:40:10,359 So it's very difficult for the industry to actually propose anything new, 349 00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:14,979 to develop a new weapons system, a new main battle tank, a new artillery system. 350 00:40:14,980 --> 00:40:19,690 Today, when there are literally thousands of equipments that are still available. 351 00:40:19,690 --> 00:40:26,620 Second hand relatively cheap is actually compounding the problem for the for the industry. 352 00:40:28,930 --> 00:40:36,400 Yes, I'm nearing the conclusion so I can talk about three possible directions for solutions. 353 00:40:37,030 --> 00:40:41,350 I'm not pretending that I have any solution, but this is food for thought at this stage. 354 00:40:41,770 --> 00:40:49,510 There's probably three possible evolutions. One at the technical level, the other one at the tactical level, and the third at the strategic level. 355 00:40:49,990 --> 00:40:53,320 The first would be the evolution of platforms. 356 00:40:53,590 --> 00:41:01,420 And here we would be talking about, as I said, modernising these platforms to a great degree, to a great extent. 357 00:41:02,110 --> 00:41:09,339 I have been asked to chair the what is called now the International Master Governors 358 00:41:09,340 --> 00:41:13,390 Conference that is going to take place in my country in the month of September. 359 00:41:13,590 --> 00:41:27,910 And this is an excellent international sharing and and cross-pollination, if you will, of of tankers or of officers in specialist in armoured warfare. 360 00:41:28,210 --> 00:41:32,560 And one of the things that is coming out of this conference, at least of last year, 361 00:41:32,830 --> 00:41:42,220 is that just about every country is maintaining an extremely limited number of platforms at the utmost state of the art level. 362 00:41:42,790 --> 00:41:51,130 I'll give you the examples that I know quite well. Sweden, for example, today immediately deployable, has 14 tanks, and that's it. 363 00:41:51,580 --> 00:42:00,550 Everything else that you read in the military balance or in SIPRI or in the Vienna document, well, all of these are sort of half, half. 364 00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,120 And before they are actually engaged or deployed, 365 00:42:04,540 --> 00:42:12,279 they would need some technical revisions or they would need an upgrade with electronic countermeasures of various kinds. 366 00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:15,340 So there's a there's a diversification, if you will. 367 00:42:16,390 --> 00:42:19,740 Presumably, there's a lot of people who are using these statistics and numbers. 368 00:42:20,350 --> 00:42:23,950 So don't be fooled by what you see on paper. Definitely. 369 00:42:23,950 --> 00:42:32,470 You have the overall declared armaments stocks on these documents that I that I noted before, the military balance and so on. 370 00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:41,620 But don't be fooled. There's actually going to be less and less of these vehicles or platforms that are really immediately usable. 371 00:42:41,830 --> 00:42:49,000 So that would be one trend to have only an extremely narrow and extremely limited number 372 00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:55,210 of platforms available immediately and have the rest updated or upgraded as need be. 373 00:42:55,250 --> 00:42:57,880 This has all sorts of consequences for the industry. 374 00:42:58,570 --> 00:43:05,140 Another consequence coming from this Master Gunner conference, which I actually found extremely interesting, 375 00:43:05,710 --> 00:43:10,900 was the fact that more and more there is pressure from just about every level, 376 00:43:10,900 --> 00:43:16,720 from the soldier level to the head of state level, that each single platform become multipurpose. 377 00:43:17,140 --> 00:43:19,600 It may sound counterintuitive, 378 00:43:19,870 --> 00:43:29,200 but the idea would be that a platform be able and this is thinking out of the box but is able to carry wounded personnel, 379 00:43:29,380 --> 00:43:40,540 is able to retransmit a TV broadcast, is able to employ a very specific type of munition for a very specific use, for example. 380 00:43:40,750 --> 00:43:45,610 Well, all of this, if you are familiar with the industry, means, in other words, 381 00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:50,889 this is going to cost a lot of money per single per unit, per per platform. 382 00:43:50,890 --> 00:44:00,070 But we're seeing actually the trends moving towards these multipurpose and very high cost, high technology platforms. 383 00:44:00,430 --> 00:44:11,410 The second area of evolution would be in tactics or in doctrine, and I'm not 100% familiar with the British armed forces I hope to become. 384 00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:15,970 But definitely I can talk about my experience with with the French. 385 00:44:16,180 --> 00:44:24,190 And this is to try and explore ways that tactically you can arrive at a more multipurpose platform. 386 00:44:25,390 --> 00:44:32,740 One example would be, for example, the combination of light forces or even remotely piloted vehicles, 387 00:44:32,740 --> 00:44:36,250 land vehicles and air vehicles very close to the combat troops. 388 00:44:36,670 --> 00:44:44,680 This is I participated in a trial with essentially mixed platoons of locally made battle tanks, 389 00:44:44,950 --> 00:44:52,180 along with reconnaissance units, so that essentially you have a light force that is able to explore ahead. 390 00:44:52,390 --> 00:44:54,910 And essentially you have very, very close by. 391 00:44:54,910 --> 00:45:03,670 You don't need to go through a whole hierarchy through through any kind of planning that you have the use of force with a heavy weapon very, 392 00:45:03,670 --> 00:45:12,040 very close by when you when you need it. So very much this is one one dimension that that France is is leading. 393 00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:16,930 I have no reason to believe that this is not the case in other forces as well. 394 00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:21,220 And the third would be in the grand strategic scheme of things. 395 00:45:21,460 --> 00:45:26,800 And this would be definitely to further develop this you can call it several names, 396 00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:35,620 you can call it this sea air warfare as it is in the United States of America, or you can call it the British way of war. 397 00:45:35,650 --> 00:45:40,900 This is what I learned from my short stay over here at at Oxford. 398 00:45:41,350 --> 00:45:46,240 Actually, it's also called the U.S. Way of war in other places of the world. 399 00:45:46,450 --> 00:45:49,790 But this is very much the expeditionary approach to things. 400 00:45:49,810 --> 00:45:54,130 You come in. You are decisive. You do something. You you change the status quo. 401 00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:59,170 And then you try to leave or you hand over the situation to somebody else. 402 00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:09,759 And then the third would be very much what we were discussing before this conference coalition building and finding local stakeholders on the ground. 403 00:46:09,760 --> 00:46:18,520 That will essentially help your efforts, as is the case, for example, today in Mali, where one is trying to stay, 404 00:46:18,520 --> 00:46:26,920 trying to build capacity in order to be able to remove oneself from being committed to the to the region. 405 00:46:28,030 --> 00:46:34,120 I'll just conclude with these three options or the three directions of of travel. 406 00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:42,760 Just wondering, this is a personal thought. Just wondering whether these different ideas that you see here are too good to be true. 407 00:46:43,330 --> 00:46:51,940 Because here is always the question. Everyone would like wars to be crashes, where everyone would like these wars to be extremely short, 408 00:46:51,970 --> 00:46:55,420 neat, decisive, and then be able to pull out very quickly. 409 00:46:55,660 --> 00:47:05,770 Is this not wishful thinking up to a certain degree, and are we not moving towards other surprises in this area? 410 00:47:06,190 --> 00:47:06,970 Thank you very much.