NATO in Action
March 5, 2025
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Good morning, everyone. And thank you all for getting up and making the earliest start I think we’ve had this week. So well done for making it to the last day and 0800 in the morning. Today we’re here to offer some views and opinions on the subject of “NATO in Action.” Clearly a political hot topic at the moment, and also one of the most challenging titles to cover, is if I say it far too fast in my British accent, that it can be easily misconstrued as inaction, rather than inaction, a mistake that I’ve been trying not to make as I’m preparing for this. And I can assure you today, it’s about the latter. We’ve got a team of experts here who live and breathe how we are employing NATO in action. I think NATO is an alliance that many people talk about, but few truly understand, unless they are embedded in it and working within the construct every day. NATO’s key purpose, and some may say greatest responsibility, is to ensure the collective defense of allies against all threats from all directions. To do this, they work to three core tasks– deterrence and defense, crisis prevention and management, and cooperative security, all in an effort to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means. And to help me talk about the topic, we are fortunate to have a team of experts on the stage who, as I’ve said, are fully embedded in NATO and can offer us views from the strategic and policy down to the operational and tactical levels. We are not going to talk about politics or defense spending levels, because this is not the time to be in the newspaper headlines. But instead, I think for the next 30, 35 minutes or so, we’re going to try and draw out some examples of current activity and offer an opinion on the advantages and challenges of operating within the NATO construct. So in terms of the expert we’ve got, we’ve got Mr. Tom Goffus to start with, the current Assistant Secretary General for Operations and NATO Secretary General’s Special Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Next up is Lieutenant General Luigi Del Bene, the Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of Operational Forces for the First Air Region Command. And we’re also lucky to have Brigadier General Andy “Spoo” Clark, the current commander of the NATO Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Force. So to set the scene and get us started, I just want to ask each panel member how they see their role in NATO and what NATO is doing in that area at the moment. So Mr. Goffus, you get to work at the policy level, and I’m sure you’ve been involved in some pretty interesting conversations recently. Can I start with you? What is your current role and focus at the moment?
Tom Goffus:
Thanks, Nikki. Really great to be here and great for an early crowd. Believe that we’re at a generational inflection point in the history of the Euro-Atlantic, much like we were in 1990. Right around that time when the wall fell, Germany reunited and the Soviet Union dissolved. The next months very well could set the trajectory for Euro-Atlantic security for the next decade or even decades. At NATO, the role of the OPS Division is threefold in six words– prevent war, support Ukraine, and defend allies. To prevent war, NATO has troops in Kosovo and in Iraq. And NATO activities that are dynamically managed by SACEUR on a daily basis in order to prevent Russia and all of our adversaries from perceiving an advantage in either any geographic domain, in any warfighting domain, or in readiness. We also build the security and capacity of our 35 partners that NATO possesses. To support Ukraine, the OPS Division underpins the pillars of NATO’s work for Ukraine, including the NATO support and training assistance to Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany, the $40 billion pledge for military assistance to Ukraine that all allies made last year in DC, of which in 2024, we hit $51 billion. That’s $11 billion more than was pledged, by the way. Almost 60% of that was from non-US allies. There’s a center in Bydgoszcz, Poland that we help run with ACT to pull vital lessons learned from the battlefield in Russia and Ukraine. We have a trust fund of about $1 billion that the OPS Division runs for urgent non-lethal assistance, like Starlink and OneWeb, EW and counter-drone capability, and also long-term projects, like promoting the interoperability of Ukrainian forces with NATO forces, as well as long-term strategic defense reform. So to defend allies, we have a brand new set of plans, the first in 30 years, to defend the allies against Russia and terrorism. And the OPS Division helps to try and operationalize those defense plans. We also run NATO headquarter exercises so that the ambassadors can take decisions at the speed of relevance to the battlefield. Other than driving tanks, ships, and airplanes, this is about as “NATO in action” as NATO gets at the strategic level. Thank you.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Thank you so much. Lieutenant General Del Bene, how about from the first region command perspective? What are you currently involved in?
Lt. Gen. Luigi Del Bene:
Good morning. Thank you for the question. Actually, it’s not so early start. My body clock is about afternoon. But from my perspective, and we already heard the words from General Acker yesterday, and in the framework of the three main tasks you mentioned before, we’re mostly committed to the training and exercise model led by AIRCOM, which basically drive the Italian Air Force into the authorization of the agile combat employment concept. Mostly engaged into LFEs, agile force employment, and exercise in situ at different levels. And we’re also engaged in a challenge with the basing issues, as we also heard yesterday. The other area where we put most of our efforts is basically readiness. The new force model put into the system, great changes, obviously. And generating those serials and those packages is quite an endeavor these days. And then the operations. As the Italian Air Force, we’re committed 12 months a year into enhanced air policing in the Baltics and in the east of Europe. And that adds on to the regular commitment Q&A that we do in Italy as well. Plus, we do commit into the insider initiative, the enhanced visual activity as well. And that adds on at the end to the continuous adaptation process that we have in different fields. We already heard about the new set of plans. And I’ll tell you, the authorization of those plans, it’s a big deal.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
It sounds certainly not too quiet at the moment for you. And finally, Brigadier General Clark, what about your role in NATO, sort of at the delivery end? What are you looking at the moment?
Brig. Gen. Andrew Clark:
Yeah. So I think you heard the strategic and the operational level. And I’m going to take it tactical. And I know there’s a lot of folks in NATO that don’t really understand what we do. We are a relatively young organization. And I’m betting there’s a few in the crowd that don’t either. So I’ll offer a quick explanation of what NATO ISR Force does. We’re one of two operational units that reports directly to SACEUR. We’re common funded. So all 32 nations have buy-in in the force. We’re about 10 years old. And we currently have members from about 24 nations. And we’re tasked with conducting unified intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations. And by this, I mean we do the collection through five RQ-4D aircraft. And then we receive data from several national platforms from throughout NATO. And then we process, exploit, and disseminate to all 32 nations. So the advantage is we provide that unfiltered intelligence to all those nations. And so what I like to tell people is that in the US, we have the DGS system, the Distributed Common Ground System, that peds the information that aircraft in our Air Force collect. But we do it all in-house. We’re a one-stop shop. We have about 150 analysts on the ground there. And our products, we put out about roughly 10,000 products a year is the rate we’re at right now. About 35% of that is collected through our aircraft. And then the other 65% is other national inputs. And then what I can say is that under General Hecker’s OPCON control on our aviation assets is we’re engaged around the clock, 24/7, 365 on the eastern flank.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
I think we all see it’s pretty impressive what’s actually going on out there on the ground. So I just want to expand slightly on your answers. I’m really interested to hear, having heard what you sort of do in your roles, where you see the advances and challenges of operating within NATO. So Brigadier General Clark, I’ll start with you. Where do you feel the sort of good and bad aspects are within the construct?
Brig. Gen. Andrew Clark:
Yeah, and I think what we see down at NISRF or NISRF is reflective of what we see at the higher operational or the higher operational strategic levels is that the rewards and the benefits we reap are from the pooling of national resources, right? All the different nations and all of the resources they push in. For us, we see it in, we tend to get very talented and very experienced people from the aviation world and also from the intelligence community. And so we like to think that we produce a superior product because we are getting so much talent and so much resources on that. But on the flip side of that, and the challenges I have at my level is working with 24 different nations, different cultures, different militaries and different branches of the military, building consensus above those and dealing with a myriad of problems, along with the rewarding aspects of working in this community, there’s some challenges that are very unique that as a US Air Force member, I’m not used to. An example I like to use is one of our nations has a union for their military and they can only work a certain number of hours. And I was very foreign to me and I haven’t been around that and so working through that challenge presented opportunities as well to make sure we were utilizing the right folks at the right time and in the right place.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Hey, I’m not sure my bosses would like if we started a union, but you never know. So Mr. Goffus, how about from your perspective in the headquarters?
Tom Goffus:
Yeah, I’m looking for my own union if I can get one. So I’ll start with the challenges a little bit. To be clear, working to get consensus and at the political level, and that’s where I live on a day-to-day basis, with 32 allies can be painful and make cat herding look easy by comparison. But when 32 nations agree, it’s powerful and it’s game-changing. As Churchill famously said, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, “and that’s fighting without allies.” Getting 32 on board harnesses 50% of the world’s economic power and 50% of the world’s military might. NATO has that kind of throw weight. It simply put is leverage, leverage for the US and leverage for all the allies. In our strategic confrontation with Russia and China, having 32 of the richest and most capable nations in the world, who are not always, by the way, enamored of each other, remains clearly and simply one of the biggest asymmetric advantages that the US has. And having the US in the alliance as a major stakeholder is a pivotal source of leverage for non-US allies. Not preserving this pivotal source of leverage would have strategic consequences and alter the future course of your Atlantic history. And by that, I mean both US history and European history. One last thought, NATO is becoming more relevant to the China threat. I told Vice President Vance this in Munich a couple weeks ago. NATO is following in the example of President Trump as the father of the Space Force into developing space capabilities. Space is a warfighting domain and by its very nature is a global domain. That means that if NATO is a player in space, it is de facto a player in any conflict in the Indo-Pacific. I think that’s an important thing to remember when people think these two theaters are not connected. They are totally intertwined and NATO is at the heart of that union.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Yeah, so it feels like a change in mindset that people probably haven’t noticed where it’s going to. And Lieutenant General Del Bene, what about from your perspective?
Lt. Gen. Luigi Del Bene:
Yeah, first of all, we always focus on challenges. That’s true, there are a lot coming along. But I think that if we look carefully behind every challenge, there are at least a couple of opportunities that we can grab. Just to mention one, I already mentioned the new sets of plan and that was a definite change into the way NATO addressed plans in the past. These days we’re facing more complex and sophisticated plans that are connected to CJSWAR and they’re linked into the readiness model. So one of the biggest challenge is keeping the nations involved into this process and make sure that we’re synchronized to the all different changes that SACR and SHAPE are running every day together with the components. That’s from my perspective. The good part of that is that I’ve seen through the last couple of years a definitely more focused leadership on readiness, which it’s a good fact that people are taking this specific function more and more seriously. We have an issue associated with air basing in the logistic of resilience. Obviously this is still handled through nation to nation agreements. We need a more agile way to make sure that we can flawlessly move from one base to the other as far as AIRCOM directs us to do so and SACR does the same. The ACE concept is very interesting. Going from the concept into reality, it’s not so easy also because some nation understands that in a different way. There is a common factor and a common understanding of a few things, but I think the more the exercise, AIRCOM exercise program becomes sophisticated and we try and try better and better to do things, I think we can get to a point where the interoperability is complete. Then obviously we’re facing the introduction of a new RC2 system and that will be a major challenge, leaving the new and old at the same time, SCCS, into the new one. So these are the ones that I see for now as the most challenges were having at my level.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
No, that’s brilliant, thank you very much. Clearly a topical discussion at the moment and maybe too big for just one panel question, but I think it’s important to address where we can see where NATO may be learning from the war in Ukraine and the Russian aggression. So without getting political or going outside the classification, I’ll start with you Lieutenant General Del Bene. What is your views on the lessons we can be learning?
Lt. Gen. Luigi Del Bene:
There are a lot of things that NATO has already learned out of Ukraine. Some others are still under observation, under analysis as well. Remaining to the unclassified domain, one of the most interesting things that we started to learn is the campaign design that was overarching the fight in Ukraine. And then I think we got some interesting issues coming out of that, especially in the air and space domain. There is another, I think, aspect and issue concerning the Russian doctrine and then how that goes down into the TTPs and how they adapted through the phases of the conflict, which is interesting to notice and to see how also things are moving as the conflict progressed through the years. It’s another part which is very interesting and personally as Italian Air Force, we learned a lot out of that, is how fast the Ukrainian leveraged out of the shaft technologies and put them into operations really fast. And that also goes particularly to the, some of the, some air defense systems, which with a lot of creativity were put in place and into action, and that also concerned the unmanned domain and the counter-unmanned domain.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
That’s brilliant, thank you so much. And Brigadier General Clark, from your perspective?
Brig. Gen. Andrew Clark:
Yeah, so, you know, any in-depth discussion of intelligence is obviously a challenge in an unclassified environment, but what I have observed firsthand, well not secondhand, it’s a remotely piloted aircraft so I can’t really say firsthand, but I’ve seen it on the screen with my own eyes, is the importance of air superiority, and that’s a theme we’ve talked about the last couple of days, gaining and maintaining air superiority and how important that is to affect outcome on the battlefield. And really for me, it is stressed the importance of the airborne role, the air-com role within NATO in the overall NATO defense and deterrence mission. So what we’re focused on down at Sigonella is how do we gain synergy with what air-com and General Hecker in his NATO hat and his operational focus areas and how we can support those, so C2, IAMD, ACE, data and information integration, and I’m forgetting the first one. Counter A2/AD, and that’s exactly the one I wanted to talk about.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Good to have a senior prompter.
Brig. Gen. Andrew Clark:
Thank you, sir, appreciate it. Counter A2/AD, which for us, it was one of the most challenging parts of operations over the last couple of years, and we worked through a myriad of ways how we can ensure our platform can gain access, but it’s not without trials and tribulations, right? Every time we have a success, we have another failure, so that’s an ongoing challenge, and we continue to learn from that.
Lt. Gen. Luigi Del Bene:
If I add a little bit about this, Nikki, there is a great initiative led by air-com, which is striving to get all the nation’s warfare centers stuck together and analyze and speculate over different issues and aspects that derive from the lesson learned, identified, actually, in Ukraine, and I don’t want to duplicate what has already been said about air superiority and anti-A2/AD, in operating our assets in a very contested environment and understanding the vulnerability we have, but also the enemy’s vulnerability as well. So I want to mention this initiative, which I think is very good, and is making all nations grow together in this issue as well.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
That’s really good. I think learning from each other, and clearly in that environment, is absolutely critical. And so, last but not least, Mr. Goffus, from the policy side and where you sit, what are your perspectives?
Tom Goffus:
Yeah, thanks. I’ve been staring, I got to NATO one month before the invasion, so front row seat watching the whole thing. I think it’s a critical topic. I can’t help myself with all the flight suits around by just mentioning acoustic sensors for low-altitude detection of drones and cruise missiles. Essentially, Ukraine is covering its entire nation, a thousand meters and below, with acoustic sensors for less than 50 million euros. It’s crazy what they’re doing with this. But trying to move it back up a little bit more to the strategic, number one, we just opened a lessons-learned center in Bydgoszcz, Poland. It’s the first NATO and Ukraine-run organization that we have. We don’t have any other partners that run an organization like this. It’ll be under SAC-T, but there’ll also be a civilian element to it. I’ll have some of my people there working for the commander on the ground for unity of command. But that’s gonna be a vehicle for more of these. So a few ideas at the three-year point. Lesson number one, collective action rests on the foundation of shared awareness, and it takes real work to achieve that shared awareness. And unlike in 2014, where ambassadors were arguing, they’re looking at pictures saying, see, the Russians are in Crimea. And the next ambassador would say, no, that looks like a hunter to me. And as a result, we didn’t do anything, ’cause we didn’t have shared awareness of what was going on. Our 2022 response couldn’t have been more different than the 2014 response, in primary part, due to shared intelligence among allies, especially from the US. And so lesson number two is, it’s not what we do that provokes Putin. It’s what we don’t do. We should have learned that in 2014. And that’s lesson number three, which is Putin is not a strategist. He’s an opportunist. He pushes on some doors, and when nobody pushes back, he walks in. What 2014 taught him was there is no, there was no significant consequence for using force. It invited Putin’s 2022 invasion, in my opinion. In his own words, Putin believes that, quote, “A serious, irreconcilable struggle is unfolding “for the formation of a new world order.” And that’s lesson number four. We are in a strategic confrontation. I believe our Australian friends are seized of the same Xi dynamic in the Indo-Pacific. Putin explicitly said he’ll use crisis and conflict during peace to win the strategic confrontation. Peace, crisis, conflict used to be a sequence, part of our model. Now it’s a spectrum. As NATO Secretary General Rutte said, “We are not at war, but we are certainly “not at peace either.” Lesson number five is that we are woefully under-invested in our transatlantic defense industrial base to produce the capabilities we need at pace and at scale. Russia, with an economy 5% the size of NATO, produces in three months many critical munitions that it takes 32 allies an entire year to produce. I know I’m not making friends amongst the industry at this point, but something is very wrong here and we must fix it.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Brilliant, thank you. Again, it was important to address that side of the topic and some really insightful answers. And I wanna expand on the industrial aspects a little bit. So, Mr. Goffus, if you’re happy, how important do you think that defense industrial capacity is across NATO for success?
Tom Goffus:
It’s not been this important in a long time. We had peace time, people taking peace dividends. The demand signal was at least level, if not decreasing, and now it’s gone up. We have new defense plans that require new capabilities that require more investment. But at the back end of that string of threat, plans, capabilities, investment, is defense industrial capacity to deliver that. Just with the increase due to the new plans that we have, that would have maxed out industry and then some. And then on top of that, you put the need to secure, to support Ukraine, and so we’re even above that level. And by the way, I need to dispel the myth that some folks have that if we declare peace, the next day the requirement to support Ukraine goes to zero. That’s not true. Because we all know, after 2008 in Georgia, 2014 in Crimea, and 2022 with the full-scale invasion, Putin’s coming back. So we need to rebuild the Ukrainian army when peace breaks out. And then we need to build it up in order to deter future aggression. That’s just what it is. This is gonna be one of the major topics at the summit, the NATO summit with all the world leaders in June. This is a focus, defense industrial capacity. And the other thing I would say to industry is with countries like Poland is at 4.7% of GDP. The eastern flank is in fact going above 5%. There is money out there, and there is a demand signal out there. And again, I’m not gonna make friends and realize that as American in NATO, I have to pick on American companies, but this would apply to European companies as well. I talked to a Lithuanian, and with their extra percentage of GDP in defense spending, they wanna buy Amarams for their NASAMs, five-year wait. I talked to the Bulgarian Chod. They wanna buy Javelins for their Strikers, seven-year wait. I talked to some of the big allies who want to buy Patriots, 10-year wait. Again, that needs to get fixed. And I know that industry will tell you what we need is long-term demand. Well, 10 years sounds like long-term demand to me. There is something that we need to get in there and fix. Some of it is process, and I think that Secretary General has talked to President Trump about that, and said, “Look, you gotta help me. “People wanna buy American kit. “You’ve gotta help us help you on that.” And Europe needs to increase its defense industrial base as well. And I love our South Korean friends, but when European allies are going to South Korea to buy, it’s because they can’t do it within Europe, and they can’t do it with the US, and we need to fix that.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
That’s brilliant, thanks so much. And Lieutenant General Del Bene, what about in your position? How do you see the defense industrials past V?
Lt. Gen. Luigi Del Bene:
To be honest, Nikki, from the operator’s perspective, having been working on capability development for a few years, the operator’s demands have always been there. What has changed recently is that the signal is being understood in a way or the other, so the sensitivity is different. Obviously, now we have production capacity from the industrial base. I don’t think it’s gonna be solved very quickly. Unfortunately, the waiting lines that has been mentioned will be there. They could be mitigated in a way, but I don’t think they’re gonna be solved immediately. There are also some technology gaps that must be closed, but again, mostly it’s the mindset that has to change. A few years ago, we the military, we’ll take a look at the industry as a counterpart. Right now, I think we need to take a look as a strategic all of making our defense stronger. And so if we work together towards the same goal, maybe there is a way of mitigating some of the shortfalls that I don’t think we’re gonna solve in the short term. The last thing I wanna say, mention is we don’t need products. We need capabilities, and sometimes it’s not tough to relay this message into the industry. Some do already, some others are trailing on this concept.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Yeah, it’s always easy to buy equipment versus buying the actual capacity and capability you want. And Brigadier General Clark, from your perspective.
Brig. Gen. Andrew Clark:
Yeah, I think my thoughts are gonna dovetail nicely on General Del Bene’s. In the ISR community, it’s very similar to a lot of other communities, but I think it’s more acutely felt is there’s a capacity demand signal mismatch. And when you have, for instance, we have five aircraft along with the two US aircraft with a similar capability as ours. That’s it in the theater that offers that capability at high altitude. So aircraft availability and maintenance and all those things that industry is heavily involved in are impacted by those relationships between the different industrial partners and with the military folks, regardless of the nation. And so my plea, I guess, and I’ve made this very clear with the three major partners that we work with on a regular basis is, yes, I get it. You know, you’re there to make money. There’s a competitive piece of this, but at some point, there has to be partnership and there has to be collaboration. Because when you have these exquisite platforms that rely on components and systems from the various nations if you can’t find a way to work together to improve that capacity, to ensure that those platforms are available, then you’re never gonna even move closer to overcoming that mismatch.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
That’s great, thank you. I just wanna draw on some of the challenges that people mentioned earlier as well. So I think everyone in this room works across partnerships. We all work across alliances. And it’s interoperability and integration are absolutely critical. I’m just really interested to see how that sort of fits in your working day in NATO. So Brigadier General Clark, I’ll start with you.
Brig. Gen. Andrew Clark:
Yeah, one of our personal operational focus areas in NISERF is it’s completely, it’s basically the same as General Hecker’s and it’s data integration, data interoperability. And I mentioned earlier that over 65% of our intelligence products are derived from data that’s from other nations that aren’t a NATO asset. So whether it’s overhead, we’re dabbling in FMV now, MINT, GEOINT, we absolutely rely on that data. And as it stands now, there’s a lot of different data baselines, data definitions, all those different, you know, the data catalog just isn’t there that unifies it all into one format. So we run into challenges with the timeliness of the data we get. And as you well know, in the intelligence world, the older the data gets, the more useless it becomes. So, you know, we’re working with our various national partners to improve on how we get data quicker. One good example is some of the find, fix, and target F2T events that AIRCOM conducts, where we try to identify a target and then hold it. We use those opportunities to test the speed with which we can get that data. And in some cases, it was taking over two hours for us to get imagery on a specific target, which is completely unacceptable. But through some of the processes that we’ve inculcated into the force and across the joint ISR enterprise in NATO, we’ve brought that time down to anywhere from about five to 15 minutes, which makes that a prosecutable target in the long run. So for us, it’s the data piece is probably the most important thing.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Yeah, data is definitely one of the critical elements. And Mr. Goffus, from your side, do you think we can be really, truly integrated across NATO?
Tom Goffus:
Yeah, I think it’s a great question. It’s a great challenge. We live it in the ops division from the aspect of supporting Ukraine. That’s one of our primary lines of effort is to make them more interoperable, because what we found is the more interoperable you are with NATO, the easier it is for us to support you. But on the other hand, I believe the Ukrainians have about a dozen different 155 millimeter artillery systems. That means they have to maintain 12 different systems. They have over 20 infantry fighting vehicles of different types. We’ve given them just a terrible jigsaw puzzle to try and solve. So more is not always better if it’s not interoperable. And surely we shouldn’t give ourselves the same terrible jigsaw puzzle. On that score, there are well over 1,000 standards at NATO. And trying to figure out which ones are the most important and actually enforce them is something that one of my colleagues got that rose pinned on her, and she is getting after it right now. On the good side, there are companies out there that can connect your toaster to your coffee machine to your refrigerator and have them all talking to each other happily. So there are solutions out there, and NATO is looking for those solutions.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
That’s brilliant, thank you. And Lieutenant General Del Bene?
Lt. Gen. Luigi Del Bene:
Yeah, for interoperability, interoperability is the first benchmark that we need to work together, obviously. But it’s mostly technical. Concerning material issues, for example, protocols or non-material issues, such as stand access, was mentioned now, or standardization agreements. In this domain, I think NATO is doing pretty good through the years. There is still work to do. Obviously, there are adaptations going on as technology progresses, but overall, I think NATO constitutes a pretty good benchmark. Integration is another story. Integration requests the willingness to integrate, and it’s based mostly upon info sharing. And there are examples, good examples, I think. For example, the F-35 user group in Europe, led by Aircom, is one integration example, and it works to me. It got good results. There are some other areas that need to be addressed as well and make progress on those areas as well.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Yeah, and I think access and sharing is one of the critical elements. I always wear my ‘Yes Forn’ patch with pride, try to get it going as much as I can. So we’ve only got about five minutes left, so we’ll pause on the questions. I think it’s, first, we thank you to the panel for their time today. I just want to offer you each a chance just to offer a couple of, a minute or so, of closing remarks of the sort of final aspects you’d like the audience to take away. So I’ll start at this end, so Brigadier General Clark, I’ll start with you.
Brig. Gen. Andrew Clark:
Leadership in NATO, I think, is what I would focus on. It has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my career, after having spent almost 30 years in the special operations and in the ISR world. Seeing the nations come together at the tactical and operational level and achieve what they’ve been able to achieve, and again, I wish I could share more, come to Sigonella and I’ll tell you all about it, has been literally eye-watering to see. And I’m incredibly proud to be a member of NATO, to lead this organization. It hasn’t been without its challenges. It’s taught me a new meaning of the word patience, and it’s made me a more patient person. But with that patience has come the knowledge that we’re doing fantastic work on behalf of the alliance and its primary defense and deterrence mission. So I appreciate the opportunity to come and share.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Lieutenant General Del Bene.
Lt. Gen. Luigi Del Bene:
First of all, let me thank you, AFA, for the invitation, and you, Nikki, for leading this panel. Overall, I think people need to realize, as you see here in the US, that for us and the air forces in Europe, we don’t have a day where we’re referenced to air comm and to NATO, basically. All our activities are totally intertwined with NATO from the start, and we learned that from the basics. So it’s part of our essence and of our everyday operations. These days, as Italian Air Force, we’re facing interesting times. Most of the challenges are dealing with trying to live with very strong upstample together with a very robust exercise program, both national and NATO and multinational. We are introducing to service a set of capabilities very interesting, going from surface-based missile defense to very capable aircraft for multi-missions and electronic attack. And that comes into a time where, unfortunately, we’re low on personnel and we’re struggling with people most of the times. Procurement, again, is an issue, but I think there is a way to get out of that. And if we work together as an alliance, together with industry, I think we can mitigate all the shortfalls that we already mentioned. So overall, I think I’m optimistic.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Glass half full, always a good thing. Mr. Goffus.
Tom Goffus:
Yeah, and kind of piggybacking on General Del Bene, I don’t think most Americans realize that by 2030, there will be over 650 European F-35s on the continent. That’s nothing to sneeze at, and that’s part of what NATO brings together and helps with that interoperability to keep everybody going in the same direction. The baseline power of NATO is twofold, unity and adaptability. And unity doesn’t necessarily mean harmony, but it does mean constructively disagreeing. Adaptability means learning, and if nothing else, the war in Ukraine is a fight of adaptation against attrition. It’s brutal to watch, but extremely important to learn from. Finally, Secretary General put it this way, this is the worst security situation in my lifetime. My personal belief is that in the history of Euro-Atlantic security, NATO has never been as important or as relevant as it is right now. And President Xi is watching what happens in Ukraine very closely. In fact, my personal opinion is the front lines of the fight against China, and against China trying to take Taiwan, is on the Ukraine battlefield right now, that’s where the fight is. It doesn’t mean that if that war ends and Putin gets a good deal that he’s gonna go tomorrow, but it gives him a flashing green light to go ahead with his plans. So I would say, as a final thought, the fate of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific have never been more intertwined than they are right now, and NATO sits right at the heart of that intersection. Thanks again, Nikki, appreciate all the work you did on this panel.
Air Commodore Nikki Thomas:
Brilliant, and again, I won’t even attempt to summarize that, I think the team did an absolutely superb job bringing the closing remarks together. So please, all I can ask is please put your hands together to thank the panel for what was an informative and important discussion.