Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation

Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine has become Europe's greatest security challenge since the Cold War and a powerful catalyst for NATO's transformation. The Alliance is rethinking high-intensity warfare, accelerating the adoption of innovations, and adapting its structures and doctrines to account for the role of new technologies – from drones to artificial intelligence.

Thanks to its successful resistance against the aggressor, Ukraine has gained unique combat experience that is already influencing allies' decisions. NATO's Allied Command Transformation and the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training and Education Center (JATEC) play a particularly important role, integrating Ukrainian experience into NATO training, doctrines, and innovation.

In an interview with Ukrinform, Admiral Pierre Vandier, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, spoke about how the war is changing the Alliance, the lessons NATO has learned, how transformation is strengthening support for Ukraine, and the role Ukraine will play in Europe's future security.

THE ABILITY TO ADAPT IS ONE OF UKRAINE'S MOST IMPORTANT LESSONS

- Admiral, you are leading the strategic transformation agenda within NATO. So how, in your opinion, has Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine reshaped the vision of NATO about transformation? And what does the military conflict in the Middle East add to this vision?

- So the invasion of Ukraine has been a shock for a lot of Europeans that thought this kind of war was not possible in Europe. And so it has been a shock of realism.

The width of the invasion, the ammunition consumption with figures that are bigger than what we can produce have created a shock where all the leadership of Europe has realized that they need to change of era. They need to produce more. They need to be with more magazine depth.

And so the first fight has been helping Ukraine to fight tonight. And during these years, it has been the core of the effort. But today, four years of fight tonight raise the question of how we fight tomorrow.

Because we see that the enemy is adapting very fast. And so now all the effort is how we bring the nations to invent the cutting edge for the next years so far. You know that in The Hague, they pledged for 3.5% of their GDP in defense.

And so that means that we need to invest for the future and not for the past.

For the Middle East, in fact, what we see is the level of violence. And we see, in fact, what Ukraine experiments.

On a daily basis, you see strikes on infrastructure. Would it be data centers? Would it be oil refineries and critical nodes? And so, in fact, we just see that what happened in Ukraine, in fact, is the new way of fighting today. And so it's giving a strong momentum to what Ukraine experiments to spread among all the allies.

- Over the four years of full-scale war, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have become one of the most experienced military in the world. They demonstrate rapid adaptation on the battlefield, starting from using drones and implementing new strike tactics. Is NATO integrating any specific element of Ukrainian combat experience in military training and military-structured forces and operations right now?

- The first effects of the war in Ukraine has been to reframe the training. We inherit a very, I would say, conventional training.

And we've seen, given the speed of evolution of the battlefield, we not only need to qualify the troops, but we need to train them to adapt. And so we launched last year a new program for all NATO, which name is Audacious Training, where, in fact, a part of the training is unscripted. It's using red team and unscripted actions of the red team, just as the enemy, in order to stress the blue and make them replan and adapt.

Because we think in NATO that it's the DNA of adaptation, which is one of the strongest lessons from Ukraine, a constant adaptation of the fight.

THE WEST DID NOT ANTICIPATE THE WIDTH AND SCALE OF BALLISTIC MISSILE PRODUCTION

- By the way, this war is often described as a laboratory of modern high-intensity warfare. Which technologies or approaches – such as unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, or network-centric warfare – are most significantly transforming today's battlefield?

- So we have three domains in which we've seen extreme progress.

One is space, and especially the use of commercial space. Would it be for communications? And we see the role of Starlink, for example. But we see commercial imagery, commercial EW.

The second area is robotics. Would it be on land, on sea, undersea, in air? And we've seen this extremely prolific and rapidly adaptive domain.

And the third domain is the IT, and the use of these technologies to have a better command and control.

The example of Delta [situational awareness and battlefield management system] that's been invented by Ukraine is a very good example of how you can adapt at speed and give to the soldier relevant information for him to fight.

So these three domains are remarkable, and we have dedicated programs to take this experience into account.

- Given the growing global demand and the evident shortage of air defense missiles amid several simultaneous ongoing conflicts worldwide, does NATO have a strategy to scale up production and refilling stockpiles across member-countries?

- So we are working on finding the sweet spot to have the good weapons on the good targets.

In fact, we are in a mass combat, and so we need to use the good weapons on the good targets. The one that we can scale up to fight the drones, which are produced in hundreds of thousands. And so we need to find good products that are very cheap to kill these low-end threats, and then to be able to keep the exquisite, expensive, and very accurate weapons for the most demanding threats as ballistic missiles.

And so in NATO, we are working on finding these sweet spots and be able to construct a C2 system that will allocate the good effectors to the good targets.

- But what about the most expensive anti-ballistic missile, like Patriot?

- I think the West has not considered the width and the scale of the production of ballistic missiles. We had warning, for example, about the Houthis in Yemen, that such a small country was able to strike the maritime traffic with ballistic missiles.

This should have warned us. Say, okay, we need to do something different.

During that time, the production line of the complex missile was not that big. And so I think we are in a moment where we are in a hurry. We need to ramp up this production, and it's a complex weapon. So it will take some time.

- One of the key instruments of cooperation between Ukraine and NATO is the Joint Analysis, Training and Education Center, like you mentioned, in Bydgoszcz. So given the JATEC's work on the exchange of experience and information, when can we expect the creation of a fully interoperable command, control, and communication system for the military data exchange between NATO and Ukraine, especially in particular sharing the confidential information?

- So this is, I say, a complex topic because we need to find the agreements between the 32 nations and Ukraine to have this level of exchange. But so far, we accomplished some good work.

For example, we had an innovation contest on the gliding bombs that was quite successful. We are working on the counterfiber drones with another challenge. And we have incorporated the Ukrainians on the red teaming of our exercises.

And so today, a part of the success of Audacious Training is the Ukrainian success.

COGNITIVE WARFARE PLAYS A CRUCIAL ROLE IN COUNTERING HYBRID THREATS

- Russia is actively employing hybrid tools, including cyberattacks, sabotage, information operations, and pressure on critical infrastructure. How does the Alliance's transformation account for these new evolving types of threats?

- So you have a good example with the EVA Baltic Sentry. When the cables were cut in the Baltic one year ago, SACEUR has launched eVA, which is an extended Vigilant Activity where we put together all the assets of the islands, ships, maritime patrol aircraft. And we, ACT [Allied Command Transformation], launched a USV fleet to monitor the Baltic Sea.

And so that is an example of how the alliance is reacting at the scale of the islands. That means that all the 32 nations are collaborating in dealing with this.

More broadly, I think this gray zone operation is a sort of harassment.

And in fact, it's where cognitive warfare is important. A part of this warfare is to make our nations more resilient. The ability to adapt, to protect in depth, and to have a population which is not passive in the fight.

That's what we experienced during the Cold War. And we need to regain this experience.

- The war in Ukraine also demonstrates the importance of mass-producing low-cost technology, such as drones, such as electronic warfare system. Does this change NATO approach to the balance between expensive high-tech military equipment and mass-producing cost-sufficient solutions?

- Yeah, so there is a great work which is ongoing in the alliance to find these two tracks. You have, I say, a slow and complex track where you are looking for cutting-edge, exquisite technologies to have the superiority. And then you have another track where you need to go very fast with massive systems.

The drones is a good example. This year, I've been told that Ukraine will produce nearly 10 million drones. This scale needs to be affordable for the West.

The problem for the West and for the Europeans is that they are not at war. And given the obsolescence of the drones, for example, making a stockpile is not relevant. So we need to find a way, and training is the way, to be sure that the industry and the technology is always on the cutting edge.

With ramping up possibility for the industry. So it's where we need to aggregate the demand signal of the nations and to be sure that if we go to war, we'll be able to ramp up very rapidly and to have the latest technology.

WE NEED HARD TRAINING TO STRESS-TEST OUR SYSTEM

- Recently, the Ukrainian military, for the first time, led the opposing forces during the REPMUS/Dynamic Messenger exercises. And also during the practical phases, they deploy uncrewed surface vessels such as Magura V7, which I think had a positive result during training. How does this experience of adopting high technologies to the maritime domain influence the transformation of NATO's naval component?

- So these boats have been hired by my command. I paid for it because it's what I wanted to happen.

So it's what I told you about red team. In fact, it's making a more demanding and more realistic training environment. Then we will trigger the effects on the blue side being more relevant, developing the good technologies and to be prepared to this kind of war.

So it's a great success of the Ukrainian side to bring us this experience and to make us stronger. And so it's exactly what kind of trainings we want to achieve, where in fact, we don't make paper training, blue sky and sweet training. We need hard training to test and to make some stress test of our system.

- And some details about this training?

- It was training. So you still have some limits. But I think the good point is that we triggered a better understanding of where is the technology, what the achievements of Ukraine have given as a threat side.

And so what we need to work on.

IMPLEMENTING NATO-STANDARD STRATEGIC AND OPERATIVE TRAINING IN UKRAINE IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY RELEVANT

- Let me return back to the JATEC activity. You personally inaugurated its work just over a year ago. And what specific result or significant achievement of JATEC's activity can you mention now?

- So first is the red team build up. So this is for the benefit of NATO is bringing this war experience in the NATO enterprise. And on the Ukraine side, we made two competition for the glide bombs and for the fiber drones with very good success.

And so we have other program of work which have been asked by Ukraine. We will work on education, how to bring the strategic and operative training on the NATO standards to Ukraine. So it's a win-win endeavor.

SUPPORT FOR UKRAINE HAS ENABLED A REAL UNDERSTANDING OF WARFARE

- We already talked about hybrid tools and hybrid threats. Is the Alliance discussing a new mechanism for the collective response to hybrid threats that may not fall under the traditional interpretation of Article 5?

- In fact, it's what we are doing on a daily base. It's the eVA [enhanced Vigilance Activity].

So you have a secure as triggered some extended vigilance activities, one in the Baltic, one which is Eastern Flank after the drone incursions in Poland. Another one is now in the Arctic.

And it's a way to assess the problem and to generate forces that will address the problem in different areas, different domains, using space, real platforms and information warfare.

- As part of the collective response, is it only the deployment of rapid reaction forces in such areas, or you have some other vision of it?

- So I can't go public on the width of what is done. It's a global planning, multi-domain and the strength of the alliance, I say is first integration of all the nations. And so it's the standards, the ability to work together very seamlessly.

And second is the ability to aggregate all the domains. And even the, you have some domains that will be operated by some nations, but they will be integrated in a global picture. That gives a very good strength to the answer.

- And the final question, would it be fair to say that the war in Ukraine has effectively accelerated NATO's transformation by decades? And what is the role Ukraine will play in the near future in this process?

- So definitely the war in Ukraine has triggered a new era for NATO. Because now we have a pledge of resources from the 32 nations, 3.5% of the GDP, which is roughly doubling what it is today. At the scale of Europe in 2032, we should reach 800 billion a year of defense expenditures.

And what Ukraine experiences in war and what we've seen in the Middle East, as you asked previously, show that we have an effort and a strong effort, which is not only making more of the same, but we need to invent the next war and the next war fighting. The war fighting that will make us win and not be obliged to wage a war we would lose. So there is an intellectual effort, a training effort, a technological effort to be sure that we will keep the edge on the future.

- And what about Ukraine's role in your transformation plan?

- And I think Ukraine, supporting Ukraine has created links with real war. And I think Ukraine brings that, this DNA of adaptation, of fighting each night and reinventing itself. So I think this is very profitable for NATO.

And I think NATO can bring the building up of a long, credible and efficient military in the future.

Yurii Chornyi, Kyiv

Photo credit: Hennadii Minchenko / Ukrinform