Defence`s Feeds

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I wrote a piece on the CSTO and the Warsaw Pact for Russia Matters. Here’s a preview. You can read the whole article here.

This month 65 years ago, the Soviet Union announced the formation of the Warsaw Pact. For the next three and a half decades, the pact remained the security alliance of the Communist world, designed to counter NATO in Europe, before becoming defunct in 1991. Almost immediately, however, post-Soviet Russia laid out a new collective defense organization. Officially known as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), that post-Soviet pact has proved to be no match for the Warsaw Pact. Neither CSTO nor the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the other collective security pact of which Russia is a member, pose a real threat to the U.S. and its allies above and beyond the threat posed by their individual member states.

The Warsaw Pact was formally founded on May 14, 1955, as Moscow’s answer to the integration of West Germany into NATO. Its members included the Soviet Union and its East European satellite states: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Albania was initially a member, but withdrew in the 1960s after siding with China during the Sino-Soviet split. The pact obligated member states to mutual defense, allowed for member states to station troops on each other’s territory and set up a unified military command under Soviet control. During the 35 years of its existence, the pact only undertook one operation as an organization—the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, though Hungary’s withdrawal from the pact in 1956 was one of the proximate causes of the Soviet invasion of that country. Both of these actions were practical applications of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which justified intervention in any socialist state if socialist rule was considered to be under external or internal threat. The pact’s dissolution in July 1991 was a key signal that the Soviet Union’s hold on Eastern Europe had been broken and that the Cold War was truly over.

After the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union, leaders of several of the newly independent states signed a new collective security treaty. Although the treaty was signed in 1992, no practical actions were taken until the early 2000s, when six states formed a new organization on its basis, imaginatively called the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Through this new organization, the member states sought to enhance the existing treaty’s mutual security commitments to develop a standing organization that enhanced security cooperation through regular exercises, while aspiring to further integration including an eventual joint command structure. However, the organization was largely moribund for several years after its founding. Although it became more active in the last decade, organizing regular and increasingly frequent military exercises since 2012, it still does little more than provide a venue for cooperation among the military forces of its member states.

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Smart textiles are a new generation of innovative material offering very interesting multifunctional properties such as being integrable into uniforms and platforms. They therefore have drawn the attention of the defence sector.   

Against this backdrop, EDA has incorporated smart textiles into the so-called Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) of its capability technology group (’CapTech’) devoted to Materials & Structures, and a specific Technology Building Block (TBB) was set up for them. Furthermore, other EDA CapTechs, such as those dealing with CBRN, Human Factors and Ground Systems, have taken initiatives related to smart textiles.  
 

STILE project 

In January 2019, EDA launched a project on “Smart TextILEs in defence: looking at the soldiers of the future” with two participating Member States, Spain and Portugal. The practical implementation of this project, called STILE, was assigned to a consortium led by the Spanish research institute AITEX, in collaboration with two Portuguese organisations, CITEVE and INEGI. 

The objective of STILE is to lay the foundation for a future ‘European Multifunctional Smart Textile’ for defence able to respond to a certain number of requirements in terms of functionality, integration, comfort and weight. More precisely, it was aimed to define a roadmap for developing a system offering several functionalities in a textile substrate, and to come up with a proof of concept that integrates various functionalities with state-of-the-art technologies.
 

Preliminary results  

The initial analysis undertaken under the project confirmed that Europe lacks multifunctional smart textile capabilities in defence. Hence the importance for the STILE project to produce a proof of concept of multifunctional smart textiles able to integrate in a single model all the afore-mentioned features and requirements.  

Preliminary results of the project give already an overview of the current R&T development and technology needs as well as the challenges laying ahead to overcome those needs. The methodology used was based on the technical knowledge of the consortium members and the collection of data coming from multiple sources, including a technology foresight workshop on smart textile technologies organised at EDA, a survey done among the Agency’s ‘Materials’ CapTech experts as well as various meetings with experts.
 

Roadmap 

A medium to long-term technology roadmap was established with a set of actions required to develop an innovative smart textile for future defence applications, including the incorporation of modern design and development methodology by the textile industry. For this purpose, two simulation models were developed to evaluate the main concepts regarding the thermal protection capacity of the garment and the thermal signature under different ambient conditions.  
 

Proof of concept 

As a first step of the roadmap, a multifunctional smart textile prototype - the first of this type and quality in Europe - was produced with the following functions (each of them tested):  

• signature management: the textile has multispectral camouflage in both static and moving positions 

• CBR threats monitoring: the smart textile detects the presence of hazardous agents (e.g. H2S, NO2, Cl2) and provides warning to the soldier 

• improved mobility, using various textile structures as well as seamless technology in body mapping concept 

• flame retardancy, water and dirt repellence and anti-mosquito solutions 

• physiological monitoring: the smart textile measures the heart rate and provide info to the soldier 

• temperature regulation (cooling and heating): the smart textile is able to control the body temperature through monitoring of the ambient temperature 

• communication: the smart textile provides all parameters, such as the heart rate, to the soldier via an app in the smartphone, embedded in the system. In addition, the data can be transferred to the operating centre, if needed. 
   

Testing in the field 

From June 2020 onwards, the STILE prototype will be further tested in the field to make sure that it fulfills the stringent military requirements. At the end of the project (expected in May 2021) an exhibition centre will be organized to reveal the fully tested STILE model to the European defence and dual use community, reaching out the potential users in the European Ministries of Defence. 

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Smart textiles are a new generation of innovative material offering very interesting multifunctional properties such as being integrable into uniforms and platforms. They therefore have drawn the attention of the defence sector.   

Against this backdrop, EDA has incorporated smart textiles into the so-called Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) of its capability technology group (’CapTech’) devoted to Materials & Structures, and a specific Technology Building Block (TBB) was set up for them. Furthermore, other EDA CapTechs, such as those dealing with CBRN, Human Factors and Ground Systems, have taken initiatives related to smart textiles.  
 

STILE project 

In January 2019, EDA launched a project on “Smart TextILEs in defence: looking at the soldiers of the future” with two participating Member States, Spain and Portugal. The practical implementation of this project, called STILE, was assigned to a consortium led by the Spanish research institute AITEX, in collaboration with two Portuguese organisations, CITEVE and INEGI. 

The objective of STILE is to lay the foundation for a future ‘European Multifunctional Smart Textile’ for defence able to respond to a certain number of requirements in terms of functionality, integration, comfort and weight. More precisely, it was aimed to define a roadmap for developing a system offering several functionalities in a textile substrate, and to come up with a proof of concept that integrates various functionalities with state-of-the-art technologies.
 

Preliminary results  

The initial analysis undertaken under the project confirmed that Europe lacks multifunctional smart textile capabilities in defence. Hence the importance for the STILE project to produce a proof of concept of multifunctional smart textiles able to integrate in a single model all the afore-mentioned features and requirements.  

Preliminary results of the project give already an overview of the current R&T development and technology needs as well as the challenges laying ahead to overcome those needs. The methodology used was based on the technical knowledge of the consortium members and the collection of data coming from multiple sources, including a technology foresight workshop on smart textile technologies organised at EDA, a survey done among the Agency’s ‘Materials’ CapTech experts as well as various meetings with experts.
 

Roadmap 

A medium to long-term technology roadmap was established with a set of actions required to develop an innovative smart textile for future defence applications, including the incorporation of modern design and development methodology by the textile industry. For this purpose, two simulation models were developed to evaluate the main concepts regarding the thermal protection capacity of the garment and the thermal signature under different ambient conditions.  
 

Proof of concept 

As a first step of the roadmap, a multifunctional smart textile prototype - the first of this type and quality in Europe - was produced with the following functions (each of them tested):  

• signature management: the textile has multispectral camouflage in both static and moving positions 

• CBR threats monitoring: the smart textile detects the presence of hazardous agents (e.g. H2S, NO2, Cl2) and provides warning to the soldier 

• improved mobility, using various textile structures as well as seamless technology in body mapping concept 

• flame retardancy, water and dirt repellence and anti-mosquito solutions 

• physiological monitoring: the smart textile measures the heart rate and provide info to the soldier 

• temperature regulation (cooling and heating): the smart textile is able to control the body temperature through monitoring of the ambient temperature 

• communication: the smart textile provides all parameters, such as the heart rate, to the soldier via an app in the smartphone, embedded in the system. In addition, the data can be transferred to the operating centre, if needed. 
   

Testing in the field 

From June 2020 onwards, the STILE prototype will be further tested in the field to make sure that it fulfills the stringent military requirements. At the end of the project (expected in May 2021) an exhibition centre will be organized to reveal the fully tested STILE model to the European defence and dual use community, reaching out the potential users in the European Ministries of Defence. 

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