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Chaque année, de nombreux jeunes sortent du système éducatif sans diplôme ni qualification. Sensible à cette situation, l’armée de Terre expérimente cette année le service militaire volontaire (SMV) pour favoriser l’insertion dans l’emploi de cette jeunesse éloignée de la vie professionnelle. Deux responsables de la formation SMV de Brétigny-sur-Orge ont ainsi présenté aux jeunes ce nouveau dispositif à l’occasion du forum de l’emploi sans diplôme organisé au Quai Branly à Paris.

Map: Council on Foreign Relations

Waters are heating up again in the South China Sea, as Vietnamese authorities this week accused a Chinese vessel of sinking a Vietnamese fishing boat near the disputed Paracel (Xisha in Chinese, Hoang Sa in Vietnamese) islands on September 29.  Vietnam, Taiwan and China all claim the Paracel islands, which consist of some 130 small coral islands and reefs, which were occupied and are now controlled by China after defeating the South Vietnamese navy in 1974.

The sinking of the Vietnamese boat, according to Phan Huy Hoang, an official in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Ngai, occurred as a result of a Chinese ship slammed into the boat.  Five Chinese men then boarded and proceeded to steal navigation devices, fishing equipment and their 2-ton catch of fish.  The boat eventually sank some 12 hours later and the fishermen resorted to floating in their life vests for another four hours before being rescued.  

According to Hoang,  more than 20 Vietnamese fishing boats have been attacked by Chinese vessels this year.  On June 19, a Vietnamese fishing boat operating off the Hoang Sa archipelago was boarded by a Chinese crew, which destroyed its fishing gear and confiscated an ICOM walkie-talkie, a positioning system, and about five metric tons five metric tons of catch worth US$13,780.  And on June 10, four ships surrounded a Vietnamese fishing boat and then forcefully boarded the fishing boat, forcing the 11 Vietnamese fishermen to transfer all of their catch – about six metric tons – to the other vessels.  As a result of these attacks on Vietnamese fishermen, the Vietnamese government now plans to allow its coast guard forces to employ weapons to help chase away foreign vessels which have illegally entered Vietnam’s waters, starting October 20.

While the Chinese naval vessel has yet to be identified as belonging to the Chinese government, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying defended the action as one taking place in waters China claims, stating, “Chinese authorities have the rights to take law enforcement measures in accordance with the law on boats that have illegally entered.”

Should the Chinese vessel be identified as a state-owned ship, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Le Hai Binh warned of a potential response: “If there is such a case that foreign law enforcement commits acts that hinder the normal and legitimate operations of Vietnamese fishermen in this area, we will have formal and appropriate response.”

Hanoi’s authorization of the use of force and a plan to augment its coast guard patrol capabilities signals Vietnam may be taking the threat more seriously, and not just catering to nationalistic sentiment at home.  The U.S. has already provided Vietnam with five patrol vessels and has pledged to contribute more in the future.

Should Hanoi decide not to respond, the U.S. may nonetheless stir up tensions in the water in their own effort to challenge the sovereignty of China, as they have threatened to do in recent months following China’s reclaiming of land on submerged reefs.  China has been using the reclaimed land to build airstrips and other potential military infrastructure on three of the Spratly (Truong Sa in Vietnamese, Nansha in Chinese) islands.  The Spratlys consist of more than 750 reefs, islets, atolls, cays and islands and are variously claimed and controlled by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Washington does not recognize Beijing’s claim to the 12-nautical-mile zone around the islands in the Spratlys (the U.S. argues international law prohibits claiming territory around artificial islands built on previously submerged reefs), and some geopolitical analysts believe the U.S. military will soon assert freedom of navigation in the waters by sailing or flying within the zone claimed by China.  U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter warned on Tuesday the U.S. military would sail or fly wherever international law allowed, while John Richardson, the U.S. chief of naval operations, told reporters in Tokyo this week, “It should not come as a surprise to anybody that we will exercise freedom of navigation wherever international law allows.”

Clearly, the waters in the South China Sea are again heating up with rhetoric from all sides, and this may be behind Beijing’s attempt on Friday toward reconciliation.  On the microblog of China’s Defense Ministry, Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan issued a statement saying all sides should try to limit their disputes, with Beijing offering to hold joint exercises with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries next year in the South China Sea.  The joint exercises propose to cover search and rescue and disaster relief efforts, as well as rules about accidental encounters at sea.  Given the encounters at sea this week and over the last several months, and the propensity of fishermen from all countries to follow the catch (paying little attention to maritime boundaries), Beijing’s offer holds little water and is unlikely to stop a more serious and deadly confrontation from taking place.

Marokko ist bekannt für seine Nähe zu Europa und seinen politischen Liberalisierungsprozess. Das Königreich blieb während des Arabischen Frühlings 2011 stabil, da die Regierung auf Proteste umgehend mit demokratischen Reformen reagierte.

Áll a bál Ugandában: a választások közeledtével a regnáló Yoweri Museveni ellenfeleit egyre több inzultus éri.

Über unfaire Wahlen und Deutschlands Geschäfte mit Ägypten

Source : © European Union, 2015 - EP

Wo zwischen Supranationalität, Nationalstaat und Intergouvernementalismus bewegen wir uns in Europa und wo wollen wir hin? Markus Ferber, Mitglied des Europäischen Parlaments und stellvertretender Vorsitzender der Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, brachte mit diesen „Fachbegriffen“ das Thema des Abends auf den Punkt.

On 13-14 October 2015, the European Defence Agency (EDA) organised the Test & Evaluation (T&E) Collaboration Workshop to bring the concept of T&E Collaboration support closer to the Member States and, for the first time, to provide practical training in cooperation mechanisms and available tools. 

Representatives of six Member States participated in the training event, i.e. Cyprus, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Romania, and the United Kingdom. The workshop was directed to national test centres, project managers and coordinators who may request the EDA T&E Collaboration support. 

The workshop’s agenda covered the whole package of available tools, not only the Defence Test and Evaluation Base (DTEB). Additionally, it offered practical training opportunities with exercises and tests to improve the understanding of the T&E Collaboration operation. 

The workshop started with the theory part, during which the participants were presented with how the EDA T&E Collaboration works, along with some way ahead for the future. The practical part of the training included live exercises with the use of dedicated support tools. In particular, the Defence Test and Evaluation Base (DTEB) was used for initiating cooperation, the Collaboration Database (CODOBA) tool for the management of the cooperation, and the Capability Development Plan (CDP)  for capability implications. Additionally, the training touched upon the standardisation aspects in accordance with the European Defence Standards Reference System (EDSTAR). 

The workshop participants discussed the utility of support tools and the practical ways of cooperation under the different schemes, e.g. test arrangements, Category A/B projects, working groups and EDSTAR expert groups. “The  constructive feedback from the participants will enable us to further optimise the tools and make them as user-friendly as possible,” said Thomas Honke, an EDA project officer on T&E, Qualification and Standardisation. The T&E Collaboration Workshop ended with an official hand-over ceremony of certificates. 

The EDA plans to offer further annual T&E collaboration training events using this format.

Background

The European Defence Agency has taken up the initiative of supporting European Test and Evaluation (T&E) Collaboration in 2013 in a systematic approach. Since that time, the DTEB database has been created enabling enhanced networking amongst T&E facilities and capabilities in Europe. The database is additionally linked to the EDSTAR, CODABA and CDP tools in order to allow swift identification of potential cooperation opportunities and future T&E capability requirements for common staff targets. Moreover, the EDA has initiated a crosscutting T&E expert group in EDSTAR to identify best practice T&E standardisation and to further stimulate T&E cooperation.

More information: 

• Project page Defence Test and Evaluation Base (DTEB) 
• Defence Test and Evaluation Base (DTEB) factsheet

Greetings CCLKOW readers. Today we bring to you a new guest author, @fightingsailor, an officer of the Royal Navy whose biography you can find below. In this piece he discusses the implications of budgets, efficiency and effectiveness. With the latest Strategic Defence and Security Review eagerly awaited here in the United Kingdom, the matter of managing defence in an era of constrained budgets weighs heavily upon the proceedings. In this piece, our author contends with the conflicts and contradictions of the various means to ‘do more with less.’ Although focussed on issues facing defence in the UK, as the American defence establishment grapples again with the demands of sequestration the piece should resonate with the audience on that side of the pond. So, read the piece, consider the questions, and join the discussion on Twitter at #CCLKOW.

 

“My department’s budget may be rising again but there will be no let-up in getting more value for money… Efficiency savings mean we will be able to spend more on cyber, more on unmanned aircraft, more on the latest technology, keeping ahead of our adversaries.”  – Michael Fallon MP, Secretary of State for Defence [1]

 

In this short essay I will examine what value for money means in the context of Defence and whether the inevitable SDSR [2] drive for greater ‘efficiency’ is, in fact, counter-productive in achieving the purpose of the Armed Forces.

As the Secretary of State alludes, the drive for ‘Value for Money’ in Defence  is usually shorthand for efficiency.  Efficiency is the ratio of output to input.  In other words, the drive for greater efficiency means attempting to do more with less or, at least, doing the same with less or more with the same.  There are a couple of issues here for defence strategists.  First, there is an inherent assumption that we understand what our outputs are. We go to great lengths to define these and set up business agreements between the different parts of Defence to ensure that everybody plays their agreed part in delivering them.  This implies, generally, that the purpose of the Armed Forces is to output Forces ready to be used for operations. In part this is true, especially if one applies the POSIWID principle [3], but surely the purpose of the military is to deliver successful Government policy outcomes.  Many of the outputs of Defence may not be relevant to achieving such outcomes in any given crisis.  Take the recent Operation GRITROCK, the UK Military’s contribution to the fight against Ebola in West Africa.  This wasn’t part of any Force Design or Force Testing scenario that I am aware of, and was delivered using Forces whose justification for existence (and thus attribution of input resources such as funding) was for other Military Tasks [4], yet a positive policy outcome was achieved for Her Majesty’s Government. The point here is that where Military Forces exist, they are rarely used for the specific purpose for which their requirements were set, but rather they have broader utility as instruments for Government policy; providing that they exist in the first place.  This is particularly true of units such as warships where the variety of missions that, say, a Type 23 frigate is able to undertake is far in excess of the predominantly anti-submarine mission for which she was originally designed.  So, the Value for Money is generated by buying as much capability as you can afford that is useable in the broadest range of scenarios.

Except; this logic forces you down a route of planning for the most likely scenario.  In risk management terms this is planning for the expected outcome.  This approach works if you’re an insurer and can aggregate your risks across many thousands of policy holders; or a health service whose usage rates by a population can, on average, be meaningfully planned for.  But the Military instrument is not like that.  We have been seduced into thinking that military campaigns have a steady drumbeat of 6 monthly roulements through theatres: whether Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland or one of the many routine operational deployments of the Royal Navy.  If we gear our entire establishment around this model we will achieve efficiency (of sorts) but we will fail strategically.  I say this because what really defines successful use of the military is its response to crisis, and the sort of crisis that becomes generationally defining.  The Falkands in 1982 is the obvious post-WW2 example but Sierra Leone, Iraq in 1991and the Kosovo intervention are other examples where it went well.  Operational failure in warfighting, especially when vital national interests are stake, changes the international balance of power and can redefine a nation’s place in the world order – the outcome is of strategic significance. It’s the stuff that brings down Governments.  To be ready to respond to crises which are, by their nature, largely unexpected takes systemic agility.  This agility comes from diligent contingency planning and meticulous preparation but necessitates a substantial degree of spare capacity in the system that can be drawn upon when the unexpected occurs.  Spare capacity is, self-evidently, not a feature of an efficient system. This is not, therefore about the management of risks to outputs but, rather, about the uncertainty of outcome.  The difference between risk and uncertainty?  In the former the probability distribution of possible outcomes is known, in the latter it is not.  It means you need a different set of management techniques.  That’s why stockpiles and reserves must be maintained, even though they may not have been drawn upon for years, because if they are needed they will be needed in a hurry; and once the button gets pushed it will be too late if they do not exist.  A push for efficiency at the expense of all else risks confusing activity with effect.  So in all that we do we should prepare for the most extreme outcome: high-end warfighting against a world-class adversary.  This should drive our requirements, training and manpower but importantly it should drive our intellectual preparation.  Concepts and doctrine must drive the other lines of development towards dealing with the evolving character of warfare and novel technologies must drive, and be driven by, the need to retain operational edge.  Of course, this will be constrained by the available resource but we need the moral courage to balance the activity of today with setting the conditions for successful effect tomorrow.  Within a system incentivised by annual appraisal this is especially challenging.  Ironically, and perhaps even paradoxically, the better we prepare to win wars, the less likely it is that we will have to fight them and thus our Forces can be used more readily for lower intensity operations.  If you want peace, prepare for war!

But however we define our capabilities and capacities, surely within the Force Development and Generation cycles there are efficiencies to be had? Why don’t we just cut the ‘red tape’ and stop spending money on bureaucrats and pen pushers?  This is an attractive battle-cry when it comes to seeking ways to save money on the generation of military capability and, indeed, in the spending of public money in the round.  The problem, however, is that every bureaucrat, no matter how inefficiently they work, is there to service a process which fulfils a function.  To get rid of the bureaucrat you need to establish that their function is no longer required (at least in the same quantity). But most of these processes are conducted to give a degree of management control and/or assurance over different aspects of the organisation: financial management and probity; contractual propriety; safety and environmental management; commodities management; human resource; etc, etc.  So what functions can we do without? Well, none of them actually.  We can reduce the amount of each that we conduct but, here’s the crunch, we must then be prepared to delegate and empower individuals to do make decisions and commit resources without the levels of assurance and managerial control that have been previously demanded.  In short, we must take risk against these processes and this means that mistakes will occur more frequently; and we must accept that this is not failure, but the system working as it was now designed.  And if we want individuals to hold such increased risk personally, then we may find that they need greater recognition and/or remuneration as part of the deal for doing so.  Process and bureaucracy are like a kelp forest for a scuba diver – it is no one strand that substantially impedes your passage, but the overall effect means a disproportionate effort is required to make progress.

So, beware the inevitable ‘efficiency drive’ after the coming SDSR.  Without a properly reformed system that removes management and assurance processes and delivers a commensurate increases in delegation, it will simply be code for reducing the number of people available to complete a similar amount of process.  The strands of kelp get packed closer together and progress becomes harder than it was before.  There is a real risk of not only achieving a less efficient system as a result, but also one less effective at delivering its real purpose, achieving desirable government policy outcomes using the military instrument. And during the SDSR process the arguments must be made to retain as much high-end warfighting capability as we can possibly afford in order to give the agility to deliver such outcomes, including novel ones like cyber and unmanned systems.  And finally, having sufficient warfighting capability makes it less likely that you will have to use it for this purpose.  If you think peacetime Armed Forces are expensive, try having a war!

. . .

Following this review of the issues of defence management and budgets, the following questions are put forward for consideration and discussion:

1. Have western defence bureaucracies gone too far in adopting modern business practices and values? That is, do the terms of prudence in the private sector apply well to requirements of defence?

2. What should drive peacetime budgets and military plans? Should the aim be to spend the least and hope for the best until war arrives? 

3. Can armed forces and defence bureaucracies afford to reduce their processes and accept less control during peacetime?

4. What would you cut, and why?

. . .

@fightingsailor is a Royal Navy Weapon Engineer Officer with substantial operational and staff experience. At sea he has undertaken operational deployments to the Mediterranean (Libya), Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean (whilst participating in Operations DEFERENCE, ELLAMY, TELIC and KIPION); as well as to Arctic Russia, the Baltic region and the East Coast of the USA. Ashore he served in Afghanistan as the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) Liaison Officer to Task Force Helmand. Staff appointments have predominantly focussed on capability planning, management and strategy. They have included: the Ministry of Defence, PJHQ J6 and the Maritime Capability Division of Navy Command HQ. A graduate of the UK Defence Academy’s Advanced Command and Staff Course (ACSC) he has a keen interest in developing ‘good thinking’ in Defence.

 

 

Notes:

[1] Speech to Conservative Party Conference, 4 Oct 15, https://www.politicshome.com/foreign-and-defence/articles/news/michael-fallons-speech-conservative-conference accessed 10 Oct 15.

[2] Strategic Defence and Security Review. The UK Government’s quinquennial review of Defence and Security Strategy.

[3] The Purpose of a System is What it Does. Brilliantly explained on the thinkpurpose website: http://thinkpurpose.com/2012/11/07/3-brilliant-systems-ideas-that-will-explode-in-your-face-2/, accessed 11 Oct 15.

[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-defence/about accessed 11 Oct 15.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) is continuing to promote maritime affairs and to develop, with Member States, the next generation of mine counter measure solutions via the successful delivery of Unmanned Maritime Systems projects. 

The latest of the fifteen coordinated projects to be successfully delivered, that comprise the Unmanned Maritime Systems (UMS) Programme, one of the largest in the Agency, is the SIRAMIS project. This Dutch-led project, consisted of seven Contributing Members and addressed the knowledge gap of ship signatures with the overall aim of understanding ship signature interaction with multi-influence mines at a close range. This project presented a considerable challenge for the consortium, which comprised of industry, national research centres and academia, both in terms of signature measurement and signature analysis. It also placed an emphasis on cooperation and mutual support, which are the hallmarks of the EDA projects. 

With the successful delivery of this project, plans are at an advanced stage for a follow-on project that will build on the advancements already made and will further address the modelling and simulation dimensions. A feature of the UMS programme is the coordination between projects, and the developments and gains made have positive implications for the follow-on Modular Lightweight Mine Sweeping project that will be launched shortly. 

Maritime Conferences

The EDA is co-organising two conferences on maritime topics. These conferences present an opportunity to engage with key stakeholders and to fully explore and address the pertinent issues relating to the maritime domain. 

The first conference will be held on 29th October 2015 in Berlin and is co-organised with EuroDefense Deutschland. The conference will focus on key questions that relate to UMS and principally address the operational perspective of the introduction of UMS, collaborative efforts resulting in technological advancements and, lastly, the area of legislation, safety and regulation will be explored.  

The second conference will take place on the 12/13 November 2015 in Nicosia and is co-organised with the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Cyprus. The conference will be  conducted within the framework of the Luxembourg Presidency of the European Council. The focus of the conference will be on the Maritime Security Strategy and it will explore the challenges and potential benefits of the implementation of the strategy via its action plan. In particular, the conference will address Europe’s sea lines of communication and the challenges facing European navies. It will also examine the potential of the strategy to be considered as a catalyst for Civilian Military coordination.

More information:

• Invitation for Maritime Unmanned Systems Conference
• Invitation for Maritime Security Conference
• Unmanned Maritime Systems (UMS) research 

Si les frappes contre Daech ont pour objectif d’éviter des attentats en France, Paris s’engage dans une politique antiterroriste préventive inaugurée par l’Amérique après le 11 septembre

Az EU-s lobbijegyzék alapvetően hasznos, de félreérthető, ellenőrizetlen és több más sebből vérzik.

Le 14 octobre 2015 au large du Sénégal, le BPC Mistral actuellement déployé en opération Corymbe, est rentré dans les eaux territoriales du Sénégal escorté par le patrouilleur espagnol Centinela.