 Yn ymddangos cyflawn. Gwyddoedd, ar y cyflawn. Gwyddoedd yma. Llyr Gruffydd y Ddweud, ac mae'n ffordd o bryd ond y gallwn i'r rhaglen o'r cyfflawn hwn. Felly, yn ymwneud cyfreunio cymaint. Ym ymddangos, Debra Haines, I'm the security and defence editor at Sky News. We've got an eminent panel here today talking about command and leadership in the 21st century. I thought I would introduce everybody and then sort of throw a few questions at people for about half an hour. And then if you have like burning questions you want to jump in and ask, like please stick up your hand and I'll keep on looking up. But then the back half of the session will be over to you. And if you put your hand up and just say who you are and a microphone will come to you. So starting with Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges, a former senior US and NATO commander, I met the general when you were doing the US-Europe job. And he really made a huge impression on me about the need to ensure resilience for the European NATO Allies when it comes to actually how to fight a war. This is sort of post-2014 Crimea annexation and NATO scrabbling to understand what its deterrents needs to look like. And you are making the very valid point that if you can't get troops to the fight at the speed of relevance you're going to lose. Then we have Luke Coffey who is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute but used to be here in the UK as a special adviser to Liam Fox when he was in opposition as the shadow defence secretary, which is when I first met him many years ago, and then as during his time as defence secretary. We also have Professor Funmi Olinasakin who is the vice-president of the King's College London and is going to be offering her perspective on global leadership. And last but definitely not least is Marco Mickelson who is the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Estonian Parliament and his great credit used to be a journalist and has a deep experience of Russia. He covered the first Chechen War and now in his job with the Estonian Parliament he has a lot to say about Ukraine where he has been including to Bakhmut, the Bakhmut front line. So starting off with obviously it's a time of leadership that we've seen the need of wartime leaders given Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It's a role that President Zelensky has absolutely stepped into. I remember back in January 2022 when the US and the UK and others were warning that these troops massing around Ukraine's border were going to launch a full-scale invasion and the Ukrainian president was on a ski holiday telling everyone to be happy, merry Christmas. I couldn't quite understand the slight juxtaposition there but when it mattered he stepped up and has been this incredible leader and I was wondering what do you make of the alliance leaders, the UK Prime Minister, your president. Are they acting as wartime leaders? Do they need to show more authority or are they doing enough? So like everybody I remember the morning after Russia started their special military operation we saw President Zelensky out there with his cell phone and I thought how cool is that? I mean that's awesome, dynamic positive leadership. And then I thought how the hell is his phone working? I couldn't believe that the Russians had not decapitated the leadership of Ukraine in the early hours of the way we would have done. But nonetheless they're regretting that now because of the dynamic positive leadership example that the president of Ukraine has exhibited non-stop that's been so effective. When I think about my president I think he's done an exceptionally good job helping keep 50 nations together, supporting Ukraine. I mean I'm sure the Kremlin never anticipated that President Biden after the catastrophe of the withdrawal from Afghanistan after the catastrophe of what happened in Washington DC on January the 6th. I'm pretty sure that the Kremlin never anticipated that Joe Biden would be able to lead in such a way. My criticism of my president though is that he has failed to do the thing that is absolutely the most important thing for any civilian leader in wartime is to clearly define what is the strategic outcome that we want. He has not done that. He has also not said clearly we want Ukraine to win. He says we're with you for as long as it takes, which is about the most empty statement you can make, or recently he modified that by saying we've got your back. But none of that adds any urgency to the delivery of capabilities and we continue to do incremental decision making about from Javelin to Stinger now we'll at least get out of the waste of other people and give F16s. And I think this is a critical failure that is causing the war to drag out. If President Biden tonight would say we want Ukraine to win, all the excuses about how much fuel an M1 tank burns or how long it takes to train somebody to fly an F16, that shit all disappears and this war is over by the end of this year. Why do you think he's not doing that? I think part of this is of course I'm retired. I have zero responsibility. The President of the United States does have some responsibility and he cannot be quite as cavalier about well there's no way Russia is going to use a nuclear weapon. I think it's a concern about Russian escalation that is exaggerated. It's unfounded. Of course Russia has nuclear weapons, thousands of them. Of course they do not care how many innocent people they kill, but there are actually zero positive outcomes for Russia if they use a nuclear weapon. Their nukes really are only effective so long as they don't use them because they see that we continue to deter ourselves. That's why once a week some idiot from Moscow comes up and says we have nukes. We're going to nuke London or we're going to move a tactical nuke to Belarus like that's the beginning of the end. All this is nonsense but they see that we respond to that. I think that's the main reason. I think also they're not sure what to do when Ukraine has colossal success. I mean when Ukraine is going to win this war there's no doubt about that. What we don't know is what happens in the Kremlin afterwards and so I think people are very uneasy about that and then finally I think the Chinese are communicating we do not want a Russian collapse and so I think these are very complex questions that the President and the White House have to deal with. Bottom line is though he has to define what it is that we want to do. 19 out of 20 years in Afghanistan we never had a clear objective. Luke you want to come in on this. What do you think about the way that the U.S. President is leading in this war effort. Why I largely well firstly thanks to the London Defense Conference for inviting me here and we're good to see you here and thanks for moderating this this panel. I agree with what Ben has said President Biden has an open goal. The American people instinctively support Ukraine. They instinctively want to provide the Ukrainians what they need to win on the battlefield. And in fact I would argue that it's a civil society in America that has really kept the train driving ahead because you can go to Capitol Hill and you hear bipartisan support bicameral support for Ukraine. Yes you have some of the vocal wackies on the fringes that are very loud but they by no means represent the mainstream thinking on either side of the aisle on Capitol Hill. I you know I'm from Missouri. I go home in the in the in the same garden. I will see a Trump 2024 sign and a Ukrainian flag. I you know I'm out fishing in the Shenandoah in places where he cannot even get a mobile phone reception. I see Ukrainian flag. So in many ways civil society in America has led become the leaders on America's role in this. And I think what what would be very helpful is if we had that prime time address by President Biden from the Oval Office explaining to the American people what our involvement is in Ukraine. What our involvement is is going to look like going forward and why it's important and right now we just don't have that on the flip side has been alluded to. We've seen the definition of leadership from President Zelensky. And you mentioned the him with his cell phone recording that video. I have the 20 words that he said and I'm going to read them aloud now. I think these 20 words that he said in that recording were probably the most consequential of the 21st century at least so far. He said we are here. Our soldiers are here and we are here. We defend our independence and that's how it will go. And with that message he sent to the Ukrainian people to the to their European partners to the Americans to the to the free world that Ukraine is going to fight. We're not leaving. You give us the weapons. We'll make it happen. But the theme of this panel is leadership and the leadership command and leadership in the 21st century. And I want to touch on this a bit. In many ways leadership in the 21st century is no different from leadership in the 20th century or the 19th century or the 18th century. As I was listening to the panel this morning on the role of technology and warfare and AI and the drones. I found it all very interesting and I think there are important lessons to learn. But let's also learn the right lessons and remember that when Mary Opal is liberated it's going to be liberated by a young guy or girl who is tired, hungry, hasn't slept in days smells. Why'd you point it? Well you're not after your armor also, right? Because I'm sat next to you. With the filthy boots he has probably just lived through hell. Mary Opal is not going to be liberated by a drone and that drone will enable that liberation at the end of the day for as old since the very first conflict on the face of this earth until the very last one. There will be humans involved and just the basic fundamentals of junior officers, NCOs, team leaders making decisive impactful decisions on the scene. That is what's going to win wars in the future and that's what won wars in the past. So let's focus on the technology of things but let's also not forget the first principles of leadership. Thank you. So I was in Kiev on the 23rd of February 2022 into the 24th of February and saw that country go from obviously it was already at war given what the war that was being waged in the east but in terms of a full scale invasion seeing that country go from peace to war literally overnight and also seeing as a British national how the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. And I know he's obviously he's in the news again today and he knows obviously a controversial figure so I'm not making any political statement here. But in terms of the leadership that he showed on Ukraine that very special relationship he had with President Zelensky and the way that the UK, even though after decades of under investment decline poor choices when it comes to procurement of military equipment, et cetera, et cetera, doesn't have the most powerful military that it once did. Still used its place as a leading nation, a P5 nation, a G7 nation, a leading member of NATO to really corral other allies into action. There were lots of jokes in the run up to the invasion about the Germans and the French and there's always like the strong British, the strong Americans, the strong Canadians and then the sort of weak Germans and weak French because they weren't stepping forward. Finlay, I wonder if you want to offer some thoughts about British leadership when it comes to dealing with Ukraine. Right. I mean, I think let's also put things in context, right? There are three things to note in that context. One is we were in an environment where there hadn't been war on the continent of Europe as we see today. There hadn't been that in half a century. What am I talking about? 70 or so years and so that itself was a shock to the system everywhere the UK wasn't different. And second thing is you have to start thinking about what the political context in the UK was. Every leader in Europe faced their own political context and I think whether it was Boris Johnson or any other leader at that point in time. It was a moment of opportunity to step up and try to corral other leaders in Europe and it wasn't difficult to do. It was not going to be difficult to do because everyone was shell shocked that there was one on the continent of Europe. But I think Ukraine also provided a moment of opportunity for Boris Johnson to exercise leadership and also to save his political skin at that point in time. So all of that worked very well, all said and done. But the last thing just to try to talk about that political context, the choice to escalate what one would do in Ukraine, whether then or now, always tends to some really your own capacity or capability as a country. And I think the US's capability is what everyone looks to at this point in time. If I may add to the conversation we've been having. War, as a student of war studies, I also of his studies as well, I would like in war to health or medicine, in medicine there's no 100% full proof. All right, in war as well especially when you're dealing with crazy leaders that you don't know what decisions they might make at any point in time, even if you're 99% sure that they would not be a nuclear weapon used. The 1%, just as in medicine, when they tell you it's 99.9% sure that surgery will be successful, the statistic for the person who falls into 0.1% is always a deadly one. And that is why I think in part, of course I'd like to be a fly on the wall in the Oval Office, right? But I think that is part of the driver of this US response in Ukraine. The UK didn't have, Boris Johnson was not necessarily having that conversation, but rallying the support of the whole of Europe, of the whole of the world at that point in time, for Ukraine was something that any leader that was bold enough to do would be able to achieve because it was the first time we were seeing war on the continent of Europe. Thank you. And Mark, could you just offer a perspective from your part of Europe? Obviously the Baltic states were long sounding the alarm about the threat posed by Russia, while the UK and others were distracted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was wondering, can you just talk about how, as a small country, a small NATO member, and yet one that is now being so leaned upon for its expertise, how Estonia has really helped to sort of lead NATO's understanding of the threat posed by Vladimir Putin? Thank you, thank you, Deborah, and thank you, organisers. Excellent conference. I would like to start, actually, with my personal sort of story, which is very short, as you mentioned. I covered the mid-90s war in Chechnya, the first war in Chechnya, from 1994 to 1996, and I was in Moscow, and Moscow corresponded for Estonia's National Daily Newspaper. And as a historian by location and Russian history was my kind of subject, then what did I see there and how did I cover this horrible, brutal war where Russians killed thousands or tens of thousands of their own citizens? Then I guess that was my first really kind of wake-up call as a Estonian, as a journalist, and as a person who tried to understand Russia, that they are not left behind, the tools and ideas, idea first to conquer back lost territories of former empire, and for that they have, in toolbox, everything, including also carpet pommings of their own cities. So if they can do that, and later on they did Moscow apartment pommings, killed 300 plus their own citizens, used terror, played Chechens, and we all were blind that time. We hoped that this Fukuyama's world is getting through and Russia is getting closer to our sort of way of living, but that wasn't the case. And this has, this last 30 years, but not only has been, obviously for us, for Estonians, but also for Baltics, very clear sort of path, our crystal ball, let's say, that we understand what our neighbor looks like, what are their views and their aims and what they are ready for. And actually we told to our partners and allies for many years about that, that we have to get much more serious about our own defense expenditures, we have to get serious about our strategy to understand how do we can stand and protect our principles and ideas and a free Europe or free world. But this wake-up call didn't come until February 24th of 2022, but I would like to provoke a little bit, this is not yet there. Our great allies are not yet awake. And as Ben Hodges said, and I totally agree with this, we don't yet have common strategy and common vision about how this horrible war should end up and what is our vision, what kind of Europe we will build after this war. And here, our country, Estonia and our Baltic nations, we have pretty clear vision. We have a unique moment at the moment to really cut off this chain of impunity and terrorism about the fascist Russia, what they are doing right now with their neighbors, but not only. Their aim is not only to destroy Ukrainian statehood. Remember what kind of ultimatum Putin gave just a few weeks before he started full-scale invasion. This wasn't about Ukraine, this was about NATO. Obviously they would like to destroy NATO, they would like to destroy European security architecture and this is where we now think what should we do and what is our sort of goal and aim in this war is first to protect Ukraine to help them to win this war and win with full liberation of all the territory including Crimea. And in terms of borders of 1991, then what is the security guarantee for Ukraine and against Russia? The only security guarantee what is viable is membership in NATO. Anything else with the kind of ideas about let's make Ukraine, Europe, Israel or so is just, I don't know, who thinks this way. Are we ready to give nukes to Ukraine or not? Definitely not. I think that this is why just two weeks ago in our parliament 92 members voted out of 101, voted on consensus based to support Ukraine's membership in NATO. And we are really looking forward, but during the Wilner's NATO summit allies are saying out loud that Ukraine is going to be invited to NATO and we definitely will mark out a clear path how do we end up there. And then last but not least, this is not only about Ukraine. This is also about Belarus, which is the fact occupied country by Russia right now. Russia is moving tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus in coming weeks. Obviously is threat to all of us. Then the question about the future of Moldova. And unfortunately I must say that there are not so good news lately coming from Georgia, but everything around Russia used to be sort of grey area, grey zones. And we didn't pay a lot of attention to our one of the strategic mistakes we did was in 2008 we didn't give membership action plan to Ukraine and Georgia and then in 2014 we didn't react boldly against Russian aggression and illegal annexation of Crimea. And now we have a chance and I hope that with the help of small countries like Estonia we find our way to this vision. Thank you. That's such an interesting point and it's been really interesting as a journalist sort of observing it, seeing that evolution from 2014 when not all allies actually were able to initially agree that little green Russian men were invading Crimea. Then to the limited but effective plan to have these forces in the EFPs in the Baltic states in Poland. But still not really as you were saying Ben at the time, genuinely transforming NATO onto a genuine credible deterrence footing. And then obviously that meant deterrence failed and Ukraine not a member of NATO. So I guess some argue that as Peter Watkins was arguing yesterday, deterrence has succeeded in the sense that Russia hasn't tried to attack NATO, but it still did attack Ukraine. And I thought back in February 2022, the Allied response finally galvanizing into action, genuinely making these commitments to arm Ukraine to boost defense spending. But then it did seem to Peter out, not Peter out, but the Madrid summit. There were so many other distractions going on. You had this commitment to expand the NATO response force to 300,000, but no actual country numbers which hopefully we'll see maybe in Vilnius. I was wondering, Ben, if you could just give your thoughts as we're looking at leadership and command in the 21st century about how the difference between autocratic leaders and democratic leaders, Russia, how Putin is leading, how the allies leading, how she and China is leading, which one is going to succeed? So I would pick soldiers from a liberal democratic country versus an autocracy 100 times out of 100. And that's not a democracy bouquet here for the audience. I absolutely believe that. We know that war, we know from thousands of years of history that war is a test of will, and it's a test of logistic. And when you think about soldiers who are people who are defending their homeland, who trust each other, who believe in what it is they're doing compared to large armies that are basically conscripts, draftees that are being sent there by an autocratic leader, there's a different moral component to that. You could not fill up this auditorium right now with Russian soldiers who actually want to be in Ukraine. I would bet a lot of money on that. But the Ukrainians who are outnumbered in almost every category, except willpower. And so I think that comes from this, the type of system that the Iranian are trying to figure out. Why is it after so much time where the Ukrainians were either part of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, and now just a handful of years, they have gone completely different in terms of how they do everything? And I think there's something about their desire and Western orientation is what has unleashed all the talent and the creativity, which really only happens in democratic systems. And an autocratic system, I mean all you got to do is look at what's happening on the Russian side, thankfully, they hate each other. I mean Progosian, Shorygu, Gerasimov, Mr Khadirov, the Chechen, the Ukrainians refer to the Chechens as the Tiktok army because they're always on Tiktok, they're not actually doing anything. I mean you don't see any video of dead Chechens. And I think Khadirov is biding his time to either be the savior or he's waiting for the third Chechen war when he sees opportunity. But he's staying close enough to be in the parades, but not close enough to lose any of his extremely well fed soldiers. Progosian announces, hey, I'm leaving, I'm out of here on the first, and by the way in these videos that we've all seen, horrible videos with his dead soldiers lying on the ground behind him saying this is the fault of Shorygu and Gerasimov. Actually they don't owe him anything because he takes no orders from them. But he needed to make sure a Russian domestic audience knew that it was the general staff's fault that he didn't get what he needed, which is why after nine months he had still not captured by Moog. Thank goodness they've got this chaos and incoherence in their command structure because that prevents, that sort of distrust and hatred trickles down to all the colonels and majors that have to be coordinated with each other by the way. They're not bound by a common loyalty or a common sense of purpose. It's up this autocratic sort of chain. So I think this is the principle reason that Ukraine is absolutely going to win this war outright. I've hoped for the audience in one second, just one last thing that Finlay and I very briefly talked before we came on the stage and I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts when you sort of look globally at this sort of battle for leadership. And you've got the authoritarian regimes, the democratic regimes and then this fight for the middle, the undecided, the global south. Who's going to win? Why? Where's that going to go? I mean this is a moment of uncertainty, a lot of unpredictability in the world, but my take on this whole question of leadership and command is that context matters. So depending on the kind of problem you have is Keith Green that talks about all the decision making spheres, whether you're talking about leadership management or command, it depends on the context and if you have a really wicked problem. Okay, authoritarian governments might be successful as well as democratic regimes, so there's no foolproof. They equally successful depending on the situation. Now let's go to Ukraine and what we've seen. I think last month or the month before the Munich Security Conference, that was a subject of the debate. Why do so many countries in the global south think differently about the responses in Ukraine than the global north? And at the same time you see so many countries in the global south, let me take the continent of Africa that are themselves unstable and do not necessarily, and some are going into democratic reversals, and leadership and command do everything the opposite of what we want when the context suddenly shifts. And my own real concern is that in the 21st century context these global north institutions will be facing needs in the global south where for environmental needs, searching for green sources of energy, search for natural resources, raw materials will get China, the U.S., the U.K. into terrains in which they might have to act and act even on democratically because they're defending strategic geopolitical interests. That's what I think we need to bear in mind. So Ukraine is teaching us a lesson about sometimes the reticence of states to do the things that might be morally right, but when faced with the hard challenges in context in Africa, in parts of Asia, but particularly in Africa where we see what's happening in Sudan and elsewhere, democratic nations make different decisions and the soldiers might play different roles at different moments. That's the challenge of the moment. Thank you. So out to the audience. That gentleman there has been very patient. He was early first, his hand up, gets rewarded. The first question. No, the system. This is a question to Lieutenant General Ben Hodges. As a former old grad, he was in my class of 17 as you are too. Leadership is very important. My question is, we don't know how the conflict in Ukraine will last. What steps can U.S. leadership take to not make the same mistakes as in Afghanistan? Because in the beginning, Afghanistan's support was high, NATO's support was high, but it's only been one year in Ukraine. We don't know how long this will last. How do you ensure this reliability and trust issue is sustained throughout the conflict? Great question. Thank you for your service. First of all, there are four or five major mistakes I think that we the United States made. I had my fingerprints on at least three of them, so I can't just point the finger at others, but why were we there? The first year it was clear, to make sure that Afghanistan could never be a safe haven to attack the United States or our allies. After that, it was never clear again for 19 years, four different presidents never really could clearly identify why we were there. Second thing, American people were not involved. I mean they didn't pay one penny in taxes for the two trillion dollars that were spent in Afghanistan, not one penny. So no president wanted to raise taxes to pay for this war, so unless you were a reservist who was mobilized or you lived next to an army base or a marine camp or something like that, you weren't affected by it, especially after the first couple of years. It was just, it wasn't even on the front page anymore. Then the third thing of course we made a huge, huge mistake of assuming that Pakistan was going to be an ally or at least helpful. Clearly they were not, but we were not willing to do the hard work to address that, to include getting India involved and to help Pakistan be more helpful. So the Taliban had safe haven and we're making the same mistake now in Ukraine by restricting what we provide to Ukraine. We in effect create safe haven for the Russians in Crimea and obviously in all the Russian air bases in Russian territory from which multimillion dollar precision weapons are being launched against our apartment buildings. I think that the importance of working with allies and this is where I think President Biden gets A++, 50 nations sticking together. I mean it's hard to say I'll get NATO stick together on a lot of really hard issues or the EU for example. 50 countries continuing to spend a lot of money so working with allies, a clear objective, making sure people understand why this is important. Like Luke said, I mean if the President would sit in the Oval Office and say hey, let me tell you why we're doing this. This is for our security, this is also about deterrents of China and this is about the international rules based order. And of course you have to explain what that means because that sounds like some political science gobbledygook but when you say this is about sovereignty of borders. This is about freedom of navigation. This is about respect for international law. Every American is affected by those things. I mean Campbell on the side. Wait for a microphone to sex. I mean it's Campbell from the House of Lords. The panel has made it very clear how we should treat the victorious Ukraine. But the victorious Ukraine means a defeated Russia. How should we deal with defeated Russia with or without Putin? Right, I'll have a go. I don't believe that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. I think the process actually started in 1991 and if you look at everything that's happened over the past 30 or so years you can see that it's still collapsing. Russia's invasion of Georgia, ongoing fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh, land skirmishes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, annexation of Crimea. You name it, it's still collapsing. The dust has not settled. I think history has this ability to condense time. In 300 years from now when historians write about the collapse of the Soviet Union, they'll probably identify February 24, 2022 as perhaps the most consequential if not the final act of that collapse. So that begs the question, what comes next? Right now I think it's impossible to know or even to start speculating. But I do not believe that if Russia is militarily defeated inside Ukraine that the Russian Federation will look the same on a map in 20 years as it does today. So we need to start thinking about how we would want to work with our allies, with our partners to ensure our interests are met. We should learn the lessons of the 1990s. We should not assume that with a little bit of engagement and hard work we can find that Thomas Jefferson-like opposition leader that's going to usher in a new era of liberal democracy and free economics into Russia. This was a waste of time in the 90s and it would be a waste of time to try again if the situation presented itself. You're going to have tens of thousands of young men disproportionately from ethnic minority groups that are going to have combat experience and they're going to come home to nothing. And they're going to be in areas concentrated around Russia that have a history of separatism, calls for self-determination. So you could see I would say maybe even another round of fracturing. I think the 15 new states that emerged in 1991 that was the safety glass breaking. That was your car windshield shattering in an accident. It's a little messy, it's relatively safe, and it's easy to replace. When the next shattering happens of the Russian Federation, it's not going to be the neat cuts like we saw in 1991. You're going to have sharp shards of glass that are going to break in unpredictable ways and we need to start thinking now how are we going to deal with this? What about the nuclear weapons? What about the emerging civil wars and the insurgencies that could take place and spill over? What about the countries that want to get into the EU and NATO but can't because Russia has a de facto veto on their membership? Now that veto is gone, do we do a big bang enlargement to get some of these countries into the like Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, into the alliance when the opportunity presents itself? So I don't have a good answer, but I do know we have to start thinking about it now. Malka, you wanted to come in. Yeah, we're thinking all the time how to deal with our neighbor. I could actually argue that you said look at Soviet Union or Soviet Empire collapse didn't end in 1991 but the process is going on. I would say that the Second World War didn't end with a peace but with ceasefire and actually what because we had a nuclear process but only process for one side of this evil because as you know Second World War was started by Hitler and Stalin commonly, not only by Hitler. So and unfortunately this regime which Putin has today was herited from Stalin time. Actually current Russia is very similar to that what was Soviet Union looked like in 1930s or 40s just we are in a different century. So the paddle is about the future of those nations which were or still occupied one fifth territory of Georgia is occupied in a certain territory of Ukraine still is occupied and Belarus is the factor occupied by Russia. So what is the best to do right now is to understand that this war is not some sort of regional war what is going on in Ukraine. This is a battle maybe one of the last battles of Second World War that we can finally bring those who committed so many crimes including the highest crime against the peace again crime of aggression to the accountability. And this is why our country is so actively arguing right now that one of the results of this war should be establishment of special tribunal that those people starting from Putin, Shogul, Lavrov and others must be prosecuted as a not only war criminals but those who started a war against Ukraine aggression. And last but not least the best policy dodge politics policy dodge Russia is to liquidate the great zones around Russia liberate those nations gave them clear path to become members of your Atlantic community as they actually want and what is the best news from Belarus is coming as well. That Belarusian opposition who is writing a new constitution is completely convinced that the Belarus's place in the future must be also in European Union and perhaps even in NATO so it's only that after that we should be concerned about what's happening in Russia. Can I put a bit of a global list on this? It's an assumption and from what Ben said at the start there's nothing that suggests to me that that path of a Ukraine victory is clear unless other things happen. But what I want to warn us as an analyst around is the context is different this time around. Military victory will not equate strategic peace. Strategic peace will be about what we do with thoughtfulness around Russia otherwise we will lose the support of the rest of the world because it's not everyone. The rest of the world is not on the same page with us on this question so it will be my own question around it. That's a really good point and also how to ensure when victory happens in Ukraine how to keep the peace in Ukraine too from a shattered country that will need reconstruction. The lady there with the beige jacket. Thank you very much, Julia Muravska, visiting fellow at the Freeman Air and Space Institute. I just wanted to say a quick thank you to Marco for bringing up Chechnya reminding us of that. I as a lot of Ukrainians have re-engaged or rediscovered those of us who are younger all the horrible atrocities that have happened there and I think it should be actually everyone's great shame that after that we as in the west through the doors open for Russia we were only happy to do that. We invited them to the G7 which became the G8 etc and I certainly hope that lessons have been learned. But my question is actually about security guarantees. I follow very closely what is happening in Ukraine in terms of discussions regarding the end of the war and that's where increasingly the conversation is turning now. So within Ukraine there are a lot of kind of debates about what does the end of the war actually mean and increasingly the conclusion is that a military victory even if we do achieve the 1991 borders will not guarantee us a victory, a lasting victory, lasting security, lasting peace. The only way to do that is to have durable ironclad security guarantees and I personally do not see any alternative to that other than NATO membership. So my question is what is the place of leadership by the US, by the UK perhaps by the Baltic countries in bringing that about. A lot of changing of minds is required right because there is that statement of how really we are with Ukraine as long as it takes and Ukraine is fighting for all of our values but we don't really want it in NATO I think it's pretty obvious. So what is the place of leadership in that? He wants that one. So absolutely Ukraine's long term security depends on NATO membership. There's no question that has to be the objective. How do we get there? I'm not confident that the summit in Vilnius will have a lot of really strong positive things. I think they're still going to fall short of what we would want to hear. I think they're looking for something that has all the symptoms of membership action plan without having to say it. I think that's the only way they'll get the 31 nations to agree to it unfortunately. So the United States does have responsibility here and I think probably with the UK and a couple of others to do everything we can to get us on a clearly defined path for Ukrainian membership. So number one Ukraine is not an island. The mistake we have made for decades is that we don't think of the Black Sea region and have a strategy for the region. There's a reason Ukraine is important not just because we love Ukrainian people but because of where it sits on the map. And so if you don't think strategically about the Black Sea region then you have stupid policies about Turkey. We let Georgia backslide Moldova's out there is some kind of a weird place. So we have got to think strategically as the alliance and as the United States that will contribute significantly to Ukraine's security. Number two I think the United States we have to normalize our relationship with Ukraine. I mean to be honest it's been weird from ever since over the last 10 years I mean even President Obama would not agree to giving Javelin which is inexplicable. And then President Trump it was all about Hunter Biden's laptop and Giuliani and in this nonsense. And that was the height of our strategic thinking. So if we start if we start thinking about a normal relationship in terms of diplomat not just having a great ambassador which we do now but all the other stuff that goes with having a normal bilateral relationship. And then finally Armin Ukraine to the teeth until they're in NATO. I mean they need they need to be able to defeat anything that comes their way. I can imagine rotational U.S. troops there resuming the training mission at Yavari for example all those things would be part of this. We're short of time and there's still many questions. So Robert Fox first and then if we wouldn't mind doing two questions to gentlemen in the middle as well and then we'll feel those two questions. Right leadership at the most granular level as Ben and Luke have described it. The great glory it was learned from the Burmax and Second World War was mission command which is what you're describing about those young soldiers in the line. What happens though to mission command in an increasingly risk a verse political and social culture as we now have in the U.K. Because mission command as far as I can see and I've been involved and looked at the British Army for over 40 years is going out the window. And the gentleman rather inconveniently placed right in the middle. OK. Thank you. My question is also on leadership and how the U.S. sort of perceives the reaction of leaders in Europe. Europe has often been criticized by the U.S. for not spending enough on defense and the U.S. is encouraged us to spend more and more. Is this sort of being sort of a quieting down of that given how much commitment has been from leaders like she soon act and decide from Finland Sweden Poland all these countries to help as much as possible. Has that creates them gone down a little bit in the U.S. Thank you. He wants the command question. Let me say this. Two things will immediately help reverse that trend that you sense. Number one who gets promoted. I mean you can say you're for we want young leaders who will take risk who will use their initiative will be creative. But when they make mistakes and they get sacked or there's huge investigations there's a clear message to everybody like OK if you don't want to make a mistake don't do anything. So you have to leaders have to promote people even though there will be criticisms from the Parliament or the Congress or tough journalists will say what happened this guy did this or she did this. So you have to promote people that exhibit those qualities you want and then publicly our leaders have to go out and talk about why this is important. Why you have to claim to the point of failure like in an exercise so you can discover where the problems are and fix it versus having an exercise where nobody ever made a mistake. I mean so this is where our leaders have to talk openly about that. Mark, are you coming. Yeah I totally agree with that and I see that in the modern world there is a kind of very tough to find those who who cannot bend to sometimes the public opinion or social media opinion. Let's say and then to to have a vision and to really lead. And sometimes perhaps it's easier for smaller countries to be a more sort of outspoken and I must say that during this war our leaders have been very vocal and very visionary. And then Ben you said or perhaps during the real news summit we won't see some good news for Ukraine. I tell you we work 24 hours right now here in this capital yesterday we had a meeting but specifically in terms of Ukraine's NATO membership. We have to be present heavily in Washington and Berlin. Those two capitals today are hesitating most. Interesting. On the second question about US leadership pressuring Europeans to spin more on defense. This is a perennial issue that will never go away in my opinion because we'll never have all members meeting two percent. That's just a political reality. But I remember as a young army officer a long time ago I was once told that the definition of leadership or a definition of leadership is trying to convince people to do something they otherwise wouldn't do. So I think I mean in one case it could be you know stay in Bakmut to the to the very end. And guess what there are no reserves coming because we have to save them for the upcoming counter offensive. But on the other end of that on the big strategic level it's a US president using finesse sophistication politeness to convince European leaders why they should be spinning more in defense. Working hard at understanding the political realities face in many countries across Europe. With our presidential system of government in America we fail to understand how many parliamentary democracies across Europe appropriate and authorize funding. Usually this is done by the finance minister or the prime minister really but the finance minister is the face of it. Whereas in the US the Congress plays the role of authorizations and appropriations of funds. So one thing I've been advocating for a long time now is at NATO summits we should have a special finance ministers meeting. We have the defense ministers meet we have the the foreign ministers meet. Let's have those who are actually writing the checks meet so they understand why defense is so expensive. And then I think that would help American policymakers better appreciate how parliamentary democracies work when it comes to defense spinning. And that was one of the great advantages I had as an American working in the House of Commons for so long was how this system this parliamentary system of government works. Now how it's different from what we have in the United States. Then again I guess you also need leadership to be able to explain to the public in many of our countries why spending on defense is so much more important than domestic. And we've got time for two very short last questions. So the lady right at the very back and the gentleman just in front of her ish. Yeah a few guys. Hi Tarzament PhD student and more studies at Kings and I'm with Women in Defense UK. And my question is for General Hodges. So Deborah mentioned at the start that you'd said if you can't get troops to the fight you lose. And I'm just wondering if you might be able to comment on the kind of recruitment and retention challenges that we're having in the UK for example. How we incentivize people to join defense and particularly what the impact might be in Ukraine and future conflict. Thank you. Great question. And the gentleman just about three or four rows in front. Thanks very much Aaron McLean from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. General Hodges you're the occasion for this question but anyone is welcome to field it. You gave a colorful and I think not inaccurate account of policy towards Ukraine in the United States under the Trump administration. What happens with respect to Ukraine if Trump is re-elected next year and Howard Zelensky and Putin accounting for that scenario and their calculations. OK so in three minutes we can take the recruitment question first. I'll stick around afterwards we can talk about what a disaster would be if we have another Trump administration or why you thought I was inaccurate. I think it's inaccurate. OK good we can still step outside and enjoy a drink. Recruiting is hard as hell. I had a commander one time who came from a recruiting command and he had one of these stress rings and he said that thing glowed red all the time because you're having to make mission and your mission is to get enough people. It's always easier when the economy is down because then people are looking for job. For us the best recruiting incentive has always been education opportunities and how expensive it is to go to university in the United States. So if you can offer education we got lots of great young women and men that wanted to come in because they saw a path to getting a degree. But at the end of the day it's not just an economic decision. People around them that influence them whether it's parents or teacher or their favorite coach a minister has to be seen as you know what you could be a helicopter pilot. You could be an engineer you could be an infantry soldier there's endless opportunities and frankly for minorities. I mean Colin Powell would tell you it was the best way for minorities in the United States. Other than professional sports the military is the most merit based profession that we have. So those are the kind of things I would emphasize but people have got to talk about this is a good thing. Not a choice of if you if nothing else works for you can always go in the army. Marco just we've got like a minute and a half left if you could offer from a European perspective what you think it would mean if there was another Trump administration. Interesting never boring. We managed to survive and actually you know it's it's not only president who makes decisions end of the day in the United States as well. It's a democracy. There are many others who play important role as well to first to put together some policy and strategy and then very important also parties who will execute those decisions. But but anyway it's I don't I don't I don't see that this is going to be the end of it. But but definitely it's not going to make our common job easier. And just look on the UK on the war in Ukraine that a change of president to President Trump Mark to what would that mean. Well again Congress does play a big role in foreign policy making in the United States unlike in many European parliamentary democracies. The U.S. Congress has the ability to not only edit U.S. foreign policy but make U.S. foreign policy using those tools of appropriations and authorizations of funding. So I think it would just we would have some challenges we'd have to overcome but I think it's not going to change overnight the bipartisan and bicameral support for Ukraine. And that's 18 months from now by the way. So let's get it done. And Fenway do you have any last comment you'd like to make just to say that we're talking about Ukraine a lot today for various reasons. How we resolve Ukraine will say a lot about what happens in the rest of the world because tomorrow any country can now go and commit a war of aggression without any consequences. It's a big deal. We need to really think about it. You can join me in thanking our great panellists for a really interesting presentation. Thank you. If you can take your seats please ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well thank you for your forbearance and I'm delighted to end the day on a high note. I'm delighted to welcome Abel Raddican chief of the defence staff who's going to be in conversation with me and promise to not ask too many questions and open up to the floor with some questions before we end the conference. We're not doing bios at the moment because we thought we'd better go straight into the conversation. And I decided to give you a nice easy one to start with which is that you're here amongst friends in defence who will support defence. So it's a great opportunity for you to tell us what's going to be in the defence command paper please. Yeah that's very kind of you. So I think I can definitely provide you with a sense of what I think we're trying to do and especially where ministers are. And I think it won't be a surprise, it will link with IR23. I think we will, I'm happy to talk about it in terms of Ukraine and where that's taken us. And when people talk about lessons, there is lots about Ukraine which is affirmative in terms of UK defence policy, whether that's the importance of NATO, whether it's the reflection of being a nuclear power and that importance. But I think it also tells us that some of those other aspects that we have declared before but actually we might want to give even more emphasis behind such as our modernisation agenda and how do we try and create a bit more momentum. That will be there. I touched on NATO, the importance of continuing to be such a strong partner within NATO. I think we recognise that we're particularly strong in air and maritime, we're a full spectrum power so that includes space and cyber. We're strong with the British Army but we want to be even stronger in the future with the British Army and its role within NATO. And then if you look internally, there are some things that we have to get better at and that includes acquisition and how can we speed that up. How can we take advantage of what we've learned with Ukraine and have the confidence if necessary to buy and buy more quickly and not wait for the perfect thing. And then if you also look at again internally as an organisation, we're now, we're a budget of £50 billion a year. Are we delivering as much as we should do for the government for that amount of money and can we drive ourselves to even higher productivity. And then can we also be honest about some of those frustrations that we have in the Ministry of Defence around our processes and our hierarchy. And I know we say that we're going to cut through but we struggle to cut through so can we give it another go. And this is on the back of principally two ministers, the Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace but also the Minister for Armed Forces James Heapy, who have been with the department for a little bit longer than is the norm in recent times. So can we use that authority to get after some of these things. Can we use the confidence that the government has in us in terms of we're being invested in and we've got additional money. Can we reflect on the fact that there is war in Europe and can you combine those together so that we continue in the same direction but in some areas we give extra momentum. And if we need to adjust the tiller a bit we've got the humility and confidence to do that. So that's what we're trying to do. Well let me go further on the modernisation agenda, radical, that you called yourself at one stage. I never called myself radical. Radical, as you were called, let's put it that way. I think you said at Rusey in December that at times it was easier to get kits to the front line in Ukraine than it was to British units. Is that still the case? Are we making progress on those sorts of frictions? There are some elements where that's definitely true and in a way we should be imbued with some aspects, that's right. If we're really partners of our friends in Ukraine and they're at war, well actually let's twist our system to be as fast as possible to get the kit there. But Andy Start, the chief exec of D&S, would highlight that it's not something magical. These are the same people in our organisation. And what they're doing is additional to their normal day job and I think they deserve immense credit for spending extra billions and our people deserve immense credit for getting kit to Ukraine. But it's about alignment. So alignment of the clarity around how much money we got to spend, what is it that we want to buy and how much risk are we willing to take in order to get that there quickly. And if we're honest, we don't always have such sharp alignment in our normal domestic agenda and therefore is that what we need to utilise. And that's what we're trying to do. And then on the modernisation, again James Heapy has spoken about this. You look at the ubiquitous nature of drones and drone warfare and what we're seeing in Ukraine. Again, how does that impact on the UK's armed forces and can we have an open conversation about, and I don't think we'll get to the decisions on some of this where you'll get the formal programmes and so on. But I think we're trying to challenge ourselves around the need for more drones and be honest about what that might mean to some of the existing force structures. And what does it mean in the future? We talk about a 500 chip navy, it won't be 500 chips, but it might be 400 drones. A thousand aircraft air force, but it might be 800 drones. The equivalent of a couple of hundred thousand people in the army, but with that level of lethality and that level of firepower. And that's what we need to be offering. And then actually we should be driving for additional lethality, additional deployability. And that's what a modern armed forces provides and it's linked together in a much stronger way than it currently is. And so that's the opportunity. OK. I mean, in the same speech, I was going to say that you ambitiously gave some numbers and you said there were aspirations, ambitions, 10,000 drones by 2030, I think. Yeah, I think it's those kind of things, and that's what we should be contemplating. The Prime Minister announced the other week about providing one-way attack drones to Ukraine. I'm concerned now as to whether or not he announced how many. But we're talking, it's the ability to provide hundreds of drones a month and the impact that that has. And then it's a very obvious question if you're doing that to a partner over there and you don't have the same programs in your own armed forces. And those are numbers that you can quickly get to a couple of thousand a year. So 10,000 drones by 2030. At one level, gosh, that's a big number, it's not. These are relatively small numbers between now and the end of the decade. And that's what we need to get into. I mean, rather more challengingly, you talked about doubling outputs, which I assume means, as you mentioned, deployability and what part of your force you can actually put into the field. If you had to. That one's far more aspirational, because if I'm honest, when you have these conversations in defence, everyone says what do you mean and what's your metric and this and that and the other. What I was trying to get at is a change between 2020 and 2030 and a reflection that in 2020 we weren't really an armed forces with a carrier navy. And we go from no carriers effectively to aircraft carriers and a full capability. And might we be contemplating as part of a defence command paper that we have jets on both carriers. And that's that kind of productivity. Then you have an air force that is shifting from fourth generation jets to fifth generation jets. Then you have an army that is extending the range of its firepower. So prism comes in, which is just short of 500 kilometers. But actually, if you look at technology and what's happening, at what point do we start to have hypersonic missiles with our army? At what point the way that armies work at the moment, which feels as a sailor to be these quite short ranges, our armies contemplating several thousand miles. And then if you look at the size of our armed forces and how much do we actually deploy, can we increase the deployability? We have ships, I think people know my frustration as First Sea Lord that we have ships that go to the other side of the world, go to the Indo-Pacific. And then when you're going to bring them back for maintenance, the notion was that you drive them past some of the best dockyards in the world in order to go to a British base, to do their maintenance in order to go back out again. Why not keep the ships out there permanently and you have a different HR system? And then you get the impact of that. We're doing that in the Gulf, we're doing that in the Indo-Pacific. What does that then mean if we can start to do those kind of just do differently with the air force? And look at our aircraft and compare our availability and how much time they spend in the air compared to the commercial equivalents. Look at an army which we've been really open about saying about the positive impact of deploying the army so that it can influence countries so it can be alongside our allies and partners, whether that's reassurance, whether that's capability development, whether it's in the right place to be able to respond. So can we push more out? And that doesn't mean that suddenly I can't now do war fighting and so on. Yeah, actually, can you combine some of that? So those are the conversations that we're having. And Patrick Sanders, we had a conversation about the army last week. He would advertise that he's got a slightly smaller army, but he's doing a lot more. And that's what we should be looking at is the actual lethality, deployability, the availability of our ships and aircraft. And then when you get to a slightly more sophisticated piece, is it all joined up and can it operate together and can it introduce these new domains, space and cyber? And that's about your real impact. And I think we're slightly stuck in some of the numbers game. The numbers are important. I didn't want to deny that, but the numbers aren't quite as teatemic and as golden as people say. There can be a bit lazy as the arbiter of describing an armed force. The incoming chief of the air staff speaking here at King's at our Air and Space Institute, the Freeman Institute a few weeks ago talked about the Air Force having to accept more risk. Ultimately, you as the chief of the events staff are going to have to explain to your political masters what that risk means. And get them to agree to it. Do you think that's something you can do? Risk in terms of being deployable, doing things which I think the argument was the Air Force had got out of the habit of doing? Yes, I think there's easy conversations with the ministers that we've got now. I think we've got a government that's investing in its armed forces and wants to utilise those armed forces. I've described a maximumist approach to the military instrument. So we should have the confidence that governments will use their armed forces and they might use them in a domestic sense, whether it's COVID, whether it's sometimes covering for some of the domestic issues that go on. But then also using the armed forces as part of your projection of who you are, we're a P5 nation, we're a nuclear power, we're a top 10 economy. We have interests all around the world. You saw that, you've seen that, you had the Prime Minister here yesterday, he's just back from the G7. He goes to Japan, he signs a defence accord with Japan. We talk about with the Prime Minister that for a lot of countries our relationship involves both trade and security. They're not these two distinct entities and is that a better portrayal of where we are as a country and the power and influence that we have? And how do you use that? Then you've got amazing contracts, GCAP, the Six Generation Fighter, with Japan on the other side of the world and a European partner who's a member of the EU, Italy, to shape our future air force. Orcus with this phenomenal nuclear technology with Australia and America as one element of it, but then also recognising AI quantum machine learning cyber at some of the super high end other technologies where we want to work together. These are partnerships that will shape our relationships with those countries in a particularly in a security sense, but I would also argue in an industrial sense as well over the next 50 years. And then when you come closer to home, I look at things like Joint Expeditionary Force, where we lead that with one of 10 nations mostly in northern Europe. We looked at some figures the other day, it's created in 2014. If you look at the activity of the Jeff between 2014 and 2021 and then you look at it through 2022 and this year. In the last 18 months, the multiples are about 15 to 20 times more activity in the Jeff than the previous seven years. It's about those contributions and those outputs and outcomes and being really strong supporters of Finland and Sweden as they made and they're making their journey to join NATO. Look at our contribution, the response of NATO to the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the strengthening of the Eastern flank. All of NATO responding to that and the UK whether it's air policing, whether it's additional troops on the Eastern flank, that's what we can do. And I think it's that notion. I think we've got ministers who are really clear about wanting to invest and to use the military instrument. And it's not when I joined up, it's not this break glass in emergency insurance policy here contingency that's never used unless it's a really, really bad day. Actually, how do you use your military instrument? And that doesn't mean that you've now blown the opportunity or you've blown your responsibility when it's a really bad day and you've got to respond for that contingency. Can you blend the two together? Okay, there was a lot in that answer. I'll try and unpick a couple of things. Well, I would just note that as this conference has discussed, ultimately deterrents failed in the case of Ukraine. And despite a long lead up with us trying to deter Russia from taking action they did, we are where we are now. But let me go back to Orcus, which you mentioned, something that we've discussed over the last two days. Every speaker has emphasised the importance of Orcus and even the Prime Minister talked about Track 2 as being very, very important. But the sense is actually the UK is actually focused on Track 1 and we are paying lip service to Track 2. But actually, as CDS, can you reassure us or maybe explain to us why the focus is on submarine technology? Obviously massive, complicated programme, of course, which will take decades. But every speaker has talked about the security and you yourself has talked about it. Unless there's some leadership that you're talking about from our side as well, is Orcus going to deliver the promise that has been suggested for the past year? Yes. I mean, it's a super short answer. And it is both pillars. So I think some of it is the straightforwardness of everybody can get their head around these big black submarines and there's an understanding about exquisite nuclear technology and that only a handful of powers have that technology and we're sharing this then with Australia. And the significance of that, both in an industrial sense and in a kind of military security sense and the strategic messaging that goes with that. I mean, when you then get to pillar 2, and I think these are some of the difficulties that we have, when you're trying to describe AI and quantum and cyber and those aspects and what it means, that is much, much more difficult. To me, as a blend, they're really important because one of the problems with the nuclear conversation is really important. It might be really clear, but it's a really long time before you see the impact of that. And the impact in the shorter term will be, I think, for the UK around strengthening our domestic nuclear enterprise and the notion of additional volume and allowing nuclear industry to have that assuredness to run more smoothly. And I think those are issues that medium sized powers have about these big ambitions and therefore the volume associated with that becomes very, very significant. And then on the pillar 2 aspects, the reason why it's complementary and I think it's really important is that some of those things associated with AI, quantum and cyber, then they are distinctly not decades away. And therefore, the ambition to be operating at that high end technological edge affirmed in what we're seeing in terms of Ukraine, affirmed in terms of how we see our partnership with other nations. That is very important. And I also think that that to me always feels like that is a bit more of a foundation to have conversations with other nations. It will be easier to consider other nations joining pillar 2 than it would be the pillar 1 nuclear element. So it enables that conversation to be had. Right, staying in the Indo-Pacific, I've got this question from one of our students, which I'll be careful to try and keep it to the points that they're making. Essentially, they ask whether you visualise the UK expanding its military ties with sub-regional groupings in Indo-Pacific in multilateral regional partnerships and extending UK strategic footprint. So military cooperation with some of these not block organisations necessarily, but actually military direct ties. I actually think it's been an extraordinary success in terms of something that was announced a couple of years ago and this tilt to the Indo-Pacific. I think I've spoken before. Tilt's an unusual word, but it's an apt word. And then you go to IR23, which says maintain the tilt. And that's what we're doing. And I think it builds on some of the existing security arrangements that we have east of Suez. So in recent years, a base re-establish in Bahrain, a continued footprint in the Gulf, investment in Dukham in Oman and the importance that that gives both with a really important relationship with Oman, but also where you are there in the Indian Ocean. Come down to Kenya, again, utilising the relationship that we have and the facilities that we have. Then you come across to Diego Garcia and the importance of that as a strategic hub. Then Singapore with facilities there, then Brunei, then you carry on further east, all kinds of relationships, but strengthened when Prime Minister Kinshada from Japan came to number 10, I think last year, the signing of a reciprocal access agreement. That's at one level. That is super, super boring. But it was part of a number 10 press release, and it was about being able to share each other's bases and their fundamentals in terms of security relationships. Then that's built upon last weekend with the Prime Minister signing the Hiroshima Accord to strengthen our relationship. In-between, you've signed a deal about GCAP and six-generation fighters. Then there's AUKUS, and that builds on Type 26 Hunter-class frigates being built in Australia. Then if you look at Japan and Australia, where we both operate P8s, they're both going to be F35 nations. Then if you extend it, if you look at the economic relationship in that period from a couple of years ago, we're now a dialogue partner in terms of the ASEAN arrangements. We've always had FPDA. Then we're on this journey with CTPPP. I don't mean this to be critical. I'm just saying for most government policies that are announced two years ago, that is a remarkable list of things. It's not a massive effort when people then say, have you over tilted to the Indo-Pacific? It's tiny. We've got a couple of ships there that are there on a permanent basis. We'll look to deploy on a regular basis, but our focus remains anchored in the Euro-Atlantic and as being the strongest European partner of NATO. There being this remarkable ally and successful nation with Ukraine and trying to work with other nations and galvanise those in terms of responding to the challenge of Russia and Ukraine. For me, the Indo-Pacific, it caught everyone's imagination because it was new. There's a risk it's exaggerated in the newness of it and where we've achieved the tilt, we'll maintain the tilt. We'll carry on those relationships, but let's also remind ourselves that our predominant security relationship remains in the Euro-Atlantic. Before I open it to the floor, I just want to go back down a little bit away from geopolitics and back down to your role as head of the armed forces. I mean, I heard you talk about three services, but I think from some observers outside, because of the capital programmes, because of the procurement, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, they kind of have a direction for the next decade, maybe even two decades. I'm not saying platforms are the only driver, but it's an important driver. The Army, notwithstanding equipment coming in, is in a different place. It seems to be having, well, we all know, an internal conversation about where it goes next. As chief of the defence staff, can you tell us, you know, the wave all discussions, where is this going and what are the options and when might we hear about how the Army sees itself and how it fits into your vision? Yes, so I think the defence command paper will speak more to that. I think we all recognise we want to say more about the Army's future. I'm massively in the positive camp, and I, again, it's back to, people haven't recognised the shift in investment that happened in 2021. So the Army's capital programme increased by about 80%. So the Army's got the second largest capital programme in defence over the next decade after nuclear, and it's £41 billion. We're spending £130 billion on the Army over the next ten years. That's an amazing amount of investment. It's about 25% of the defence spend over the next ten years, much higher than the other two services. What that gives is a phenomenal opportunity to build on what I think is already a strong Army, and the strength of the Army is, and I learnt this during my time as First Sea Lord, the strategic strength of our armed forces continues to be its people. And I know that at times that can be a bit tried and worth it, but it's the quality of our men and women, and that's what you see. So if you're making those levels of investment when you've got the quality of those soldiers, then your opportunity to modernise and to strengthen even further is there. Then you've got a NATO conversation, and we'll have to see how that matures. But I think some of the NATO conversation is, as we've seen the strengthening of NATO in terms of its purpose, its unity. Again, staggering amounts of investments. 350 billion additional investments since 2014. That allows the Army to plug into an even stronger NATO, and might that be, and we've got to see where SACUR goes. But if SACUR wants to have a strategic reserve, and if he wants to have two strategic reserves, and does he want those to be in Europe? And might one of them be France, might one of them be the UK? And the UK's got an Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters, which everybody recognises as being, again, a sort of Premier League. Do we build on that? Do we strengthen three divots of war fighting division? And then do we have the confidence to see that through? Because the Army that I see is an Army that's responded magnificently to every challenge that it's had in the recent years. And I look at, the simple example would be the training of soldiers for Ukraine. We had a brief conversation about the need to support Ukraine and battlefield casualty replacements. We thought that might be a couple of thousand, and then we quickly realised it needed to be a larger number. The Army just absorbed that very, very quickly and trained 10,000 soldiers last year. That's more than any other nation. Then we're joined by about eight or nine international partners. We're looking to at least double that this year. We've then said, well, it's 20,000, maybe we should be pushing it further. So should we be looking closer to 30,000? That's more than the whole of Europe put together. And the Army does that in its stride. Then I look at the way that the Army has provided kit. And it's not just kit, it's also advice and mentoring as part of that training programme. So this is an Army which is time and time again proves itself to be first class. And it's now being invested in, to me, an extraordinary way. And then we need to capitalise on that investment to give its security of its strategic future within NATO. And that almost becomes a strategic anchor for the next 20, 30 years. And I think that to me is, we should have the confidence about that. And unlike some other areas in defence when we talk things and you then say, well, okay, where's the money? This is one of those ones where the money is already being provided. I'm really confident about the quality of the people. So can we tell a better tale and can we make that clear to you and to others as to what that looks like over the next decade? All right. You don't have to answer what I'm going to say now. But that sounds like something a tabloid would describe as a smaller, better equipped army is coming. But let's put that aside. I'd like to ask my last question and then open up to the floor, which is the term whole force has been knocking around defence, whatever you want to call it, for more than 15 years. Essentially, not just the integration of the reserves, but also relationships across the civil service and, of course, with industry. This seems to be something, and I've only been doing this for 35 years, that we keep talking about Britain and we always talk about smart this, modernise this, but we just don't crack it. There seems to be an interest in doing it, but what's stopping us finding a better way to do this, to create this whole effort, let's call it that. So, I mean, I think that's fair. And I think some of the stopping of it is partly the way that we behave, the inertia that's in the system that struggles to move on. I've seen the regular reserve debate. We had a debate about regulars and flexible service, and when you look into it, the flexible service is not very flexible. You've got to agree that it's one or two days a week, and then your employer's got to agree. We're fixated by our rules and processes. Then you have these debates about reserves. Are we going to bring in reserves for niche capabilities that we don't have, or are we going to have reserves for the mass that we might need? I'm deeply selfish on these things. Can we just do both? Can we have systems that allow us to do both? Can we buy into that if we can train the Ukrainians in five weeks to fulfil some of the basics of soldiers, what does that mean for what the nation might need if we were under pressure in the future? Can we establish systems that allow us to take advantage of that in the future? Can we have the confidence that says, when the nation was under pressure with the pandemic, and the government did an extraordinary thing and went out for volunteers, and I think it got 750,000 volunteers 48 hours later. Can we say what would that mean if the nation was under pressure and we wanted to grow a military quickly? Do we use our command and control organisation almost to be the gearing and the leverage to get into that real mass, and do we have to think about this differently? And then the contractor's piece. There are some bits of industry and our relationship with industry where, yes, it's got to be competitive because we're buying paperclips and we want to buy high quality paperclips with the cheapest price. But if we're building a nuclear submarine, well, there aren't many people building nuclear submarines, so can we accept that it's a partnership and it's not going to be a competitive piece and so on? And so I think it's... When you say, why do we struggle? Because I think at times we're straightjacketed and we get dominated by our processes and we're not as strong as we should be on the outcome. And I think this is where... There is an element of recognising that war in Europe and the impact of Russia's invasion in Ukraine means that it's a reflection back again to... We might want to do things differently and then we might want to look again at some of those rules and processes and say that we're over-dominated by those and we can do things slightly differently and it's not going to be terribly risky and it might mean that we get the kit more quickly, we get the people more quickly, we can have slightly more flexible relationships. But I don't want to pretend that those are easily rectified. They're part of our character and DNA, but I come back to having ministers that have been in their positions for several years and I think give them a certain confidence and authority where they might challenge us and they might have a bit more ambition to say, right, we're going to cut through some of that. OK, thank you. So let's turn to some questions from the floor. I think the first question was here if the mics can come down. And in fact, and next to the first question, I think it was the second one. Am I giving you first or are you sure? Giki, thank you very much, CDS. You said that the Ukraine war was an affirmation of the decisions you made. I just wonder which bit of the Ukraine war was an affirmation for making the army, the regular army, smaller. You're well aware that there are reports that, you know, it will shrink to around about 73,000. There are even rumors that it could go down to 60,000. I wonder if you could knock those on the head today. My second question was about your tilt to the Pacific. Now, those leaked American documents, in which I'm sure you can't comment on, did make mention of sticking an aircraft, one of the UK's aircraft carriers out in the Pacific on almost a permanent or semi-permanent, I don't know how you phrase it, basis. Is that something that you are considering? In which case, given that you've got two, I'd say that is a bit more than not a tilt. But yeah, thank you. OK, so shall I be helpfully dull and quash a couple of those sort of rumors? So I don't think with the defence command paper that we anticipate that the army is going to be smaller. I don't think, even though I'm saying, and I admire James Heapy for throwing open the opportunity to have some big conversations, I don't think we're in the realm of anticipating that we'll be permanently basing an aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific. But on your main point about the affirmation, there are some things that are affirmation about Ukraine and there are some things where we've got to have confidence and humility to adjust. But the big things in terms of how we keep our nation safe and how NATO keeps all its member nations safe are around collective security. To me, it's interesting that NATO's got bigger by the addition of Finland. NATO will get even bigger again by the addition of Sweden. NATO, I mentioned, has invested 350 billion additional in terms of all of those countries putting more money into defence. Those are far bigger impacts than the conversations we're having about our domestic UK armed forces. So this fixation about... I see sometimes some newspapers, they portray a Russian orbit, order a battle against the UK. And yet we tell you as our policy that if we were to go to war with Russia, it would be the whole of NATO and suddenly that orbit is three million people in uniform. It's a couple of thousand ships and submarines. It's 15,000 tanks. It's thousands of fast jets. Just look at the journey that NATO is under with 5th generation fast jets. 500 5th generation fast jets and most of the aviator community would say that a 5th generation is a multiple of 4th generation aircraft. So that's what I mean about affirmation. Affirmation is we keep our nation safe by adopting collective security and being in the world's largest and most powerful military alliance ever. And affirmation is further enhanced by being a nuclear power and being part of a nuclear alliance. And those are the foundations of why the UK is safe. And then we might have to have the honesty to say, right, what's changing? Well, what's changing is that in the air all of the missile ranges are getting longer and longer. And therefore, how can we best defend ourselves if we thought that we might have that threat facing us? And so does that mean that we have to look at our homeland resilience and our missile defence and do we do that internationally as part of NATO and what might be our national position and how we contribute to that? And what does it mean in terms of our own lethality and the technology that's there and what we should be taking advantage of in order to create problems for a potential enemy? So that's what I mean about, can we have a slightly bigger conversation and recognise our national position and that our security is guarded and husbanded by virtue of this amazing military alliance called NATO and collective security is something that I think has been affirmed by Ukraine and that's why you see Ukraine's ambition well actually it wants that collective security as well and it wants those security arrangements whether that's through NATO or through partnership with other allies. Thanks very much. George Grills from The Times. In terms of specific pieces of kit from Ukraine and lessons, I wanted to ask about tanks. So there's one school of thought that tanks have been proven to be a relic of the 20th century that anti-tank weaponry has overtaken them and that essentially we don't need that many. There's another school of thought that says tanks vital for combined arms manoeuvre how does Ukraine prosecute a successful counter-offensive without them? Which camp do you stand in? So I think I'm in the camp that sees the value of tanks for particular tactical actions and that's why I'm proud of the way that the UK has helped to lead the way so whether it was with N laws and providing those anti-tank weapons whether it was then later decisions around Challenger 2 the recent decision around Storm Shadow but this notion that there are literally any silver bullets although there are any individual capabilities that then decide who's going to win, who's going to lose is nonsense. And I think I come back to when you look at the UK's armed forces you have to then put them into where do we fit into NATO? Where do we have particular capabilities that strengthen NATO? Where do we rely on other countries that might have capabilities that we don't have? And then are there some things that we may not be super strong in that capability? We want to have a modest element and we'll expect others to be stronger and the tank is an obvious one. There are other nations within NATO that are stronger tank nations. That doesn't necessarily mean that we dispense with tanks it just means that on a balanced force as part of a balanced international force you then take those decisions as to how much do you need and this notion, again it comes back to Jonathan's point this notion that these are cliff edge decisions and if you haven't got them suddenly that you're naked and you're no longer safe it's nonsense, it's a blend and then it's kind of boring but these blended forces you talked about combined arms manoeuvre that's a skill that we've seen that Russia has been unable to do that and where I think we've been really successful with Ukraine is where we've been able to provide some very discreet Western capabilities and help them to blend that so is that additional intelligence is that helpfulness around precision weapons and how they might be best utilized rather than what we saw I think particularly in the early days of Ukraine mimicking Russia and you had one enormous artillery battle against an artillery battle which was pretty minuscule and there was only ever going to be one winner and actually what you saw was precision weapons Ukraine fighting differently and then they were able to balance out and that's what I think and we've got to get better at communicating those dilemmas and giving people the assurance that actually a Western-ware warfare is the way that again it's another affirmation point there's nothing that we're seeing in terms of how Russia is fighting this war as to actually we're going to copy that this is an affirmation of the Western-ware warfare and we should be really confident about what Ukraine is achieving and our role in helping Ukraine to achieve that success So we're overrunning a little bit just to reassure everybody we're going to finish on time and we're going to take a bit of time from my piece which is a good thing but we'd have slightly shorter answers I would have shorter answers Aber Madison the back in the middle please next and then we'll move to the right Well thank you Admiral for your comments here this afternoon I'm Paul Madison from the University of New South Wales in Sydney I run the Defence Research Institute there and as well I lead a Security and Defence Alliance Research and Education involving King's College UNSW and Arizona State University focused on contributing to the objectives of AUKUS so my question is around AUKUS I understand your focus on the Euro-Atlantic geography matters obviously but in the Indo-Pacific certainly from an Australian perspective there is a urgent strategic need to surge a deterrent conventional deterrent effect to effect a decision calculus in Beijing to avoid conflict war that brings me to pillar two so pillar two in my view is about identifying those capabilities those disruptive emerging technologies which we believe the PLA is demonstrating peer or even overmatch capability and there is a need in this decade to drive faster, harder as three nations sitting in that bullseye strategic trust in order to sustain competitive all domain advantage for the warfighter so my question for you Admiral is are you comfortable that as three nations we are finding a way to accelerate that generation of capability from fundamental research right through to scaled manufacture and that we are identifying regulatory systemic cultural impediments to doing so in order to ensure that the warfighter will be ready to obviously deter but if deterrence fails to fight and win Yes but I want to be honest in terms of when you talk about acceleration and nuclear and so on that actually some of the fundamentals I think as you know the intent of nuclear regulatory authorities the journey that a nation takes to become a nuclear propulsion or country that does take time and you'll point on Pella too and the ability to accelerate that is happening and it's happening a good friend of mine is Lung Aquilino in Hawaii if ever you had somebody who was focused on his responsibilities and a clarity about wanting to deter in the Indo-Pacific and bad things happening but I think he would say when you look at his US testimony the need to be prepared as well and what he's demanding of his own nation and can we contribute to that that debate is going on but I don't want to race ahead we're there and we're knocking off all these things I think it's slightly more prosaic and I don't think we should be surprised at that but to me it's the bigness of it when you look at countries like Germany Germany declaring an Indo-Pacific strategy France, the UK French summit and talking about how when France deploys an aircraft carrier to the Indo-Pacific do we ensure that we've got a ship or a submarine within that and then vice versa when we're in the Indo-Pacific with our carrier and can we share information can we share our approaches now that might seem a bit soft and not quite meet your criteria of well show me the weapon system and show me this but I think in terms of the geopolitical messaging that's going on the language, the strengthening of the language in IR23 the clarity of the G7 language the clarity of the Prime Minister's statement in the house the other day on Monday the response by Keir Starmer and his elevation of language around China that to me I think is you should take some reassurance that you have got the major powers in the world seeing the issues in a very similar way and they're starting that journey but they've got inherent power already and it doesn't have to be lots of new things but it's bringing that to bear and I think you're seeing the clarity emerging but I recognise that doesn't hasn't translated into ABCDE and that list of things that I think you were hoping for OK, I'm going to take two questions two and a half questions and ask you to answer them so the lady in green first then we'll move over to this gentleman here and then if you could pass it down Thanks a lot, Ulrike Frankl from the European Council on Foreign Relations I'd love to ask you about the 10,000 drones and of course I understand this isn't an exact number but I'd like to hear a bit more about the vision behind it because of course we could have 10,000 drones tomorrow we were talking about this earlier Ukraine reportedly is losing 10,000 drones a month in the war at the moment so this number doesn't really mean anything unless we say what kinds do you mean 10,000 reapers or protectors watchkeepers, TV2s I don't need the exact model but what I mean is what exactly what's the vision, what are these systems for what types of drones do you think about when you say 10,000 drones Robin Brinkhoff, senior intelligence analyst at Everidge so my question is really on civil military relations and has two angles to it one is the commercial side right how do you think the military generally is going to deal with ESG concerns going forward on procurement and the limits to innovation there but also with the smaller armed forces relative to our general population right there's going to be an increasing gap between what the public know of our military and what both serving know about it and I'm wondering how you're going to overcome that Aaron Dawson PhD candidate with the Freeman Institute we've just had a panel looking at command and leadership you yourself spoke about the importance of people and training and while the defence budget has increased capital expenditure day to day spending has seen a real terms cut are you confident defence has the right balance thank you so the drones if I'm honest it's a trigger statement it's not a statement that we've I'm just reflecting that in the modern world the notion that we have are very distinct platforms and they're not teamed with drones feels a bit odd and so that's everything from an infant here who may have a small drone that he flies from the palm of his hand and whether that's to search a building or it's to give him a situational awareness that at the moment he doesn't have and suddenly he can start to see around several kilometres rather than several hundred metres all the way through to as you say protectors and reapers and then do you get to some of the lawyer wingmen alongside your fast jets and so on just this notion and it connects to the next point that particularly the way that we describe mass and it's only through humans and the UK as an armed force armed forces has rarely been a major contributor in mass we provide an operational advantage whether that's because of fantastic intelligence services fantastic special forces nuclear submarines amazing soldiers that are prepared to fight and to lay down their lives that's what our partners look for but it's rarely mass and in the future our mass will be provided by technology in a much stronger way than even it is now and that's what I think we're saying by the 10,000 drones and so on that's what makes your ESG I'm not sure that this ESG conversation which I think in the previous 10 years has always felt like this is crowding in defence and it's becoming even more difficult and investors are more cautious and so on in some respects the impact of Russia and Ukraine I think has been for people to recognise that the importance of security in order to maintain our livelihoods and to not be impacted by the scourge of when security breaks down so whether that's the inflation whether that's the impact on energy whether that's the impact on food prices so it feels to me that the defences defences now got a much a much stronger voice and it feels less and this is the wrong term it's less discriminated against in the way that it was maybe 5-10 years ago and then on the are you really small and therefore how do you impact on your nation? well actually I think that's a straightforward tell better stories better connect with your nation if your way of connecting with the nation was I'm going to have an even larger reserve and they're going to go to a drill evening on a Wednesday and then I expect them to actually there are lots of other ways that you can tell your story in a modern world and get your voice out there and does it mean that we have to make more effort because actually the reality is that you've got less people you've got less members of your family that are in the military and therefore you can't be as reliant as you were on the pass with that and then I'm on the I know it's a kind of command leadership point apologies sorry just the balance between day-to-day expenditure versus capital expenditure as defence got it right the awkward money question the formal answer is that the money that we've got for all the things that the government is asking us to do is adequate and the relationship that we have with our government ministers is that when we can't when their ambition actually when their ambition outstrips our ability then we have sensible conversations but do they then do they then limit their ambition and do we come back into balance but the and you're right in the day-to-day spending the big the big movements on the money side were in 2021 the extra 24 billion and the reason why that was significant was that it was the back end of COVID and there was economic uncertainty and then you saw this year the additional money for defence again when there was economic uncertainty and defence is getting more money and the really crucial piece was a government saying an ambition for 2.5% and yes we can then say well when when when please give us a date but I think for me it's the recognition that the government is saying we know that we need to be spending more money as a proportion of our national income they've already said it should be 2.5% but we're on a path to 2.5% and we'll look to to do that as the economy gets stronger and that's an honest conversation and we should we can moan to say when are we going to get extra money and so on I think we've got a government saying that is our ambition we've got other priorities and other constraints at the moment and we'll keep you informed as we try to meet that ambition and so it's a sensible conversation and it's not this you know we're suddenly poor or we're suddenly in riches it's always a balance thank you can you join me in thanking Admiral Sir Tony Agagent CDS for his contributions thank you so much for this so I don't want to fall into the trap of the classic academic overrunning but I thought the opportunity of having the generous time of CDS was worth finishing on so just to close the conference then I just wanted to say a few words and then let you all get away into the beautiful afternoon that is outside the building we've had two packs in stimulating days I'm not going to go through everything that we did but obviously for me in our inaugural year we've had a head of state we've had the British Prime Minister we've had the defence minister and the ambassador of a besieged country and finally of course CDS from the United Kingdom as well as a range of luminaries on our panels so as far as I'm concerned in terms of the objective that was set by our president Professor Shijit Kapoor yesterday morning which was to serve society we've done it the conversations have focused on massive global issues which ultimately affect all of our societies and we've heard from a range of voices which was one of our objectives and they've varied frankly in background, nation and dare I say it age and that's what we wanted to achieve in doing this because when we conceived the London Defence Conference Lord Salisbury, Ian Martin, Owen who's hiding at the top there and myself, we wanted to establish something that complemented rather than duplicated existing fora on defence and we were frankly astonished that there wasn't something like this happening already in London I hope you'll agree with me that we've achieved that in the last two days next year we're going to go even further and we're going to focus on creating a core event on defence and security advancing the objective of expanding those younger voices as part of our deliberations and we expect probably to make this maybe have a student element on a third day following the core defence I've got a range of people to thank but in brief points our security team at King's College London we don't often get heads of state and prime ministers and get told to do things that we don't normally do in a university our catering and AV support as you all know these things are not seamless and I apologise if there have been some hiccups but the effort that's gone on behind the scenes in a public university has been pretty extraordinary from the King's side Laura Midgley from my school and her comms team Julie Walden from our faculty and Paula Munors have been working alongside the London defence conference team including Nicole, Olivia, Fiona Julia, Liv Sarah and her team from ADS many thanks and we wouldn't be here but for our supporting organisations which included Airbus Andrew, ADS CQS MW Group Palantys and we're very grateful to them for making this conference possible which has helped to make it the excess and finally from my side as well as the panellists and our speakers and our moderators this conference has been unique because our students have been part of it and my colleague Dr Hilary Briffa was essential in bringing those student voices into this event and I'm very very thankful to her and our student ambassadors some of whom are still here and they really do matter to us as we move forward so finally thank you to you for staying for two days and contributing with great questions and I can announce that the London defence conference 2024 will be on the 21st and 22nd of May in this venue and I look forward to seeing you then thank you very much indeed