 A very good morning to you all. I'm pleased to welcome you to this, the second joint seminar organized by the double IEA, the Commission on the Defense Forces and the Royal Irish Academy's standing committee on international affairs. We're delighted to be joined today by our expert panel of Dr. Raluca Cernatoni, Lieutenant General Tim Keating, Dr. Ulrike Franka and Professor Greg Kennedy who have been generous enough to take time out of their respective schedules to speak with us today. Each of our guests will be speaking to us for about eight to 10 minutes and we will then go to Q and A and discussion. I would ask you carefully to note that the prepared remarks of each of our speakers this morning are on the record and are being live streamed via YouTube. The live stream, however, will end as we move to the Q and A session which will be held under Chatham House Rules. You're all warmly invited to join our discussion using the Q and A function on Zoom which you should see on your screen. Please feel free to send your questions in at any time over the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once the panelists have made their opening remarks. If you're so minded, you can also join us on Twitter using the handle at double IEA. I don't think we're quite into Instagram or TikTok territory just yet, but give us time. That will come too. Before I formally introduce our speakers, however, I'd like to pass the floor to Aiden O'Driscoll who is the Chair of the Commission on the Defense Forces for his opening remarks. Over to you Aiden. Thank you Ben and welcome to everybody to this webinar. I'm sure it'll have a wide and attentive audience within the small defense community in this country. We hope that through the work of the Commission and by hosting these webinars, we will expand that community somewhat and get a better and wider and deeper debate on defense and security matters in this country. And we all know that we have quite a long way to go in that respect. I want to thank the IEA and the particular Claude Aquain and her colleagues for organizing this event, along with the RIA who hosted our previous seminar in April. Of course, I want to thank our distinguished speakers today for contributing their time and their enormous expertise to our effort to better inform the debate in this country. And Ben has already introduced them. And of course I should thank Ben himself, distinguished professor from UCD who has been a strong and well-informed contributor to security and defense debates in this country, which is a fairly rare thing. And also thank Andrew Cotty of UCC who hosted our previous seminar. I won't take up too much of your time talking about the work of the Commission, but I did want to make a few points. As this audience will know, the Commission has been asked to look at the defense forces of the future in particular to look at the structures, staffing and capabilities that our defense forces require in the immediate future into 2030 and beyond. So we are future focused, but we start from a realistic understanding of where we are at the moment. Since we commenced our work, I want to take this opportunity to say that we've had a great deal of very useful engagement with as you would expect senior staff in the defense forces in the Department of Defense, but also with staff in NATO, in the UN, in the EU's external action service, in the European Defense Agency. We've spoken to the representative associations of defense force staff both current and retired. We've also wanted to take a public consultation and received around 500 very well-considered submissions. So that's been key. And we've talked to a lot of key state agencies because of course today we understand that security is very often a whole of government and even a whole of society concern other than just a defense force concern. One thing I do want to say is that we've now visited almost all barracks and bases around the country and met women and men from the front line, all ranks, all three services. And I can say that our report will be deeply marked by what we heard on those visits. And I want to take the opportunity to genuinely thank everyone we met, all the soldiers, sailors, air crew that we met for what was a very open, honest, frank engagement with the commission. It's really been tremendous. And I also want to thank all those people who made those well-considered submissions to our public consultation. We will write our report. We hope we will have it on time for the end of the year. It'll be a lot of work. I want to warn people again, we won't cover every single issue that has been raised with us. It would just be impossible. But we think we will produce a report that we hope will be important and challenging in some important ways. I must of course remind everybody, we will make recommendations. It is the government that will make the decisions. I do want to make just a couple of points that are relevant to the seminar. I don't want to take up too much time, but Ben will indulge me. Just a few general points. First on the timeframe 2030 and beyond, this is important for the seminar, but it's also important for the work of the commission. The security environment as we all know is changing rapidly and sometimes in very unpredictable ways. And many of the threats that we face today requires, I've said, a whole of society response. And a modern defense force must be capable of contributing in a genuinely flexible response of way to that changing threat environment and be able to work with other state agencies and indeed private entities in doing so. So the defense forces cannot be an island. They need to learn from others and teach others within that whole of society framework in order to be fit for the kind of complex and hybrid threats we face today. And I think that's a really quite important point. So defense forces need to be specifically configured to be efficient and flexible to meet those unpredictable needs of these times. And that flexibility needs to be built into its structure with clear lines of command, the avoidance of service silos and strong external relations with other key agencies. Well, the defense force is not an island. Ireland is an island in the North Atlantic with high ambitions for our own defense as a neutral country. But we also have specific responsibilities as a good neighbor and as a committed member of the European Union and the United Nations. Our location delivers obvious benefits to us from a security perspective, but it also poses some potential challenges. And certainly comes with responsibilities for a large and sensitive maritime and air domain. We need to address these responsibilities honestly with a clear and unambiguous link between our defense policy, our level of ambition and our military capabilities across all domains. And I hope that the commission can contribute to setting the framework for such a policy debate, but not ourselves getting into a policy discussion which would be outside our terms of reference. I expect we'll hear something from our panelists today on new technologies, both in terms of the opportunities they present and the threats they also pose. And I'm afraid I'm one of those people who's been a bit seduced by the whole technology thing. And I keep banging on to my colleagues about drones and UAVs and all this. And of course everybody in Ireland has become a cyber security expert since the attack on our health system. And cyber seems to me to pose an interesting case in point for the point that we really face a whole of society security challenge and points the need to develop strong new capabilities within our defense forces, but within a clear national framework which we hope is provided in our national cybersecurity strategy. Finally, major point that defense like everything else ultimately comes down to people and in our visits to barracks around the country, I want to say the commission have been genuinely hugely impressed by the quality of the women and men that we met, the relatively few women and many men we met. The people in our defense forces are genuinely great. However, we have been struck by the number and range of issues that have been raised with us in relation to the management of people and culture within the defense forces. We'll have a good deal to say about this. And I believe that our proposals will amount to a significant agenda for change and renewal to strengthen and modernize our defense forces in a way worthy of the people we met. And maybe just as importantly, of those who in the future may be attracted to join a modern, diverse and engaged organization. Final point then, any program of change in a well-established organization brings with it significant implementation challenges. And personally, I have some experience of that. But of course, the path that we are going to be traveling with Irish defense forces has also been traversed by some other defense forces and indeed by other organizations outside the defense space. So I think mutual learning will be very, very important here. We can learn from others, others can learn from us. And I hope that what we hear today will contribute to that learning process. And certainly the quality of the panel that has been assembled suggests that we can have high expectations in that regard. There are my few remarks, but then thank you very much. And good luck with the rest of the discussions. Thanks very much, Aidan. And speaking of someone from the outside, I mean, it has been remarkable to see yourself, your staff colleagues and your fellow commissioners working so hard to do that kind of bottom up process of listening in the defense forces and doing as I've seen a hell of a lot of traveling in the meantime and in some extraordinary circumstances. Please allow me now to formally introduce our speakers in order of presentation. First, we're delighted to welcome Dr. Lucas Aratoni who is a guest professor at the Institute for European Studies at the Free University of Brussels, the VUB. She's also visiting a scholar at Carnegie Europe where she works on European security and defense with a specific focus on disruptive technologies, which again in an Irish context is of particular interest. Second, we have Lieutenant General Tim Keating retired who served as chief of the New Zealand Defense Force from 2014 to 2018, where in addition to his many operational responsibilities, he also steered the development of a 10-year strategy for a more integrated defense force for New Zealand. Next, we're delighted to welcome Dr. Ulrika Frank who is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations where she leads ECFR's Technology and European Power Initiative. She's also a specialist on European security defense and on the future of warfare. And finally, please welcome Professor Greg Kennedy who's professor of strategic foreign policy at King's College London. He's also an adjunct professor at the Royal Military College of Canada in the history and war studies departments. His research centers on strategic foreign policy issues, maritime defense and disarmament. You're all very, very welcome. We're delighted to have you and I'm very pleased to hand the floor over now to Dr. Senator Tony for her formal remarks. Ulrika, please. Thank you very much, Ben and thank you to the Institute of International and European Affairs to the Royal Irish Academy standing Committee on International Affairs and the Commission on the Defense Forces for the kind invitation. I'm delighted to join this distinguished panel of speakers. So for today's talk, I was asked to cover quite a broad range of topics from emerging destructive technologies, the future of defense and the European context and I'm sure that my 10 minutes will not give them justice but I will give it a try for sure. So when I started to prepare some thoughts last night for today's discussion, I remembered the classic book of American futurologist, Alvin Toffler. It's called very, it has a very hyped title, The Future Shock or Future Shock. And thoughts struck me. While many of his prediction did non-materialize and some did, he got, I think, one thing right. We indeed live in times where we are experiencing future shock, especially due to technological advancements. And this is also true for international, European and national security. So two things are sure, especially when it comes to dealing with this future shock. Technology is power and information is power. So nowadays, we are definitely witnessing unprecedented improvement in artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies. Of course, drones are emerging technologies and I think we'll give us some thoughts on this. But definitely, especially artificial intelligence and all the discussions around it, all the strategic and policy initiatives from other international organizations, the European Union or states, for that matter, are definitely currently fueling a so-called geopolitical new great power competition, especially between the US and China. Future and disruptive technologies or emerging technologies or however you want to call them, future disruptive defense technologies are being called by the European Union and especially the European Commission are now prioritizing national strategies, again, in terms of investments in innovation, research and development. When it comes to the European Union, I would like to flag maybe one initiative that is quite interesting and of course, you are familiarized with it. It's the European Defense Fund where you see this label of future disruptive defense technologies. And in the European Defense Fund, of course, the innovation, the research and development and the application and deployment of such technologies prioritize especially in European security and defense context. So emerging technologies, new technologies have taken again a center stage on the use of security and defense agenda. This is also reflected in increased efforts to enhance the strategic autonomy, technological and digital sovereignty, data sovereignty as well as proactively investing in so-called yet again made in Europe or European artificial intelligence. The SWIFT, in my opinion, operationalizations of such initiatives like the European Defense Fund coupled with other initiatives at the U-Level to invest in civil military research and development, their cross-fertilization are definitely areas that have gained a strategic importance. While civilian innovation was not that important, let's say on the strategic foreign policy agenda as well as international security and internal security priorities when it comes to the European Union, there is an increasing trend in recent years to see technology as a source of power, especially as a source of European power. To this end, the European Commission's action plan on synergies between civil defense and space industries from February 2021 puts ahead some key steps to achieve technological sovereignty or a digital sovereignty for that matter. And this is a proposal to advance a more cross-domain approach to prioritize dual use technologies to again lay emphasis on synergies between civil and military innovation, but also overall to enhance European strategic autonomy when it comes to key new and emerging technologies. NATO allies for that matter also have agreed to launch a new civil military defense innovation accelerator for the North Atlantic. Some have said that it's similar to the European Defense Fund. The NATO initiatives is called Diana under the Greek Hunting Goddess, but one of the main goals of these initiatives is exactly to boost transatlantic operation on critical dual use technologies, promote interoperability, and yet again harness civilian innovation spin-ins and engage practically with the public sector, with academia, but as well as of course startups. So the goal is to maintain NATO's edge in seven key disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, data and computing, autonomous technologies, quantum-enabled technologies, biotechnology, hypersonic technology and space. And this is the same goals of course for the EU when it comes especially to space, but also cyber security. But what does this all mean for military transformation? I think that the above initiatives revolve around managing the shock of technological disruption. They also show from again looking at all these initiatives, they also show that both the EU and NATO have taken significant steps in recent years to adapt and adopt new technologies more quickly, strengthen the defense, technological and industrial base and bridge innovation gaps. But the clear message here is that developing the defense industry and technology base in Europe is key to strategic autonomy and interoperability in the transatlantic context. To put on a little bit of more of a critical hat, they also show an emphasis on techno-solutionism and technological superiority military affairs. But this is of course not a new development for students of revolutions in military affairs or strategic studies as scholars. This belief in techno-solutionism and that cutting edge technological innovation can become a silver bullet to solve complex national international security and defense problems or provide a strategic operational tactical edge during times of conflict is nothing new and it can chase back to the Roman Empire and even I think further on. But without any doubt in the 2030s and 2040s current accelerating technological trends will have profound consequences on strategic thinking, on security and defense policies, on deterrence capacity, balance of power and most importantly power protection. However, it is also very important to reflect on the type of technologies and data that is being used, how useful it is in the physical and in the non-physical combat environments of the future. So most importantly, I would remark that technological innovation alone rarely shapes military innovation. Instead, how militaries use technologies makes a difference actually as well as how open organizational cultures are to tech and bureaucratic innovation. Again, this is not something new and my opinion is reflected in academic scholarship and also policy analysis on this matter. I also believe that emerging technologies to create especially artificial intelligence but I will not go into details about that will create military strategic dilemmas at the heart of defense ecosystems that would definitely impact a deeply automated, digital complex and highly dynamic both physical and non-physical battle space of the future. So in this respect, more thinking I think should be done at both national, European or international level concerning such applications, drawing red lines, potential consequences of their applications and uses. But in my opinion, at this stage, we are in an emerging state of thinking as well when it comes to emerging technologies and conceptual uncertainty and strategic uncertainty surrounds many of such technologies because they are emerging, they are new as well as their potential disruptive effects or how they will disrupt organizational cultures in the defense structures. So I think that another area that should be reflected is indeed this more holistic a whole of a society approach and approaching the defense for more of a broader dimension such as security and also reflecting more deeply on for instance human machine teaming and also the ways in which for instance the militaries of the future will need to adapt to and use and be used at the same time by these new and emerging technologies. So again, to state the obvious and I will finish here, I think that my time is up and to quote a military historian, Max Boot, military innovation since the 16th century onwards has shown that technology is just one side of the story and it only sets the parameters of the possible and that is also true for the 2030s or the 2040s and the future of defense forces. So thank you very much and looking forward to the Q and A. I'm handing it over to Ben, I think. Well, Luca, thank you so much indeed. Indeed, the search for silver bullet is always a quest of Aussie makers that never exists but technology as you say opens up many, many new and fascinating horizons. We turn now to Tim Keating who's gonna give a sort of more practitioner's perspective as the man of the driving seat of New Zealand defense policy for several years. Thank you Ben, Kira from a New Zealander and Al-Salam-Alaikum from somebody who's a resident of the Middle East currently. My brief is the focus on lessons learned and look, I don't wanna stand up and take my shirt off to talk about the scars of transforming defense force. So instead, I'm gonna give my argument and talk about the scars verbally. You know, because throughout my career, I've observed the successes and failures of senior leaders and their endeavors to significantly change military organizations or other organizations. I went to the health for a while or later as the vernacular became to transform them. So my observations here about changing defense as an institution overall. In this, I'm gonna reflect on my limited successes and more importantly, are my failures to achieve the changes that I envision at the levels which I come out of my forces. Add to this in my current role as a consultant. This is what we do, we go into organizations like defense organizations and look at that model, that total operating model of the defense force. So I'm gonna focus my remarks today at institutional level. The overriding lesson I wanna get out of this today and pass across is what presents as a great idea of vision as only a start point in the long and often challenging process and very few leaders actually achieve what they envision their organizations to be. And fortunately, in many cases at the very outset, a poor vision does not provide the required simplicity, the motivation or the organization to enable the enterprise to be successful on its journey. Therefore, when examining these efforts and comparing them to other organizations both in New Zealand and internationally, there are some observations I'll make that I consider contributed to the success or failure of good transformations. In this examination, I could be accused of stating truisance or repeating the rules of previous more skilled observers than me like John Cotter. However, what I find remarkable is despite the abundance of wise advice on change and transformation that exists and the wealth of lessons learned seems to me in the haste to improve our organization's performance or respond to a change in circumstances, little heed is paid to the foundations of organizational change. Organization leaders seem to become blinded early or ease into easy solutions, shiny new capabilities like the techno solutionism we just heard about, that promise impressive outcomes and in the haste to get things done rather than investing the necessary time and understanding and the overall opportunity that is presented to make their organizations what they truly need to be, not what they want them to be and developing a clear path to how to get there. And the military would call that a military 01, where do you wanna go and develop a plan to get there? But when we get organization, we tend to forget about some of those fundamentals. To me, all three elements of vision, design and execution must be given equal diligence by those who are leading and therefore accountable for the change. Another way of putting it in my business at the moment is getting the strategic alignment right, your program management right and do not forget about the change management. Those three components must be given equal emphasis. One could put the blame on the current social and political session, sorry, setting that prefers short-term gratification results today rather than generational investment. But we cannot always use that as an excuse unless the change from model is comprehensive and in the very worst cases, poor, poorly envisioned and executed transformations actually leave organizations and seen this time and time again, worse off with an incoherent operating model. So the brief for this seminar and what constitutes an optimum for structure for small militaries, capability and staffing is of course the sort of midpoint of the transformative thinking. Look, there are many good analytical tools for this purpose, which can assist decision makers to make good evidence based and informed decisions that turn policy into affordable military capabilities. And in doing so, understand the risk-based trade-off choices that provide the nation with the most utility as we have heard already in an uncertain future security environment, one that's full of surprises, black swans or whatever you wanna call them. For example, the size of your land force will be determined by the sum of the scale and duration of the events you want your land forces to succeed in. And then trading off these events between the most likely and most dangerous, simple tool, multi-criteria decision analysis was used heavily by us to take out the biases and those strong leaders who argued for certain views. In all of this equation, affordability must be considered over the lifetime of capability in all its elements, not just at today's shelf price. Of course, the aim overall is to achieve the trinity match of policy, capability and affordability for the nation. So we were challenged with this task in New Zealand after, and I'll admit, a series of poor historical capability choices. And we completed this task under intense government scrutiny. In fact, it was more likely where our feet to the flame along with government and treasury to not repeat the mistakes of the past. As a result of following a disciplined process, I believe we produced an optimum force structure for the necessary capabilities for our context of what the nation could afford to spend on defense. And the government of the day actually considered the tools we applied to this process and the outcome as an exemplar of how you could look across a number of government departments. So the point I want to emphasize again to you today is you're presented with a once in a generation opportunity to rethink the plan and deliver true organizational transformation around forces. And in doing so, that vision and that plan must be fit for purpose for Ireland's future. And its execution has to be comprehensive and part of a long-term strategy led approach to transformation. Today as the brief, I'm not going to talk to you about policy but neither am I going to cover those tools that we used and that could be used for another day. Instead, I'm going to talk about those fundamental lessons in the execution phase. And again, as I say before, I'm going to risk restating a few truisms or getting into semantic gymnastics on transformation speak. However, I consider the purpose of why you're undertaking change and subsequently leading that change is vital in leading a military transformation or any organizational transformation. And time and time again, it's given lip service. Yeah, we know all that. So go on and do the changes necessary and why most transformations continue to fail. So if you think gaining consensus and believe me in the military, that's where the scars come from on the vision and the path towards that vision is tough. Then you have to be aware that change execution is tougher and the strategy, the plan, this must be as comprehensive that you put into determining your vision, your future capabilities and your associated or structure. So let me just clarify a point of semantics here. I refer to transformation as a pivot point, something you can't have enduring which describes a fundamental shift to a new model. And in my mind, this normally affects significant changes in all the foundations of your operating model, including the governance and that's command and control as well for the military, personnel, processes and technology. You can't have a sort of a part transformation of an organization without seeing its effect across those pillars. When I was tasked by the frustration of New Zealand government, as I said before, who had some for some years sought to develop a more coherent whole of defense force model to undertake a major transformation of New Zealand. I chose to undertake the organizational transformation before later moving to business transformation part, the capabilities part. My observations having observed it in lower ranks and around the executive table and before I came to the chief of defense force was the organizational brain required drastic surgery before the optimization of capabilities and functions could even be envisioned, let alone change as part of your total operating concept. The tribalism that exists in many military organizations, clouds, rational, future-enabled thought, the ability to think beyond individual interests to a common purpose. Military DNA is fundamentally conservative. We like fighting last wars. We like dealing with what we're certain with. One of the greatest risks to any transformation are leaders who remain wedded to past models. Of course, this is why many organizations bring external people like we have with this panel to help us break some of that thinking and drive the necessary change. And I use this as well extensively for my own defense force, as well as a motivation for them to become intellectually engaged with the future rather than just guarding the past. So I used panels like this but also built a coalition of people within the organization and outside the organization, including consultancy services to help with the plan. Building that coalition of energized leaders within and external to the organization of where I spent a lot of my effort. You know, I've actually felt, again, this might be a sound a little bit trite, but the intellectual part of it was relatively straightforward to what I'd be capabilities. But bringing that coalition of people forward both externally and internally to actually action that change is where the leader must place most of their energy. So we know and we've heard already that in today's environment, a multiple influences that impact the military organizations simultaneously and they're coming at us rapidly that collectively necessitate them to continuously review their operating model. And we're necessary and at times and carefully chosen to pivot or transform to a new model. The challenge that we have in many military organizations today in my reading and research of Ireland like New Zealand is that the changes in the past from the resulting from temple reactions to now an unperceived threats or political changes can develop that incoherence in that operating model. You've got small islands of capability of systems of governance around and you're not looking at a total, total whole. I believe Ireland's been presented by the opportunity and the challenge and one to commence a generational change for the future and develop a coherent direction, a coherent organization as part of a total model. The last point I'll make to you is and strangely enough, one that we tend to neglect will take the granted and I've heard it again here is that transformations require significant people buying to produce the human energy required to enable the organization shift as model. So while we talk about robots and machine learning and AI being part of the future we're fundamentally a people organization and transformations are fundamentally a human endeavor. We're not designing a new machine here or a new factory automated production line or process. They require and people require an articulation or intelligent people have heard you've gone to your organization and I'm serving in here for a purpose where's the vivid destination that gives clear objectives something tangible, something new, something meaningful that makes sense to me as an intelligent being that I wanna be part of this organization for the future and that's both internal and external to the organization and I hate to say it but are people excited about where we're going and this is what the human requires and that energy that brings the organization again a plain truth but often neglected as part of transformation strategy and it'll make transformation incredibly difficult to succeed unless you build up that energy and I've heard from previous people here prior to this of how that can slow down the organization and certainly where are we and where are we going? So let me conclude transformation and the strategy to enable that shift in defense and security is tough it requires foresight, it requires arguing for the intangible against the tangible particularly in the environment where I want to see the results now I want it today it requires leadership that can think and act multidimensionally across the environments the new environments we're talking through and we've talked about data and cyber but also one that can think intergenerationally and build that trust and confidence and energy in the people this multi-generational thinking must not only be from the people within the defense but the people who make those policies and can push that back can push that multi-generational thinking out to the future. Now this is always challenging in today's democracies as I sort of quote there's always this imperative to deal with that crocodile that's right next to our canoe rather than the one that lurks away into the distance. So my question, my challenge is what is island undertaking? Are you transforming? Are you embarking on a new strategy? Are you modernizing your capability? So are you changing certain elements of your operating model? Maybe a reorganization or right sizing or it's a little bit of all and what is your plan to get there? To be sure, I hope you're clear you know what you're doing and so those who must support you internally, externally and those that you must lead on that various change if it's also clear over the journey they're on. In summary, I repeat getting a true strategic vision is absolutely critical and this will guide the development of a comprehensive strategy and a plan to realize that vision and one that is well-led. These are all necessary component parts that will go a long way to assist a well-led organization achieve the change and the national policy outcomes that you're seeking. So thank you very much and I hand it back to you, Ben. Thank you very much, Ben. And I don't think I'm telling any tales out of school when I say that we have been absent a serious strategic vision on defense for generations and that really is where we are starting seriously on the back foot in that enterprise but this, as I say, is a building block towards it and thank you for your contribution. Delighted now to turn to Ulrika, you have the floor. Thank you very much, Ben and wonderful good morning from me and thank you very much for having me on this nice morning. Your inquiry or your research really tries to look at quite an array of important questions regarding the future of warfare and defense and so I decided rather to try to address them all to do a deep dive into the areas that I have worked on and studied quite intensively over the last few years and that's unmanned systems, so-called drones and the increasing role of artificial intelligence in warfare and my plan is to on both so drones and AI basically address two rather concrete questions. Number one, where's the development now and what are the trend lines? And then number two, what should armed forces especially those of smaller states invest in and do about it? And I was struck by Tim's comment that vision is tough, change execution is tougher because it makes me almost happy to be more in the vision business. But anyway, let's start on drones. Drones, unmanned aerial vehicles, remotely piloted vehicles. Where is the development now and what are the big trend lines that are relevant for 2020, 2025 and 2030? The first thing to note is that there has been quite some movement over the last few years and especially really in the last two or three. So we used to have a situation where only a handful of states had armed drones. For years, it was basically the US, Israel and the UK that bought drones from the US. And we used to have the situation where drones were an exclusively military capability. Neither is true anymore today. So we've seen a significant proliferation of military drones, including armed drones around the world over the last few years. And the letter, this proliferation of armed drones has been driven primarily by the emergence of two new drone producer and drone exporter nations. And that's China and Turkey. Now, the interest in manufacturing drones by China and Turkey was driven primarily by not being able or allowed to buy drones from the United States. But by now, they really have become the main supply of armed drones in the world. And China has been selling drones. For example, armed drones in Africa, Turkey is trying quite hard to get European customers. Poland just closed the deal. Latvia is looking into Turkish armed drones. And the US and Israel are also, I think, slowly starting to looking into exporting more. The French got their armed drones from the US. Germany might get theirs from Israel. So to put this very clearly, we are now in a situation where any state that once armed drones can get them through import or going down the kind of Turkish model, the Turkish route and develop them yourself, build an indigenous drone manufacturing capability, which costs some money, but it's definitely possible. I also just refer to the fact that drones used to be an exclusively military technology. That's no longer the case and also impacts proliferation and of course the security situation. So today drones are being used in loads of different contexts, agriculture, hobbyists use drones, photography, pipeline inspection, everything really. And importantly for the military, these drones are coming back to the battlefield. And they're coming back to the battlefield basically in three ways. They're coming back in form of commercial drones being used by non-state actors from Hezbollah to ISIS, we've seen this and it's very easy to imagine European-based non-state actors or terrorist groups using these systems. They also come back in the form that armed forces around the world are buying commercially available systems to use, so the Dutch or the German Navy have done so. And finally, because of the civilian proliferation because everyone can now get a drone and kind of tinker with it, it has just generally become easier for everyone to kind of build their own makeshift system. So long story short on this, today's battlefield and future battlefields have lots of drones in them, armed and unarmed and we need to be prepared for this. And the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh for example has shown that drones do not only play a role in asymmetric conflicts as we kind of used to think in Afghanistan et cetera, but indeed in interstate conventional conflict and warfare. Another trend line for drones I just wanna throw in here, so in addition to the proliferation and the civilian rise is the growing importance of smaller drones or even personal drones. And I think this is relevant for the kind of structure and staffing element of your inquiry because we may go into a situation where at least among the better equipped Western militaries individual soldiers may have their own personal drones with them at all time. We will also see more unmanned systems on the ground and under the sea, this is already happening but certainly will be more of an effect by 2030 and indeed the development of increasingly autonomous drones, AI-enabled systems and drone swarms. And I'll come back to this in the section on AI in a second. So what should armed forces especially small estates armed forces do and invest in when it comes to this drone question? The first most important thing, anti-drone capabilities. So no matter what you're planning what kind of operations you wanna do, you don't wanna do, you will need anti-drone capabilities. That's very, very obvious. And there are lots of different ways to fight drones. You know, there are many different drone systems so there are many different ways to fight drones. It kind of ranges from kinetic solutions, basically different ways to shoot down drones to electronics or jamming, hacking, et cetera, microwaves, lasers, nets, even eagles. All of this has been discussed and tested and tried out. Right now there's a lot of investment and a lot of research on this. My guess is that there won't be like the one system that will be able to fight all drones and that can do everything. So the kind of the silver bullet in anti-drone capabilities. So armed forces may need to invest in several and they need to acquire all, but that's something that everyone will need to do. Do states and armed forces need drones? So am I saying, you know, given this, Ireland absolutely need to get these systems. So we have this discussion in Germany. Germany is considering buying armed drones but we're not entirely sure. I would say that drones have basically proven their military work. We've seen this. In particular, you know, long-term surveillance, the long-term surveillance they provide is very useful. So surveillance drones I would definitely recommend buying. Armed drones are admittedly more controversial. In my view, a lot of the criticism has been a business place but it doesn't mean that there isn't any. So countries can basically decide to not get armed drones but if that's the decision, I would definitely recommend to try and get equivalent different capabilities then. So long-term surveillance, for example, through unarmed drones to monitor and follow troops and then also ways to engage if these troops are being attacked. This can be provided by other means but it should then also be provided if the decision is not to acquire armed drones indeed. Let me quickly talk about artificial intelligence which as I'm sure you all aware is a huge topic but just to kind of throw in a few ideas that I was thinking about in my view. So where's the development now and what are the big trend lines? Obviously AI is kind of the big hot topic at the moment in military technology. There is massive interest, massive research and investment especially in the United States and China and Raluca has referred to the kind of geopolitical competition here but also in other places such as Russia. Europe I would say is a bit behind at least in the political discussion but countries such as France and the UK are quite interested and are investing in this as well. And the thing is that AI kind of promises to change, improve or even revolutionize all kinds of military functions. And this is really the point I wanna emphasize here for the commission for everyone who's watching AI in warfare is not just about autonomy and it is not just about killer robots. That's the way it's often being portrayed but it is equally about AI enabled logistics, AI enabled cyber operations, AI enabled training and much more. But yes, it's also about autonomy and potentially even about killer robots or lethal autonomous weapons systems and they as they should better be called. And so we need to address all of these. One point I wanted to mention kind of bringing together drones in AI and drones were one of the first systems and areas in which AI enabled functions did play an important role is the field of drone swarms, right? So drone swarms, drone swarms aren't just a lot of drones together. That would be mass drones. Our drone swarms means that drones operate together. They communicate between each other. They can be used to carry out attacks together, replace each other if one or several is being shut down. So it's quite an organic entity and that capability that means AI enabled capability. And there are quite a few tests of such drones swarms and in the affirming such drones swarms. And there are ideas, for example, in the Franco-German-Spanish ATCAS fighter program, so the future command air system that France, Germany, and Spain are developing together to have armed drones, swarms, company and support men fighters. And that may require quite some level of autonomy. So people may not be able to control these systems as fast. And here the question arises, questions do arise regarding ethics and law. And but I would argue more importantly, questions pertaining to international security as more autonomy in warfare can kind of act in a destabilizing fashion. Let me conclude with the question of, what should armed forces, especially in smaller countries with limited budgets do with this because this is really quite huge and what should they invest in in the realm of AI enabled systems? I mean, the first thing, the first point I wanna bring across to this commission is that this development cannot be ignored. And I'm saying this because in Europe, there is a bit of a tendency to say, AI enabled military systems is about killer robots. We don't like killer robots, so let's just not do any of it. And that's just not good enough because at the very least, we need to know what's coming and what opponents may use. State needs defenses against some systems and incidentally in some cases, the defenses against AI enabled, especially autonomous systems may require some AI enabled autonomous capabilities on your side as well. So yet another reason to kind of look into this. There's also an interoperability question. I mean, admittedly, this is a much bigger question for NATO members than neutral states, but also within the EU. And Ada mentioned the role of Ireland within EU, a question will arise of whether eventually there will be an interoperability problem between those forces that adopt these kind of capabilities and those forces that do not. So once more, a kind of effort to at least coordinate with the other allies is crucially important to kind of be up to date on what everyone is trying to do. And finally, but I'm not gonna go into any details here. There are some kind of big international security questions that states, especially states like Ireland can take on that arise here. I already mentioned the neutral autonomous weapon, weapons question, but also things like, the potential that AI enabled systems may undermine the nuclear deterrence system that our security has relied on for quite a number of years. If AI enabled surveillance and systems kind of undermine second strike capability, we may wake up in a whole new world and that's something that's definitely worth looking at even for neutral states. So I threw in a lot of thoughts and points in here to kind of give everyone some, yeah, who's put forth and I'll end here, so thanks a lot. Thanks so much Ulrike. That is both a challenging and terrifying scenario you think there in terms of the kinds of technological threats that now faces and the limited options and the multiple options we have in trying to address and face them. Greg, over to you, sir. Thanks Ben. Thank you everyone. Thank you for the invitation and the chance to talk once again to Ireland about defense things and thanks to the rest of the panelists for some really good food for thought. I'm gonna avoid all of that stuff that has been covered and get straight to the point which is that dealing with the future for particularly Western states like Ireland is all about the sea. When you think about what it is that the West has managed to acquire the power that it has, it's been being able to control world economics. The financial system and all of that is linked from the fact that over the last 250 years, the West has made the rules as to how the seas work and how they have operated. How it is that we are able to survive in a just-in-time delivery system. The pandemic has exposed quite clearly. Air travel cannot replace that and if you don't control the seas, you don't control the world and we are very used to being able to control the world and we don't like to not. So for an island in the North Atlantic, it would only make sense as Homer Simpson would say, duh. That it is the maritime domain that is the primary focus of what it is that you would think about in terms of any type of strategic review. And I would argue that this also speaks to all of the things that the other panelists are speaking have focused on. It used to be at one point that the navies in the maritime domain were the sexy topic for technological change, technological revolutions. They were the thing before the other new things came along to fascinate and titillate the minds of the military and policy makers, et cetera, et cetera. But that's still the case. It is only the maritime domain that actually is the integrator of all the other domains. None of the other domains actually have to have in the modern security context, the other domains working simultaneously with it. So what does that mean for Ireland? Well, I think it does mean that a number of the things that are going to be important when you're thinking about this strategic review is it does come down to some of this consideration of the future as opposed to your past. And in the chat room there, I saw that there was a question of, you haven't had a past of a real or sophisticated or being a proper state in terms of how it is that you've formulated defense thinking. That puts you in good company. And as a Canadian, I can say that you are right in there with the rest of the non militaristic easy life Western states that have relied basically on others to provide your security and haven't had to. So what do you do now? And it is this kind of move to the political if you want in the strategic level that recognizes that the world is more complex, more dangerous, and it is beholding on all states to contribute significantly to that. And that has to then trickle down into your general population. And I think the maritime discussion, particularly in Ireland is the most powerful one to make. Do you really want the Brits to be looking after your subsurface submarine cables? Because they will, but do you want them to do that? Do you want them to continue to be able to guard your aerospace, your coastal air spaces, which they have done and which causes great political ferment in debate in your country if you can't? And I think the New Zealand example is quite interesting in terms of what you've seen from a country that traditionally didn't like the idea of having to play big power games when it came to acquisition, but had to bite the pill and do it. I mean, there is no need for New Zealand to have the kind of ASW maritime capability that it does if you think about New Zealand as New Zealand. But New Zealand does that to be able to connect with Australia, with the United States. It used that program that Tim implemented to be able to send messages out as well as in. And I think in terms of that messaging, the maritime domain and the maritime kind of interconnectivity of the other domains is where Ireland will get its best value for money. Because all of the things that the other panelists are speaking to run square into the two kinds of movements that you are going to have to weather your way around in terms of the big beasts in the jungle. And there it is the Americans you might throw in the UK here once in a while. NATO, if you think of NATO as a comprehensive something, I don't, I think it's broke, I think its time is done, but it still has a number of kinds of last thrashings if you will of its death throws that are going to make other countries like Ireland have to pay attention. And those are two concepts which are the multi-domain integration MDI or in the UK they call it IOPSI, the integrated operational concept, which is how do you fuse together all the five domains into one operational concept? You have to have this, you have to have that. Well, if you're thinking domestically like most politicians do, how do I spend money on defense to get my maximum number of votes? All of those things speak to the, I think the proper Irish condition, modern condition. You're educated, you want high tech jobs, you wanna develop the things that are being talked about in terms of drone technology, cyber warfare, space. You know, okay, we all want in on the space race, we all want our GPS system, we all want, we all want. But there have to be things that you're gonna have to share. So part of this thing that has been alluded to and Tim quite clearly said, you need to think what you wanna do with your strategy. Which of these kinds of things do you want to be sovereign and which do these things, you know, for your own development? Particularly, I would argue again in the maritime space and in this integration of how all of the domains integrate into that maritime space. And what things do you wanna collaborate on? And collaboration I think for the Irish defense strategy is a very powerful and needful tool. And that isn't just about the acquisition of technology or being able to get into the technology bed with the right players. It's about things like the old fashioned ideas and concepts that have to change now about prestige, reputation, and your value added too. Because right now there is a perception of what Ireland is. So how do you change that? How do you move from being if you're going to actually change to being something that you haven't been in the past? And operations are one of those kinds of areas that are quite important in that regard. Now, if you were a land-centric, land domain dominated thing, you're gonna provide. And I mean, I come back to Aiden's point at the beginning just as I do all the time with my Canadians. Nobody is arguing about the tactical, professional prowess of the armed forces. Got good soldiers, good airmen, motivated, capable. They will die the right way in the right place at the right time as required by the government. Full stop. But the rest of the mechanism after that to the operational and the strategic level is badly out of line with professionalism that's shown by the Irish defense forces. And if those are out of sync, that it doesn't matter how you cannot keep on using tactical proficiency and professionalism examples to replace a lack of operational and strategic humane. It just, you know, it's smoke and mirrors of the ultimate. And I think they're the maritime given the fact that it integrates into things like and that are important to the domestic Irish audience. Not just kinetic warfighting things but good international citizenship, upholding of international law and norm. So when you're in the Mediterranean and doing things with migrants and refugees, yes, at the same time being able to throw yourself into a task force, into a task group and show that you've got the ability to muscle in that you're not just a peacekeeper. And this is the differentiating thing in the big jungle is who are the door kickers and who are the door holders. And if you're not one, you are the other. So where are you going to place yourself? Does I think matter? And I think that the maritime domain gives you both the best domestic capability in terms of being able to grow the economy, do the thing you want for spending money on defense. And at the same time, it gives you the best external which is to be able to be a good citizen, integrate with others and do the things that you want to do. So I really do believe though that a lot of that discussion and it may be going to be taking place, it may have already taken place in different venue and I'm ignorant of that. And so I apologize. But all the stuff that's been talked about here is all of the buying into a vision of the future. When I came to the Defense Academy in 2000, nanotechnology was all about, I have yet to see in anything shot down, brought down or destroyed by nanotechnology in the combat environment. I'm not gonna say that doesn't happen in other parts and other domains that maybe perhaps people don't know about or shouldn't know about. But the fact that the weaponization of nanotechnology has not produced anything of value in over 20 years should tell you just exactly how leery of some of the other snake oil sales are out there about the new technological era. And don't forget, those that sponsor those who want to talk about these things usually can find a paper trail and a money trail back to the Lockheed Martins and the Rolls Royces and all the rest. So buyer beware. I think you have to have a very good conversation like has been presented by our panelists here who have done I think a really good job of balance. But you need to look at that future and what's realistic and what's not within your timeframe of 2035. And then that will give you a much better understanding and confidence to be able to go forward and make the kind of change that you wanted to do. Cause without that, you know you're just throwing darts in the dark. So thank you. That's me done. And I'm really looking forward to the Q&A session follow. Thank you very much.