Olivier Martin, Chairman of the Chair's Steering Committee, was invited to speak at the GICAT's back-to-school conference on Wednesday 5 October at the CNAM.
As part of the round-table discussion entitled «In this period of crisis and change, how can we adapt our industrial model? he addressed the many changes currently affecting the defence industry, and in particular two key issues:
- Whether budgets should be adapted to the risk of high-intensity conflict.
In this respect, he believes it is essential to maintain efforts to prepare for the future so that we have the high-performance equipment that will make the difference on the battlefield (the Ukrainian conflict clearly shows the decisive contribution made by the latest-generation equipment over earlier-generation equipment).
As a result, the future LPM currently under discussion will have to increase budgets to support the financial needs associated with the build-up: increasing stocks to a necessary and sufficient level to withstand the first shock until the target stabilised capability necessary to conduct the high-intensity conflict over the long term is in place, preparing the industrial and human resources necessary to enable the target stabilised capability necessary to conduct the high-intensity conflict to be put in place within the allotted timeframe (the timeframe for anticipating the high-intensity conflict), and so on.
- Ongoing European cooperation.
European cooperation takes the form of inter-state cooperation («traditional» cooperation) and industrial cooperation set up under the recent EU initiative (EDF).
European inter-state cooperation remains by far the most important in financial terms and can be very fruitful (cost reduction, increased interoperability of European forces, etc.). However, they require a convergence of operational needs between countries and a shared desire for a certain level of strategic autonomy and sovereignty. Unfortunately, the country that most shares this objective with France has just left the European Union.
The stated objectives of the EDF are to support the European DTIB in terms of technology, to support Member States in financing the development of major strategic capabilities in Europe, and to help build European champions capable of competing on the world stage. Unfortunately, some of the EDF's recent decisions do not seem to be heading in this direction, but rather in the direction of developing internal European competition, which the size of the European market generally does not allow, or even in a policy of spreading the budget too thinly, which risks proving fruitless.
