At NATO Annual Conference Brussels 14 April 2005

National case studies in military transformation Remarks by General Helsø, Chief of Defence of Denmark Transforming NATO – A Political and Military Challenge Thank you very much. Secretary Generals, Ambassadors, Flag Officers, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen. It's a tough job to be the last man on the list and in typical Danish way, I'm not going to start with a joke to wake you up because I'm just going to cover a few remarks concerning Danish military transformation covered in many details and in many areas by my Minister this morning here--a topic which for me personally is highly relevant, since the Danish Armed Forces have just begun implementing one of the most fundamental and challenging transformations in the history of the Danish military. And we picked and we use the word 'transformation' because we have to convince 29,000 man-year in the military that it was necessary; and we have to transform the decision makers' mindset also and not just only updating their mindset. The detail in the Danish defence reform, so to say, is in paper and can be read through by you at your own decision and discretion, so I'm not going to cover beans and bullets, or structures, but to touch upon some of the areas which was essential for us when we started this process and some of the discussions that we have been going through over the last two years before the political masters decided last year that yes, we go for a change in the Danish Armed Forces. So basically what we did was exactly as my Norwegian colleagues has mentioned here, to get rid of the more traditional mobilization set-up to a more modern force focused on capabilities to be used and deployed- employed globally within the full range. And during the process of drafting and discussing this new defence agreement, we learned quite a lot of lessons. First of all, it's absolutely essential that the key military leaders and key political leaders work together and walk together hand-in-hand in order to show and to convince that this is a mission to be fulfilled, with the same vision, playing from the same sheet of music. Secondly, we witnessed and we knew that everybody- that there is a huge resistance from existing structures when you talk about transformation. There's not the same resistance when you talk about updating, but if you want to move not only structures but also mindsets, you should envisage that such a resistance will exist in the military structure, in the civilian structure and in the political structure. And I will tell you that now, starting the implementation of this new Danish defence structure, drastic decisions have to be taken, and not all Colonels and Generals think this is their way of thinking, but that's a fact of life. Thirdly, when going through such a fundamental change, it is essential to think in terms of capabilities. And I- all of you have touched upon this during the day, but I will come back to it, seen from a Danish military perspective. We are not going to change structures, we are also going to change procedures, processes. We ask ourselves the question, and many in this room also in the Alliance are asking the same question: What are we doing? Are we doing the right things? And the things we are doing, are we doing them in the right way? Which means that in such a process, when you go into a transformation, there are no existing structures that are safeguarded; one should be prepared to slim, streamline, disband or abandon structures as required in order to achieve what is the goal. The Norwegian approach is similar to our approach, and therefore we aimed very early to maintain expertise and capabilities within essential areas from a joint aspect and from a time, or at least from a platform, where we want to change the equation from 60 percent support structure to 60 percent operational structure, which means that there was a need to make very strong decisions what we don't want to have. In this respect, what we did was we created a force taking into account the challenges from an Alliance point of view, but not only from an Alliance point of view but also from a national point of view, looking upon not only the force structure but also the way that we created cooperation and interoperability inside our own organization, which means smaller, more flexible command structures with psychological advance and deployable force structures, C3I, et cetera, and what is very essential, a high degree of sustainability. In this respect, the NATO Response Force was a driving factor because we reflected on the intention of the NATO Response Force in the beginning as a tool in order to transform the Alliance; and there's no doubt in my mind that the NATO Response Force must serve as an important catalyst for this transformation because it is more important to create a mind shift in the fourth generation processes than only generating a coherent joint trained and certified force package for the Alliance. On the other hand, it is dual headed, so of course it's going to be used. In this context, which also was taken into account when we went through this very tough process over the last couple of years, and from a purely operational perspective, it could be very tempting to regard multinationality and operational effectiveness as opposites. The perception does, however, disregard two important factors. With the NATO Response Force we have put aside 18 months plan for preparation, training and certification of the NATO Response Force, and those 18 months seem to be more enough in order to train different national contributions to work together in an effective force structure. And politically--and that was part of the equation--multinationality in Danish military thinking is a cornerstone as a very, very essential element for the Alliance and for the nation. We also learned that national requirements must be taken into account when transforming the forces of a nation. So you have to state and find out your requirements to be a reliable Allied partner. You have to find out, secondly, what are the national requirements, what are the standards, and what to use as a common platform in order to keep up both military and political flexibility. And one of the issues that we came across here was that the result could be, and that was also the result of the process that we went through, that we are establishing integrated force structures that can at the same time satisfy the national security requirement and be able to provide forces for participation in all type of international operations, ranging from high-intensity war fighting to peacekeeping operations. It should be mentioned in this context that of course--and very few have touched upon that today--but that a pure role specialization should not be used as a tool to rectify shortfalls within certain capabilities, simply because of the ability to provide usable, integrated, self-contained national capabilities is the difference between being relevant or irrelevant in international operations. We picked the word 'capability specialization.' I don't think that you will find it in the book in NATO, but what it means for us in the process, also in order to explain to the public and to the political field, it means specializing in complete national capabilities that combined with other countries' capabilities without being dependent on these to perform their mission. So of course role specialization and force pooling could improve the possibilities of a focused and efficient use of financial means. On the other hand, the freedom of action of the individual countries will be in the hands of our governments. We also, when we came up with this new case study or defence agreement, we were looking upon NATO as, so to speak, an 'enabler' which means what demands will there be, what standards will there be? The NATO Response Force was the driving factor, the deployable force concept was a driving factor, and the PCC was a driving factor--all three initiatives aiming at providing ready and fully deployable force contributions. And therefore, very early we asked NATO what are the good advices. What we are doing here, is that fully in accordance with the way that you are thinking? And thank you to the SAC-T(?) for a very fruitful and very deep discussions. And I quote, the Danish defence plan as presented to NATO is in line with the developing Bi-SC Strategic Vision and will significantly enhance Denmark's ability to meet the transformational objectives of NATO, end of quote. And of course there was a lot of good advice that we will look on in the future. We also took into account on a national basis the level of ambition. I know I'm touching very dangerous ground here because normally it's for the politicians and for the Council to discuss those issues. But to compare the way that we approached this one here on a national basis, actually we took a discussion about the level of ambition. What are the most likely scenarios? What are the ambitions that we would like to fulfil? And if I take as a mirror this and put it in front of the Alliance, I see that maybe the Alliance in the future will need to take the same discussion about this one here. And we looked in the process very closely at that time working papers, second and third draft on the Bi-SC Strategic Vision, which talking about- more about the most likely operations instead of the most demanding. For us, to be a viable and relevant organization, both internally in the nations and as part of the Alliance, it was also a high degree of need to change the thinking. And thereby, we touched upon very, very essential issues in the military. Certainly we have to put together defence organizations that beforehand were in the hands of all three services, or different branches, so a maximizing of the joint aspect, in order to optimize what we call the effects, the output of our changes. So we established very early output indicators to be used. And I can tell you as Chief of Defence, those figures were in front of my eyes every day for the last two years because I was weighted(?) in the military way of transformation, to live up to those standards or output indicators was a driving factor, established hand-in-hand with the politicians. The last thing I will just touch very briefly on is procedures. Because we found out that the procedures- the national procedures, in order to generate forces, should have to go through a second thought. What are the factors influencing these procedures? What are the procedures between the political and military? What are the interactions in the military and internally among the political circles? In this respect, you call it in the Alliance, and we call it in the Alliance, a comprehensive political guidance. I think the preamble to the Danish defence agreement actually touched upon those issues, and thereby dictating how these things fit together. And I have to say in this process, there was a high degree of coordination and influence from the political side to the military side, and from the military side into the political side, because we have to go there, as I mentioned, through a national transformation development hand-in-hand with the decision makers and the military structure, and thereby the Bi-SC Strategic Vision, or the thinking and the idea in this Bi-SC Strategic Vision, was a very essential input, and I think also in the future will be for the ongoing discussions inside the Alliance. And thereby we also took into account the defence requirement review and the (inaudible) started already in its process. To conclude, I'm not going to show figures or beans and bullets. You can read them yourselves. But I must say that one of the main lessons learned, and that is what you have seen, the overarching lessons learned is that if you want to take a full step in order to change what for many, many, many years has been the established military way of thinking and structure, which means transformation, it's not an easy task. Not for a nation, and I don't think it is ever for the nations with whom that we cooperate and work closely together with within the Alliance. I believe that our goals--and we are just in the beginning--can be achieved. It will require a lot of endurance on our part, and a high degree of willingness to make very difficult and very unpopular decisions. However, as mentioned also by my Norwegian friend, it is a price that we have to pay inside those political and military preamble and assumptions that is stated in order to maintain national defence and a reliable partner. The article that is shown and is handed out cover all of our thoughts behind our transformation and the Danish results, and then we will remember back home transformation ever- is a never ending journey. So in about three years' time, maybe I have all our caveats, not the caveat that SACEUR is talking about, but all the caveats to put on there concerning transformation because the goal and the mission, the vision also will change over time. So it is never ending. We started, it was a tough job, and we have just begun. Thank you.