NATO and industry: same goals, different languages?
In 2012, global military spending fell for the first time
in 15 years to 1.7 trillion dollars.
The defence industry knows it’s time to get creative.
One of the most often quotes that you’ll hear from Churchill is:
Now that have spent all our money, we have to start thinking,
and I think industry has to be within that thought process.
The defence industry needs to take a proactive role.
It must show that it can supply ideas as well as products.
Some new ideas can come from the end users in the battlefield.
We spend a lot of time with our customers, the war fighters,
when they come back from areas like Afghanistan,
where they’re using our products, for example the Chinook helicopter.
Every time a unit rotates back, we send teams out
to sit down with them and hear from them directly
what's happening with the helicopter. How do we improve it?
How do we make it safer for you and your crew?
In Lockheed Martin almost 25% of our workforce, they're veterans.
They have worn the uniform, have been the war fighters.
We have a great, not just an empathy,
but a great sense of responsibility for making sure
that not only can they accomplish their mission
and return home, but are continually given an edge.
But industry doesn’t sell to soldiers,
it sells to organisations and governments.
How easy is it do deal with NATO,
where there are 28 governments represented?
We respond to NATO
and NATO tends therefore to come to us with a single voice,
with single requests. And we don’t see, if you like,
the politicking behind the scenes
that may have gone on to arrive at that question.
How does one of NATO’s responses
to the changing security and economy, smart defence,
fit into industry’s workings?
Smart defence will require a lot more collaboration,
so how easy do they think it will be to implement?
Smart defence is, I think, a very interesting project
because it is not a NATO programme,
but a cooperative programme between nations.
NATO becomes the organiser, the catalyser for it to start.
Funding, execution... will all be done nationally.
They think the disconnect often is
between what the countries end up developing
and what NATO actually needs for the alliance.
The issue obviously is: How can NATO take smart defence
from being a concept
to being an actual planning tool at the national level.
High-level games are nice,
but the implementation happens at lower levels.
There are still some people struggling with how you go do that.
And how do you execute it
without every nation in the alliance saying:
I like the idea as long as you buy my equipment.
And so we have to get past that.
I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t at least subscribe
to the philosophy around smart defence,
but there are many practical barriers.
So what are the obstacles to making it happen quickly?
The existing structure of international trade regulations,
mostly built from a cold war mentality,
is somewhat out of alignment with the notion of smart defence.
The biggest nut to crack really isn’t individual intentions or goodwill,
it’s the ability to share information effectively
so that it doesn’t drive cost up or extend schedules
because it costs money.
But NATO’s influence in the industry is increasing
and that may help it play a bigger role in the future.
Companies like ours, who were...
who saw NATO as a marginal opportunity maybe five years ago,
now see NATO as an important opportunity.
We have... currently we’re running ten contracts with NATO,
which is a very sizeable amount.
NATO represents probably our third or fourth largest customer
in the world, which is a lot different
than where it was a few years back. And I think that helps.
Despite all this, some industry representatives emphasize
that this is about improving collaboration, not creating it.
I think all too often we get hung up on interoperability as:
You have to have my radio or you have to have this airplane.
We in NATO have proven over the last several decades
working together, training together,
going to school together, having a beer together,
you learn how to get over those issues where I have a different radio
or my airplane drops different bombs
or I don’t have a capability that you do.
You just learn to get through that.