Transformation is a nice word, but there are many definitions. It's difficult. I'll try to simplify this, but basically my work is twofold. One part of it is support to current operations, how to do short-cycle adaptation to evolving situations; and the other part is long-term transformation, how to make sure that the forces we are going to generate for the long-term will be adapted to what we envisage as being the potential future environment.
As in the past, we will always be surprised in the future. I mentioned with respect to the Arab Spring that the Libya operation was a strategic surprise. If you look back at military history through the centuries, it's just a string of strategic surprises. If you analyze the history, the string of surprises, you see that those who have been able to fend off the first blow and who have survived the first attack, the first surprise, generally take the upper hand in the long term. Our goal is not to say that we will not be surprised any more, but that we will adapt, that we will be able to react and then to win at the end of the day.
When we have a new member nation in NATO, we work very hard with the nation to make sure it comes up to NATO standards. This is part of my job as the allied commander of transformation. We help the nations on all aspects of transformation, from their own national strategic documents, down to how to train a new non-commissioned officer corps, for example. Some nations do not have one. It is about showing them what we do and how we do it, and how we bring them to the standard that is expected in NATO. This is part of what we call the integration phase. We have just concluded this phase for the two nations that most recently joined the alliance.
With our partners, we have another mechanism where we have as many exchanges as we can with them, making sure that at least when we engage with them the next time, we will be interoperable and will not face difficulties such as the ones you mentioned. I will use an example from the Libya campaign. One of the partner nations, a very strong European nation, contributed heavily to the campaign. It also contributed fighter aircraft, but we discovered that we could not refuel its aircraft because we had a non-compatible fuel system. That was fixed within days. This is something that we should have observed before. It's part of the learning process, how to make sure that we will be fully interoperable from the beginning.
The issue you mentioned on exchanging information, communicating together or not, is crucial. It links with a question that was asked previously on how we share information. We need to change our mindset. We need to make sure that we go from the previous need to know to an obligation to share, because in that way we will save lives and increase our effectiveness. But our systems also need to be able to communicate. This is why my command has developed for Afghanistan what we call an Afghan mission network. This is a basic network into which each nation, when she decides to do so, can plug in even her secret systems to share sensitive information, which can save lives and improve the effectiveness of operations. It was a very specific network built for Afghanistan. Now we're going to the next step where we'll try to develop a more generic type of network, which can be used in the future for any type of operation.
That is the kind of work we do in transformation.