National Defence committee  All defences are only as strong as their weakest member.

National Defence committee  Well, as an example of cyber, it's a great one. The decision that has been made by the NATO nations is that NATO will address the defence of its own systems. We are responsible for the NATO-owned systems. Cyber defence in the nation-owned systems is the responsibility of each nat

National Defence committee  Both as the current Supreme Allied Commander Transformation and the former chief of the French air force, my vision is that the number of unmanned aerial vehicles is going to increase. I will never say that we will only have these unmanned vehicles in the future, but the balance

National Defence committee  The connected forces initiative is a new initiative that the Secretary General launched in Munich this year, at the latest Munich security conference. Basically there are three aspects to it. The first is additional education and training of individuals. The second is enhanced

National Defence committee  Thank you. Yes. Making decisions among 28 members always takes a bit longer than making them alone. However, if we look at the recent past, it took not even one day to invoke article 5 after 9/11, and it took not even nine days to operate in Libya. If you compare these to the mo

National Defence committee  Thank you. The smart defence initiative was launched in February last year by the Secretary General during the Munich security conference. The smart defence initiative rests firmly on three pillars: prioritization, specialization, and multinational cooperation. The objective is

National Defence committee  I would argue that NATO is all about interoperability. We need to make sure that all member nations are able to operate together. More and more, as we can see in Afghanistan and in the Libyan campaign, we need to also make sure that we have more and more interoperability with pot

National Defence committee  On the choice by the nations for a specific piece of equipment, NATO has no say. NATO establishes the need for a capability. When we say a capability, we mean the whole spectrum, from doctrine to training, including, of course, infrastructure and equipment. But we don't define th

National Defence committee  Thank you very much. I will not touch on the nuclear side of your statement, because as you probably know, nuclear is not included in my portfolio. I have no responsibility on nuclear weapons or what the nations are discussing in terms of future deterrents and the different post

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen of the Standing Committee on National Defence, I would like first of all to thank you for this opportunity to contribute to your deliberations on the Atlantic alliance in terms of its vision for the future and specifically its