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12. How to Spend It: European defence for the age of mass precision
- Author:
- Chris Kremidas-Courtney
- Publication Date:
- 03-2025
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Policy Centre (EPC)
- Abstract:
- Europe urgently needs to redefine its defence strategy in response to the United States’ growing disengagement from its transatlantic allies. The suspension of US military assistance to Ukraine and calls for increased European self-reliance have forced policymakers to rapidly reassess how to sustain collective security. The European Union’s ReArm EU plan seeks to mobilise €800 billion in national defence spending to meet these challenges, but investments must be made wisely to prepare for future warfare. Modern warfare has entered into an era of mass precision, where forces can achieve the effects of massed firepower through distributed, AI-enabled, and highly accurate weapons systems. Ukraine’s innovative use of drone swarms and precision strikes against Russian forces has demonstrated this shift. China and the US are also leveraging mass precision to reshape the battlefield, making traditional mass-based warfare increasingly obsolete. However, while armoured vehicles, fighter jets, and ships require new protections, they remain essential when integrated into networked, distributed operations. To prepare for this new strategic reality, Europe must: Invest in mass precision and distributed operations – Prioritise drone warfare, deep-strike capabilities, and networked operations. Accelerate investment in the European Long-Range Strike Approach (ELSA) programme to develop long-range cruise missiles. Build a European command-and-control (C2) system – Reduce reliance on NATO’s US-centric C2 infrastructure. Strengthen Europe’s intelligence capabilities and decision support – Expand European satellite and cyber capabilities and expand analytical capacities. Strengthen air and missile defence – Accelerate the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI) and deploy cost effective countermeasures such as more cost effective laser-based systems. Build a European military logistics system – Ensure the ability to sustain forces and ensure rapid troop and equipment mobility within Europe. Train and exercise European forces at scale – Conduct large-scale joint exercises to build readiness. Buy Ukrainian – Integrate Ukrainian defence firms into EU supply chains. Buy European – Reduce dependence on US arms while leveraging UK, Norwegian, Canadian and Turkish defence industries. Build a European nuclear umbrella – France and the UK should explore extended deterrence options to protect all European allies in case of further US withdrawal. Build a European blue-water navy – Strengthen and expand European naval capabilities to protect vital sea lanes in addition to supporting territorial defence. Winning the next war, not the last one Europe can no longer afford slow, bureaucratic and fragmented defence spending—it must accelerate, integrate and innovate in order to defend itself in the event that the United States is unable or unwilling to do so. We don’t just need bigger budgets—we need a better strategy. The future of warfare is mass precision and distributed operations, enabled by AI, and supported by capabilities that enable decision, cyber and information dominance. If Europe invests wisely, it can be a technologically advanced, resilient and autonomous military power while remaining a robust pillar of NATO’s collective security. The hour of Europe is now.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, European Union, Weapons, Disengagement, and Defense Spending
- Political Geography:
- Europe and United States of America
13. Averting AI Armageddon: U.S.-China-Russia Rivalry at the Nexus of Nuclear Weapons and Artificial Intelligence
- Author:
- Jacob Stokes, Colin H. Kahl, Andrea Kendall-Taylor, and Nicholas Lokker
- Publication Date:
- 02-2025
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
- Abstract:
- In recent years, the previous bipolar nuclear order led by the United States and Russia has given way to a more volatile tripolar one, as China has quantitatively and qualitatively built up its nuclear arsenal. At the same time, there have been significant breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including for military applications. As a result of these two trends, understanding the AI-nuclear nexus in the context of U.S.-China-Russia geopolitical competition is increasingly urgent. There are various military use cases for AI, including classification models, analytic and predictive models, generative AI, and autonomy. Given that variety, it is necessary to examine the AI-nuclear nexus across three broad categories: nuclear command, control, and communications; structural elements of the nuclear balance; and entanglement of AI-enabled conventional systems with nuclear risks. While each of these categories has the potential to generate risk, this report argues that the degree of risk posed by a particular case depends on three major factors: the role of humans, the degree to which AI systems become a single point of failure, and the AI offense-defense balance. As Russia and China increasingly aim to modernize their nuclear arsenals and integrate AI into their militaries, it is essential for policymakers to be aware of the risks posed by the AI-nuclear nexus. Dealing with China and Russia on issues at this nexus is likely to be difficult in the current diplomatic and military context, characterized by increasingly strained bilateral relationships between the United States and both China and Russia, along with an uptick in coordination between Beijing and Moscow. Nonetheless, there are still various steps that U.S. policymakers could take to bolster deterrence and stability with respect to these issues. These include: building knowledge and competency around issues at the AI-nuclear nexus; integrating AI into diplomatic initiatives related to nuclear and other strategic risks, and vice versa; establishing and promoting norms for the safe use of AI in relation to nuclear arsenals and other strategic capabilities; developing policy and technical criteria for assessing exactly how and when to keep humans in the loop on all nuclear-related processes; including AI technologies as a factor in oversight and reviews of the U.S. nuclear arsenal; investing in AI-enabled cyber and space capabilities to enhance defense and resilience, reduce incentives to attack those areas, and mitigate entanglement risks; consulting closely with U.S. allies about how AI will shape extended deterrence calculations related to both nuclear and conventional capabilities; and pursuing a comprehensive set of risk reduction and crisis management mechanisms with China and Russia while recognizing the obstacles to progress. Failing to take these steps could leave the country and the world dangerously exposed to risks and ill-prepared to seize any opportunities arising from the increasingly salient AI-nuclear nexus.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, and Rivalry
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, Asia, North America, and United States of America
14. Assessing China’s Nuclear Decision-Making: Three Analytical Lenses
- Author:
- Jacob Stokes
- Publication Date:
- 03-2025
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
- Abstract:
- China’s rapid nuclear buildup is raising questions about how the country makes decisions related to nuclear weapons. This policy brief analyzes that trend by presenting three overarching analytical lenses, or categories of factors, that shape Beijing’s nuclear decision-making: leadership, weapons systems and military organizations, and official policies and doctrine. On leadership, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping likely sees nuclear weapons granting prestige and growing in relevance, but his views on nuclear weapons’ efficacy are less clear. On weapons systems and military organizations, the expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal provides the country’s leaders with new options, which could shift those leaders’ intentions over time. Implementation of those options, though, runs through often-corrupt People’s Liberation Army military organizations. On official policies and doctrine, Beijing possibly sees its professed stance as a country that does not engage in U.S.- and Russian-style arms buildups as a source of diplomatic influence, particularly in the developing world or Global South. Separately, the circumstances where China’s nuclear no-first-use policy would face a true test—for example, during a major Taiwan contingency—are precisely the moments when Beijing would have massive incentives to selectively interpret or simply abandon that policy. In the near term, China’s official nuclear weapons policies will likely stay the same, so the gap between rhetoric and action will grow. A bigger arsenal and more nuclear rhetoric and signaling will, over time, also shape future Chinese coercion campaigns. In response, U.S. policymakers should commission an intelligence assessment of Xi’s views of specific nuclear crises, pressure China to issue more explanation of its nuclear policies and capabilities, and expand information sharing about missile tests on a reciprocal basis. U.S. policymakers should also make an authoritative policy statement on what would constitute China reaching nuclear parity with the United States and counter China’s nuclear buildup using both conventional and nuclear capabilities.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and Decision-Making
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, and United States of America
15. The imperative of augmenting US theater nuclear forces
- Author:
- Greg Weaver
- Publication Date:
- 04-2025
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- The United States and its allies and partners face an impending change in the threats posed by nuclear-armed adversaries: a strategic environment marked by two nuclear peer major powers. Russia, long a nuclear peer of the United States, will likely emerge from the war in Ukraine—regardless of how it ends—even more reliant on its nuclear forces, which are already the largest in the world. Meanwhile, China is undertaking the largest nuclear force buildup since the Cold War. That buildup will increase the size of Beijing’s nuclear forces by roughly seven and a half times since 2018, positioning China as a nuclear peer of the United States by 2035.1 Meanwhile, North Korea continues to expand and diversify its nuclear arsenal. Although the North Korean threat has been somewhat constrained by the quality of its ballistic missile systems—particularly its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)—technical assistance from Russia, in exchange for Kim Jong Un’s material support for the war in Ukraine, could rapidly enhance North Korean capabilities. Finally, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East could prompt Iran to choose to acquire its own nuclear arsenal, presenting a wholly new challenge. A pair of recent analyses of the strategic impact of this two-nuclear-peer environment have sounded an alarm, making clear that this environment poses a qualitatively and quantitatively new threat of adversary aggression and the potential for nuclear war.2 Conducted by bipartisan teams of former senior US officials and other nuclear experts, both analyses concluded—in the words of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States (hereafter referred to as the Strategic Posture Commission)—that the planned US nuclear force “is absolutely essential, although not sufficient [emphasis added] to meet the new threats posed by Russia and China.”3 Both reports emphasized the urgent need to enhance US theater nuclear forces to address the most likely path to large-scale nuclear war: the failure to deter or counter limited adversary nuclear use in an ongoing conventional conflict. Finally, both reports laid out a set of attributes that US theater nuclear force enhancements must possess to effectively address the threat of limited nuclear escalation. However, these reports did not examine in depth the deterrence and warfighting implications of alternative new US theater nuclear systems. This paper examines why the two-nuclear-peer threat makes the enhancement of US theater nuclear forces an urgent imperative. It explains why the planned US strategic and theater nuclear forces are insufficient to address this threat. The paper then presents a more detailed set of political-military and operational attributes that enhanced US theater nuclear forces must possess to effectively counter the threat. Using these attributes, it evaluates the relative deterrence and warfighting value of various potential alternative theater-range nuclear weapon systems. The paper concludes with a recommended future US theater nuclear force structure and posture, specifically, that the United States should field a theater nuclear force that combines an effectively dispersible dual-capable fighter aircraft (DCA) force in Europe with nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-Ns) deployed day-to-day on attack submarines (SSNs) in Europe and Asia and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCM-Ns) and/or ground-launched ballistic missiles (GLBM-Ns) continuously deployed in Europe and/or Asia.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and Deterrence
- Political Geography:
- Europe, North America, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific
16. The next decade of strategic competition: How the Pentagon can use special operations forces to better compete
- Author:
- Clementine G. Starling-Daniels and Theresa Luetkefend
- Publication Date:
- 01-2025
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- Strategic competition is likely to intensify over the next decade, increasing the demands on the United States to deter and defend against wide-ranging and simultaneous security challenges across multiple domains and regions worldwide. In that time frame, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Joint Force should more effectively leverage the competencies of US Special Operations Forces (USSOF) to compete with US strategic adversaries. Three realities facing the DOD over the next decade lend themselves toward leveraging USSOF more in strategic competition. First, the growing need to counter globally active and increasingly cooperative aggressors, while the broader Joint Force remains focused on the Indo-Pacific and Europe, underscores the value of leveraging USSOF to manage competition in other regions. Second, the desire to avoid war and manage competition below the threshold of conflict aligns with USSOF’s expertise in the irregular aspects of competition. Third, unless defense spending and recruitment dramatically increase over the next decade, the Joint Force will likely have to manage more security challenges without a commensurate increase in force size and capabilities, which underscores the need for the DOD to maximize every tool at its disposal, including the use of USSOF to help manage strategic competition. The US government must harness all instruments of national power, alongside its network of allies and partners, to uphold international security, deter attacks, and counter efforts to undermine US security interests. Achieving this requires effectively integrating and leveraging the distinct roles of the DOD, interagency partners, the intelligence community (IC), and the Joint Force, including components like USSOF that have not been traditionally prioritized in strategic competition. For the past two decades, USSOF achieved critical operational successes during the Global War on Terror, primarily through counterterrorism and direct-action missions. However, peer and near-peer competition now demands a broader application of USSOF’s twelve core activities, with emphasis on seven: special reconnaissance, foreign internal defense, security force assistance, civil affairs operations, military information support operations, unconventional warfare, and direct action. Over the next decade, the DOD should emphasize USSOF’s return to its roots—the core competencies USSOF conducted and refined during the Cold War. USSOF’s unconventional warfare support of resistance groups in Europe; its support of covert intelligence operations in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America; its evacuation missions of civilians in Africa; and its guerrilla and counterguerrilla operations helped combat Soviet influence operations worldwide. During that era, special operations became one of the US military’s key enablers to counter coercion below the threshold of armed conflict, and that is how USSOF should be applied in the next decade to help manage strategic competition. This report outlines five ways the Department of Defense should use Special Operations Forces over the next decade to support US efforts in strategic competition. USSOF should be leveraged to: Enhance the US government’s situational awareness of strategic competition dynamics globally. Entangle adversaries in competition to prevent escalation. Strengthen allied and partner resilience to support the US strategy of deterrence by denial. Support integration across domains for greater effect at the tactical edge Contribute to US information and decision advantage by leveraging USSOF’s role as a technological pathfinder. This report seeks to clarify USSOF’s role in strategic competition over the next decade, address gaps in understanding within the DOD and the broader national security community about USSOF’s competencies, and guide future resource and force development decisions. By prioritizing the above five functions, USSOF can bolster the US competitive edge and support the DOD’s management of challenges across diverse theaters and domains.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, National Security, Terrorism, and Strategic Competition
- Political Geography:
- Africa, China, Middle East, Latin America, and United States of America
17. Issue brief: A NATO strategy for countering Russia
- Author:
- Ian Brzezinski
- Publication Date:
- 02-2025
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- Russia is the most direct and significant threat to the security of NATO member states—and since Moscow’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 this threat continues to grow. It now encompasses the war in Ukraine, the militarization of the Arctic, hybrid warfare, and violations of arms control treaties. While NATO holds a significant advantage over Russia in military and economic power, an effective and unified strategy is needed to counter Russia’s aggression and fully harness the Alliance’s collective capabilities. To effectively counter Russia, NATO must defeat Russia in Ukraine, deter Russian aggression against NATO allies and partners, contain Russian influence beyond its borders, and degrade Russia’s ability and will to accomplish its revisionist agenda. That will require, among other actions, a significant increase of support and commitment to Ukraine’s defense against Russia, and a more robust Alliance force posture including the modernization of its nuclear deterrent, the permanent stationing of brigade elements along NATO’s eastern frontier and increased defense industrial capacities.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, NATO, Intelligence, International Organization, National Security, Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Deterrence, Resilience, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Ukraine
18. The 8 Percent Approach: A Big Bang in Resources and Capacity for Europe’s Economy and Defence
- Author:
- Andrea Dugo, Fredrik Erixon, and Ismail Abdi
- Publication Date:
- 03-2025
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
- Abstract:
- Europe has become a region of feeble economic performance and military frailty. Its share of the world economy is rapidly shrinking, and the region is struggling to keep up with economies at the modern technological frontier. Countries in the European Union have for decades talked about the importance of raising Research and Development (R&D) expenditure and allow greater space for an entrepreneurial business sector that is prospering on the back of innovation. However, the results are poor. R&D expenditures as a share of GDP have largely been stagnant, business investment and inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) have tanked. Rates of new business formation and growth are paltry, partly as a result of gross overregulation. Productivity growth has continued its decades-long path of deceleration, and the EU is increasingly behind international leaders. Fortunately, Europe is beginning to wake up from its strategic slumber. Defence expenditures are now growing faster than in previous decades – and some countries, like Poland, are becoming serious powers. Yet, the region’s own military capacity remains poor. Europe must rebuild core conventional capacities at a time when defence modernisation requires substantial resources and focus. Russia may be bogged down by its war against Ukraine, but it is rebuilding its capacities fast and is increasingly aided by partnerships with other countries that want to break down what remains of a liberal world order. Many European NATO-members are now hitting the 2-percent spending target but must spend vastly more to acquire sufficient capacities to defend themselves and their interests.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, European Union, Regional Economy, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Russia and Europe
19. Nuclear NATO: How to make it credible and efficient
- Author:
- Karl-Heinz Kamp
- Publication Date:
- 01-2025
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- NATO’s nuclear deterrence is not suffi ciently prepared for the evolving strategic environment in Europe and beyond. The current Strategic Concept does not defi ne which steps are needed to maintain nuclear deterrence’s eff ectiveness and credibility. To adapt nuclear deterrence to today’s requirements, NATO must fi rst and foremost agree on a new nuclear strategy document.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, NATO, Nuclear Weapons, and Deterrence
- Political Geography:
- Europe
20. Two to tango: Russian-Iranian drone cooperation
- Author:
- Katie Fricke, Taylor Hankins, and Victoria Jones
- Publication Date:
- 06-2025
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- NATO Defense College
- Abstract:
- Iran and Russia are strengthening their partnership through collaboration on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) development and deployment. Iran’s drone programme presents a multifaceted challenge to NATO. The acquisition of Western technology through reverse engineering, coupled with Iran’s growing reputation as a drone supplier, enhances its military capabilities and global infl uence. Russia’s use of Iranian drones in Ukraine exposes vulnerabilities in NATO-provided defence systems and undermines eff orts to protect member states and partner countries. The proliferation of this technology to other state and non-state actors complicates NATO’s defence strategies. It is important for NATO to understand the drone warfare dynamics shaped by the Russia-Iran partnership. Analysing their innovations and integration into military doctrines is crucial for anticipating threats and developing countermeasures.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, NATO, International Cooperation, Bilateral Relations, Weapons, and Drones
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Iran, Eurasia, and Middle East