The Politics and DV Engineering working group analyses current political developments in the defence sector. It provides independent facts and interpretation from the technological knowledge and experience of engineers.
The Working Group on Politics and DV Engineering has the following comments and questions on the National Defence Spending Plan for NATO of 14 December 2018, in which the Minister of Defence indicates how the Netherlands will move towards the NATO norm of 2% GDP. The comments were prepared based on publicly available information and defence technology knowledge and experience. The comments and questions refer to the text of the National Plan and concern technological or related aspects only.
Page 2 (3rd paragraph) - New threats from new technologies
New technologies are sometimes a new threat in themselves, but also cause a shift in geopolitical relations in the world. The recent unveiling of a prototype railgun and China's moon landing are the most recent examples. The hypersonic missiles announced by Russia are also going to pose a serious threat that cannot be addressed by current means.
Much research and development is necessary to deal with the aforementioned threats . This often takes 10-15 years and a lot of knowledge has been phased out in recent years. For example, research and development is necessary in the field of high energy laser systems, the only technological answer to hypersonic missiles and rail-gun projectiles.
Netherlands has worked on the development of railgun systems and high energy laser in the past. These projects were stopped around 1998 and 2001 due to budget cuts.
In previous comments, besides high energy laser, we also mentioned the importance of technologies such as unmanned flying, boating and driving, autonomous weapon systems, hypersonic missiles, etc.
The National Plan states that the government will return to these threats later, without attaching a timeline. Such a timeline was unfortunately also not mentioned in the 2018 Defence Paper, which on pages 8 and 9 mentioned numerous new technologies, either as threats or as potential in-house capabilities. Developing new technologies and capabilities takes a lot of time, but relatively little money in the initial research phases. Therefore, waiting to determine a position is not effective.
Our country could be at the forefront of development in some of these technology areas, as it was at the time. Especially if Defence wants to act as Launching Customer, there are opportunities. A number of technology areas lend themselves perfectly to community co-financing from the European Defence Fund (EDF).
Unfortunately, a lot of knowledge has been lost in the Netherlands in recent years, both in Defence and in the knowledge institutes. The working group believes that one of the spearheads of policy should be to restore this knowledge base at an accelerated pace, both for existing technology areas, as well as the new threats and opportunities mentioned earlier. A lot of knowledge is necessary to follow new developments and (adjust) them where necessary and possible. Especially at a time when many investments are being made that often last 40 years.
Page 3 - European cooperation
The forms of cooperation developed by the EC mentioned above (e.g. PESCO, EDF) are important platforms to promote European cooperation. To fit in well with these forms of cooperation, it is also necessary to align the procedures within the Netherlands with them. Among other things, it is now impossible to invest Dutch tax money in such a cooperation project in technology development outside the Netherlands. In addition, setting up cooperation is almost impossible because the budgetary processes in all participating countries have to be taken into account. That problem does not diminish within PESCO and EDF projects as long as a national contribution is required. Dutch procedures should smartly respond to this so that the Netherlands can act maximally effectively.
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The Hague, 9 January 2018
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Disclaimer: The facts and opinions given are based on open sources and on the knowledge and experience of working group members.
As part of the professional association KIVI, the working group is independent of political parties, governments and companies.
This is not an official position of KIVI. The association accepts no liability for anything put forward by the working group or its members.
Photo: NATO (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
