Transforming NATO for the Future Fight
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You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. In this episode, I sat down with Admiral Pierre Vendier of the French Navy. He is the Supreme Allied Commander of Transformation at NATO. Hope you enjoy the conversation.

Let's start at the beginning. Why did you join the Navy? So, in fact, I was trained in natural science and always wanted to travel and to do something about my country. And so I was dreaming about making that happen. I was not on the right path to make that.

And so a very lucky guy, I found a way. And so I went to École Préparatoire, which is something that prepares you to enter an engineering school. Did it well and entered the Navy. So very happy to have done that. And what was your career field in the Navy or is your career field? In fact, on our training course, we see Jeanne d'Arc where we make a world tour.

I discovered aviation. I didn't know about aviation. And so one of my boss on the ship told me a lot about this. I say, why not try it? And so I decided to go on a naval aviation, be a fighter pilot on carriers, which is quite a difficult path. On the beginning, you sweat quite a lot. So I made it and my first engagements were during the Bosnian War, 1994. And so I run all the missions there. I was on a Foch carrier on a super Etendard, which

which is a multi-role bomber. And so we participate to the end of the Bosnian war and then to engagement NATO elite force 1999 on Kosovo. And then I changed of aircraft. I went on Rafale, which is a new fighter. And so participate to Afghanistan missions in 2000, 2003, 2005, then

then run my carrier. And I continued with the carriers, commanding the French carrier Charles de Gaulle. What was your favorite job in the military before you became a flag officer? Definitely commanding the Charles de Gaulle was a great experience because it's a big ship.

two nuclear engines, 2,000 people aboard. Very complex mission. We have a single carrier navy. So it's tough in the cycle to make the ship be ready at the hover hole and to go in the Gulf. So my engagement was 2013, 2015, and we went twice in the Gulf.

participate with the US on operations in Syria, in Iraq. And so it was tough. The job to be ready and to be reliable was really tough. And that was obviously not a NATO mission, but it was one in which you were working very closely with NATO members like Britain and the United States, of course, especially Syria. So what I've done with the carrier was mostly out of NATO. It was a coalition. So it was IOR, the mission in Iraq, in Iran-Faisal.

I participated in CAOC on a portion in Libya. That kind of missions that are not in NATO, but we are very close relations with UK, with German, with US, of course. And that was expeditionary missions. And who was your favorite boss before you became a flag officer in the Navy? The boss that I trusted more was an admiral that was very demanding. So it was in the headquarter of Naval Aviation.

And this guy was a funny guy, very near from us, but very demanding. And so he learned me a lot. And this relation when you can trust a top brass officer, when he says, I'm hard with you, but I want you to go forward. What's his name? His name is De Cotanson. It's a good guy. He's still alive. I have some relations with him. And he's probably one of the men that made my career. I

I'd love to hear about the last job you had before you took this very important post at NATO. So just before my job in NATO, SAC-T, Supreme Allied Commander of Transformation, I was the Vice-Shard of France. So it's number two. I'm just behind the Shard. And so the job of the Vice-Shard is the head of the headquarter, joint headquarter, and which is dealing with all the departments, which are procurement, doctrine, training, and support.

And so it's a huge job where everything is important, everything is urgent, and you are on the backstage. So you need to make things happen and you organize things for long term. You take decisions that will shape the organization of the armies for the next decade. And it seems like this was amazing preparation for the job that you currently have, because in that job, still in France, you

you were modernizing the military and work very involved in that and try to make the French Armed Forces more nimble as we are here in the U.S.,

And that's basically my understanding of what you're doing for NATO now is innovation, transformation, creating a more nimble, innovative alliance, not just one that can innovate, but can scale innovation. My first meeting with innovation when I transitioned from Superétendard, which was a craft design in the 70s, and when I went on Rafale, which was designed in the 90s, at the end of the 90s, first aircraft commission in the beginning of the century, and where we realized that

how difficult it was to use the aircraft with the new capabilities in an old world. And so I struggled as the first commander of the Rafale Squadron with my staff, saying, okay, it's different. You need to implement different rules. It gave me the sense of how difficult adoption is and how you need to struggle to convince the people around you that it's feasible. You need new rules, new job, new way of doing things.

And Rafael does things Supertanda is unable to do at all. And so that I had some occasions during my career to enforce when I was the chief of African operations during the Mali campaign in 2013. We've done a lot in that way. For example, I made the MPAs, so it's Atlantic 2, be able to drop a bomb and be laced by a drone. And so that was experiments that went to the field in a matter of six months.

and a lot of job to convince everybody. Just for those listening who don't have any background in defense of the military, that's very fast for a military timeline. Yeah, and so a lot of alignment, convince people, see what security issues are, and then bring that in the field. And one of the things I've done on this story, I was thinking one year and a half before what happened in Mali in the beginning of 2013, I said to my boss,

One day, we probably have the need of having a drone in Sahel. And so you need to look at what kind of satellite can drive the drone. And we made a study, and we realized that a single satellite was able to do the job where we were. A single satellite that you already had? Commercial one. Okay. To have the video and the command of the drone. And so I convinced my boss to hire the satellites, even if we didn't have the drone yet, because there was a single satellite. I said, we need the bandwidth for us.

And so we did it. And so when the conflict arrived, we had the drone, we had the satellite, and we used the drone on the first day of war. So you see, innovation is a sort of, you look forward, you see what you need to do, and then you try to bring it to today and convince people that they can change, they can do it. Yeah, and I think that's an important point is that this is something that came up in a meeting I had earlier today is innovation.

We all know we can innovate and adapt in a crisis, but that's not the place you want to be forced to innovate in. You want to have those innovations in place, and that's a great case study, that story that you just had. There's so much prep that needs to happen. So when you're in a crisis, you're ready. You don't want to be in a position where things are so disastrous that you have to be innovating heavily in a crisis to get out of it. So we have time. We still have time. I don't know how much. In fact, it's a question.

When do we need to be ready? When I worked on the Sahel crisis. So at the time, I made some one year and a half of war game with my team. I was on G3. So G3 is operations. And so we made studies, war gaming, and said we should have that kind of requirements. We should have global theater comps. We should have GB12 on MPAs. We should have a drone, for example, all that kind of things. And we worked on parallel units.

and I had on my desk a first day war shopping list. When the war began, I went to see my boss, a four-star general, chief of operations for France. I went with the shopping and I say, sir, can I make my shopping list go? I say, yes, use it all. That was cool because the anticipation job we've made, which was a matter of 18 months, make some new tools brought to the war. And so I think what we have to do in ACT, so it's

You have long-term strategy. You have strategic foresight, that kind of thing that are looking to up to 10, 15 years ahead. But we need to bring to the fighters, to the war fighters, we need to bring tools. We smell that it will be useful. And we say, okay, definitely you will need it. And so we try to make that feasible for now. And so it's a sense of urgency. We don't know when it will be necessary.

But all the work we do will make more rapid adoption when needed. And as you look at the security situation in Europe, Ukraine's in this very precarious position at this stage in the war. How are you creating new processes, programs, efforts to make this happen? What you just described. You have a struggle with the heritage of 30 years of defense investment, uninvestment, and the way we use the military during the last 30 years.

During these years, the problems we had were expeditionary. So it was protecting forces in Afghanistan, for example, and so selling troops, selling fighters and supply, and fight on a conflict which somehow was away from our citizens' protection. Yeah, out of area operations. So terrorism was a way to make a link with what was going there and what was going in our countries. You had the 9-11 Article 5, first use of Article 5 for Afghanistan.

It was a way. And today we have fight along our borders in Europe, and we have the risk of systemic failure. Because the war is not only shelling with 155 millimeter gun on the Ukrainians, it's cyber assaults, space assaults. And more than that, you have this information warfare, cognitive warfare, which strikes even the democratic process. So it's a global war, and we need to react and to understand what's coming on because

During 30 years, it was peace. It was quite easy. Nothing to think except entertainment. Yeah. And Europe, as I've said, another fora sort of had this holiday from history in terms of investment in its own defense. What I found troubling, we had Admiral Bauer on the show earlier this year, and he's very much pressing on this idea of industrial capacity and how the defense industrial base in Europe has a long way to go to meet Europe and NATO's needs. Do you think progress is being made fast enough on that front?

In fact, we used the defense industry in Europe at very low proportion because the demands, the markets of defense in Europe was very poor. When you have countries that spend less than 1.2% of GDP, in fact, they were buying one ship each 10 years. The number of missiles were, I would say, dozens or hundreds, but not thousands. So all this system went to sleep.

We need to wake it up. And so it's difficult because industry is not that reactive. You need to hire people. You need to build hangars, facilities to have your supply chain. And so it takes time. You see on the 155 shells, the initiative that has been triggered on the beginning of the war is

is now giving some more shares. So it took 1,000 days to make that happen. And so back to my challenge, I think we have a question of time. We are in struggle. How many days we have to produce something which has an effect, a strategic effect? And so you have the old things that need to be upgraded, and we need to bring new things that help to be more deterrent, more resilient.

And so maybe our defense better and know very quick. I know you think a lot about what deterrence means in this new era that we're in and love to hear some of your thoughts on that. I often quote usual suspects, Kaiser Sose. You know the story. I think your listeners know that. So the story of Kevin Spacey explaining the story of Kaiser Sose is a deterrent story. So a story

which has an impact on your mind, where you know that if you hurt someone, you will have a very, very, very bad time. And so deterrence is there, so it's linked with nuclear, but not only. So it's when a bad guy will attack you. He knows that not only he may be hurt by fighting with you, but perhaps his house, his wife, his bank accounts, whatever he has, will disappear. And so he says, ah, I will not attack this guy. I will find someone else.

And so deterrence is a strategy where the attacker, in fact, is at risk and not the guy that defends himself. That's a good way of putting it. And I actually thought about the usual suspects when you arrived with your staff. For those listeners at home, you roll deep, big group of people. And I thought of that line in the usual suspects. Sure, you brought enough guys when they come in to arrest Kevin Pollak with like half the police force or something like that. That's two usual suspects in one podcast. It's good.

You are very focused not just on more traditional systems. You're focused on transformation. You're focused on a lot of software issues. But using the 155 shell as a sort of analogy here, a lot of people assume that 155 is just like the other shell. But of course, they're not fully – not every 155 can be fired by every – they're all a little bit different. And you have to deal a lot with interoperability for an increasingly digital force. Yeah.

How do you make interoperability happen in the NATO context when you're talking about not just national hardware systems, but the software that powers them? Not just about communicating, but about processing all this data that these modern fifth generation fighters, you know, not every country has the F-35, for example, in NATO. These are really tricky issues when you're talking about software that's critical to enable modern warfare.

So, you know, NATO is enforcing STANAG. It's a standard that should be applied by NATO members. And so you have committees and at the end, the 32 members say, yes, this is a standard. But then you need to apply it. And the trick is that a lot of stakeholders do not apply it. Why? Because arms sales, because when you sell something, you want it to be different from the other concurrence. And so...

Today, the situation of interoperability is not that good. For example, I'll just give an example. The new US rifle is a new caliber, which is not compatible with NATO because it's fitted for Asia and not for Europe. So that kind of thing, it's when a country runs their way, and then NATO tries to bring everybody around the table and to make interoperability. Interoperability has different levels. You can have strategic interoperability. So when your strategic goals align, you have operational one,

You have tactical one, you have technical one, and then you have, I would say, concepts. The way you fight needs to be interoperable. It's why NATO deploys a lot of energy to train the people together, because interoperability starts in the minds. It's the way you fight that needs to be interoperable. And then you need to communicate. And back to your point, we are in a period where this IT layer is critical to make us efficient.

And so it's what we have ahead is to build a new way to be interoperable on the IT world, which is cloud, which is 5G, which is SATCOM, which is AI, which is software and continuous improvement. And the case study that we're all living through right now is Ukraine. How much do you think we can learn from this conflict, given that...

You know, Ukraine is of course innovating all the time and has had some very impressive innovations, but is also fighting in a very different way than NATO would fight. What are the limits of what that has to teach us and how do you think about this? First, you see in Ukraine a sort of mix between World War I and World War III.

So you have trench, you have bayonets, you have fighting hand to hand, and you have drones, you have SATCOMs, you have AI, you have EW, electronic warfare. And when you say that Ukrainians learn, the Russians learn, and they learn fast, and not bad. The first thing you need to consider is that during the first year of war, all the good guys died on the both sides. And today, the question is a question of education and training.

Because it's quite easy to find guys in the street and say, I give you a rifle or a drone and then go. It makes you not a fighter having a gun and having a drone. You need to train. You need to be integrated in a unit to have effects, to synchronize the effect with the others. And so it's why it's difficult today and very painful on the ground because all the people that are coming in to fight are not that well trained. And so a big lesson for us is to be good at the learning process and the adaptation process.

And so, for example, we are working on JATEC, perhaps you've heard about, which is a Joint Analysis Training and Education Center, which will be a center between NATO, my command, ACT, and Ukraine. And the idea is to see with Ukraine how they did well or did not well, and how NATO can take advantage of Ukraine lessons learned to boost, accelerate, and be better thanks to this conflict, which some characteristics are very different from the way we will make combat.

Yeah, it's an exciting initiative. What are some of the other... I know many countries in NATO have their own ways, of course, of learning from the conflict in Ukraine. And I've argued, along with my friend Zach Griffiths, who's an army officer, that it's critical to have battlefield observers there. And unfortunately, the US hasn't done that. I know other countries without getting into detail. So except at a little more risk on that front. But what are some other NATO institutional efforts?

on learning from this war? It's taken in the learning process and I think it's the most important thing because you can have some lessons learned where you've been told not to do this or to do this. But war is a sort of a dialogue which speed is just accelerating. And so the question is learning speed, adaptation speed. And I think it's what's really difficult for us because during 30 years, in fact, we were in stable environment.

And so the speed of learning and the speed of adapting was not that necessary. So when you see the main programs, we said, okay, it's delayed. You have less money. You will wait. And so adaptation was not something that was urgent. Today, it's a matter of a night. I'll give you an example to see in the commercial side.

You had the hurricane in Florida a few months ago. I know that Elon Musk has updated the Tesla cars to give 20% of the extra battery to get out of Florida during the night. That is a new war. It's a way to use software, to use digital, to be better on a matter of a night. And so this is new and what we need to work on because the situations we may encounter are not that scheduled.

And so you've suffered the night, you have to fight the next day, you adapt. And you don't wait.

Of course, NATO can't just be concerned with Russia, even though that is the main focus and should be the main focus. But what's been interesting to me is, partially through Ukraine, how the Asian and European theaters are increasingly linked. I mean, Ukraine's biggest backer in terms of material supply besides the United States is South Korea. And of course, North Korean troops are in Russia. And at some point, we have to assume they'll be deployed to fight against the Ukrainians.

China is obviously Russia's most important financial partner and supplying many non-military or dual-use items and probably more that I don't even know about. How do you think about this through the lens of what you're tasked to accomplish? You should download Google Earth and you look NATO AOR from the poll.

And so it's very interesting to see this. When you look at that, in fact, you see big intercommunications between Asia and Europe and the Atlantic. In fact, the North, that will change because of global warming. The commercial routes or the navigation routes will ease the trip between Pacific and the Atlantic.

And so all the northern countries, which are Finland, which are Sweden, which are Norway, they see that. And they see that where they were in the great frozen, today they are probably on the door of what's coming. And so you see that kind of connections where one day you will see fleets that will rotate from an ocean to another. And so we say spread everywhere. And when you see the size of the Chinese Navy, you can think that it will be able to do that in a matter of one decade.

Because of the war in Ukraine, changing administrations, lots of factors, just living in a much more dangerous world. How do you view the Euro-Atlantic community, the link between the United States and Europe evolving, especially through the lens of what you're working on? So two things. One, you spoke of before. So it's a theater interconnection. When you see that possibility that the threat comes from a side to another,

You can't say European conflict is just a part of it. It's not a strategic island where things happen and it's not connected with. You say RDPK is in Europe. It didn't happen since Chez Giscan to have Asian fighters in Europe fighting against Western guys. This is on the land, and when you consider air, space, and naval issues, then it's interconnected. So NATO is not something which is a side, but it's taking part of the global problem. And when you see NATO AOR,

so area of first responsibility, it goes on the shore of the U.S. And so you have here in Norfolk a new command, which is Joint Force Command, that is in charge of the Atlantic again. And the Atlantic is an ocean which is on the borders of the U.S. And second thing, NATO is a crucible of experience, of expertise, and so it makes us very strong. And so when you see Russia, Chinese,

They don't speak about France or they speak about NATO because we are a real problem for them. Because where you mix Finnish, Swedish, Norwegians, Spanish, French, US, and in my building, I have 1,000 people, best officers, working on the future.

trying to mix their warfighting experience. Why do you find this on the Earth? Nowhere, except in NATO. How closely do you coordinate or does your staff coordinate with national military organizations focused on the future? Like, for example, Army Futures Command.

organizations, major commands that are tasked with similar missions as yours? So it's one of the reasons we're here in the U.S., in Norfolk, because first, it's historic to be cyclone, but we are close to U.S. commands where we can take experience in and share consciousness, good lessons, innovation process. And so to be interpretable and to share this expertise with U.S. job. You have G7 not far from Norfolk.

A few months from there, you have TRADOC, which is the command for training and doctrine. And so we can mix experience. As this morning, I had a Navy brief on the future on my quarter. Very interesting. That was about how to make people change and take into account new technologies. So in the United States, there's this very robust emerging ecosystem of new entrants and non-traditional defense companies.

Everywhere from small dual-use software companies to Anduril, you know. And then you, of course, have the traditional primes who still play a critical role in our nation's defense and our ability to defend ourselves. And what's interesting is these companies, the primes and the non-traditionals, are increasingly finding ways to work with each other, not against each other, which I think is very healthy. Is this happening yet in Europe? Yes.

Yes. And so you have the great stakeholders that are trying to develop, for example, AI drones. But you have new stakeholders. Like Helsing, for example, yeah. New startups. Préligence, for example, has been bought by Safran, which is an AI Intel startup. And so it moves similarly with what happened in the US. The point is,

With low budgets during 30 years, science and innovation have been in the commercial. If you have a GPS on your pocket, it's because it was military at the beginning. So during the Cold War, you had the ARPANET that went to internet. You had GPS, you had rockets that were made for deterrence that went to commercial satellites after that. Today, science and innovation are more on the commercial side. And so the question for us is to weaponize the new tools that are invented in the tech industry.

and to use it in the military side. What is the role for the EU in working with NATO on leveraging new technologies? In fact, in Europe, you have quite a lot of engineers and good ones. And so we need to use this brainpower to build and participate to the effort of not only producing the stuff we need today, but to advance what we need tomorrow. We are in a very singularity point, and it's an AI point.

Because the speed that brings AI in anything, what we do today, to elaborate, to plan, to drill, to learn, to understand, all that kind of thing goes so fast that today we are in a speed game. And so it's a new game where you need to advance what's coming on and not just answer the question without today. So I think Europe needs to be ready to run in that race and to give you help because

If you have only one solution, it's easy to hack. If you have multiple solutions, then it's going to be harder. Yeah, it's been kind of dismaying. You know, I want to see Europe succeed. They're our most important allies in the world. And it's been a little disappointing to see the EU jump so aggressively into regulating AI before they have any real successful AI companies yet. That's just bad for innovation. I'm not anti-regulation. But to start with regulation before these companies have had a chance to succeed and emerge...

I want to enter a blame game, but speaking of regulation, you know the Cloud Act? It's not European one, it's US one. It's a story we write, the two of us, because when you have a Cloud Act where the US are free to go in the other's cloud offices and to respond attacks from them, then you have a sovereignty problem. And so a lot of European stakeholders, I think, have

are very prudent on what comes with the new tech because they want to keep their sovereignty, their intellectual property. And so the regulation that have been in Europe is to protect this because European stakeholders don't want to be stolen. Say I produce something and now it's in the AI and so it doesn't belong to me. So that kind of thing is quite hard. That's fair. That's fair.

I always like to ask leaders who come on the show about a book that's meant a lot to them. So what is a book that's meant a lot to you? So it's a book I read before taking the job of a chief of Navy. It's Trent Owen. It's a US historian. And the book is Learning War. The

The book story explains how the U.S. Navy went from sail and steam to night combat during the Pacific War 1944. And the story is about human. It's about how a generation of officers that named themselves the insurgents, and they turned the table off. And they set a process of continuous improvement. The process was about artillery.

And so, you know, the artillery we had on Sables on the beginning, at the end of the 18th century, it was not a very good one. And so it had to be refilled by the mouth. And they run a generation of officers that matched engineers and deck officers, and they make continuous improvement. And this story is ours today. So they were ready for the World War II, and the fight begun at the end of the 19th century. Wow.

Well, Trent's written for War on the Rocks. I'm sure he'll be thrilled to hear your recommendation of his excellent book, which I've read as well. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you for the discussion. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast. Do not forget to check out our membership program at warontherocks.com slash membership. Stay safe and stay healthy.